Psychedelic Grateful Dead bus rolls back into San Francisco after 60 years

Furthur is back.The psychedelic-painted school bus that carried Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters across America in 1964 has returned to San Francisco nearly six decades after becoming part of the city’s counterculture mythology.The bus is now the centerpiece of “Forever Grateful/Golden Gate Park,” a new exhibition celebrating the Grateful Dead and the psychedelic culture that surrounded the band.For San Francisco, Furthur is more than an old vehicle.It is a physical piece of a time when music, art, experimentation and new ideas about consciousness were colliding across the city.The bus helped carry that spirit from place to place, turning a cross-country road trip into one of the defining stories of the psychedelic era.Kesey bought the school bus with money he earned from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and set out with the Merry Pranksters in 1964.

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By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.Never miss a story Their journey became famous through Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” which chronicled the group’s mix of music, costumes, performance and psychedelic experimentation.Cannabis and LSD were part of the culture surrounding the Pranksters and the Acid Tests, where Kesey and his friends pushed the idea that changing perception could open people to different ways of experiencing the world.The Grateful Dead emerged from that same San Francisco scene.The band, originally known as the Warlocks, became closely tied to Kesey’s Acid Tests, where music and psychedelic visual effects transformed ordinary gatherings into immersive experiences.Over time, the Dead’s concerts became known for something beyond the music itself: a sense of community among the people who showed up.That psychedelic curiosity has continued to evolve.Ayahuasca, a DMT-...