Celebrating Jerry Garcia’s Menlo Park roots on the 70th anniversary of his birth

Rock historians note that Jerry Garcia appeared with the Warlocks (a pre-Grateful Dead band) at Magoo’s Pizza (635 Santa Cruz Ave.) in Menlo Park in 1965. Writes Corry Arnold in one of his Menlo/Jerry related posts on Lost Live Dead: “Apparently, however, the Warlocks racous fans violated a local band on dancing, and the shows at Magoo’s had to end.”

Corry also cites evidence that the Warlocks played at Menlo College (when it was two-year institution the same year). Jerry’s band had become the Grateful Dead, when it played at Peninsula School along The New Riders of the Purple Sage.

All of Corry’s Menlo Park-related post contain great Jerry Garcia nuggets including hanging out a Kepler’s at its pre-Menlo Center location on El Camino, information about the location of “The Chateau” (the house where Jerry and others lived at the southwest end of Santa Cruz Avenue) and Jerry’s and Menlo-Atherton High School sometime student Bob Weir’s stint as instructors at Guitars Unlimited on El Camino near Santa Cruz Ave. Read than all here.

And one get downright misty-eyed watching Garcia and Weir perform with another local, Joan Baez, playing Knockin on Heaven’s Door.

The San Francisco Giants are honoring Jerry tonight when they play the Mets. Fans who buy a special ticket package will get a Jerry Garcia bobble head. Only in San Francisco!