Beautiful tribute that captures the class sacrifice angle most people miss about Weir. The contrast between his Atherton trajectory versus the actual path he chose is wild when you think about it. Grew up near Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley and saw guys from that same prep school cohort end up running venture capital firms decades later. The choice to go all-in on psychedlic counterculture when wealth and status were basically handed to him says alot about what mattered more back then versus now.
A truly fine piece by your brother on Bob Weir, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park, where, I must insist, Menlo School was considered a haven for fuck-ups who couldn’t hack it at regular good public schools like Menlo-Atherton.
Thanks Greil! I imagine you remember Magoos - and when Kepler's was at its old location. I recall you telling me about listening to records at a record store on Santa Cruz Avenue. Did you go to M.A.?
So true about Menlo students back in the day, at least the ones I knew. Of course, Stanford had not been a particularly respectable University, either, back before the 1960s, no matter what anyone tells you now. So a Stanford feeder school was already on the back foot.
Beautiful tribute that captures the class sacrifice angle most people miss about Weir. The contrast between his Atherton trajectory versus the actual path he chose is wild when you think about it. Grew up near Silicon Valley before it was Silicon Valley and saw guys from that same prep school cohort end up running venture capital firms decades later. The choice to go all-in on psychedlic counterculture when wealth and status were basically handed to him says alot about what mattered more back then versus now.
A truly fine piece by your brother on Bob Weir, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park, where, I must insist, Menlo School was considered a haven for fuck-ups who couldn’t hack it at regular good public schools like Menlo-Atherton.
Thanks Greil! I imagine you remember Magoos - and when Kepler's was at its old location. I recall you telling me about listening to records at a record store on Santa Cruz Avenue. Did you go to M.A.?
So true about Menlo students back in the day, at least the ones I knew. Of course, Stanford had not been a particularly respectable University, either, back before the 1960s, no matter what anyone tells you now. So a Stanford feeder school was already on the back foot.