Updates to this developing story will be posted daily for the duration of the August 1-3 Dead & Company residency in San Francisco.
The Spirit of San Francisco: Part I
I sat on a Bay Area Rapid Transit train—affectionately referred to by in-the-know locals as the ‘BART’ train—leaving the San Francisco International Airport heading toward the Mission District, where Shrieks & Whispers had booked me a hotel room. I flipped absentmindedly through a copy of Relix, the popular jam band magazine that I had picked up at a stand in the airport. A headline caught my eye:
Jamming with AI? The future is now, thanks to the new AnastAIsio VST! Brought to you by SecondSet AI, the company that created the jam scene’s favorite chatbot, Oracle-4, comes the hottest new plugin that can place you onstage with your favorite jam bands! AnastAIsio generates real-time, stylistically-perfect backing tracks in a variety of styles! Just select one of the five bands in AnastAIsio’s database, dial in the specific year you want to replicate, and BOOM! Get ready to JAM! Currently for guitarists only, and coming for bassists and keyboardists soon. Never coming for drummers.
I rolled my eyes. There was nothing I wanted to read about less than some new piece of artificial intelligence software being pitched to the jam band scene. I flipped to the ‘Band News’ section.
13th Time’s The Charm? Goose fires their 12th drummer, Fleas Stampede, after his involvement in an insider trading scandal became public. In a press release, the band said that they were “horrified to hear about the accusations against Fleas. But at least it wasn’t a sex scandal this time, right?” The band is holding auditions for a new drummer, and according to the press release, “Irish need not apply.”
Boycottflowman? Twiddle, in protest of Nugs’ decision to integrate Oracle-4 into its app, pulled all its music off the platform. Nobody seems to have noticed that their music is missing, nor has anyone realized that the band has been on hiatus for two years. SecondSet AI, the artificial intelligence organization that created Oracle-4, was unreachable for comment.
I rolled my eyes even harder. Was this really what one of the world’s top music magazines considered news? I turned to my advisor, who was staring into his phone. “Have you read this?” I asked, holding up the magazine. “I don’t believe that this is our competition. How have we not blown this piece of shit publication out of the water?”
“Huh?” my advisor mumbled after a few moments, his eyes never leaving his phone screen.
“I said, how are we not the top music magazine when our biggest competitor is publishing drivel like this? I mean, look at this!” I tried to hand him the magazine, but he was glued to his phone. “Would you put that fucking thing down?” I finally snapped.
He looked up at me, startled. “What?”
“Fuck it. Never mind.”
He shrugged and looked back down at his phone. I leaned over to see what he was looking at, and watched as he scrolled through videos of children in third-world countries falling off of motorcycles in heavy traffic. I recoiled. “What are you watching? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What?” he asked absentmindedly.
I threw myself back into my seat, the last trickles of hope and patience that remained in my exhausted mind finally running dry. After 13 hours of travel time—which included a five-hour layover in Philadelphia, during which I was physically attacked by a drunk Eagles fan for no discernible reason—I was in no mood to bicker. All I wanted was to check into our hotel, have a drink, and go to sleep. My advisor, who was supposed to be in charge of travel logistics, had been totally absorbed in his phone since I met him outside our hometown airport.
He, like thousands of others, had gotten hooked on the newest short-form video app destroying minds around the country: Teases. Teases were a never-ending loop of videos, custom-curated by a proprietary engagement-maximizing algorithm that SecondSet AI had developed. Unlike other popular recommendation algorithms, which prioritized maximum dopamine release per-video, Teases operated on what SecondSet AI was reportedly calling ‘jam mode.’ Researchers had trained the model on recordings of the long-form instrumental improvisations that jam bands were known for—which typically included significant buildups of dissonance and tension that led to a consonant major-key release—and used this data to generate the cross-modal architecture of each user’s Teases feed. All videos received ratings by the sentiment-analysis function of the algorithm, which placed videos on a consonance-dissonance scale, and the order of their delivery in a user’s feed was determined by the algorithm’s assessment of its adherence to the generated jam framework, which was combined with data about the user’s interests.
Or some shit like that. That’s how a developer described it during an interview in the copy of Relix that I was planning on tossing onto the rail tracks when we got off the train. I took another look at my advisor’s phone to see that, sure enough, the algorithm had steered him away from the tense world of motorcycle crashes into the more satisfying realm of hydraulic presses crushing rolls of Zyns.
“What’s our stop?” I asked him, trying to coax him off Teases.
“Huh?”
“Where do we get off the train?”
“What?”
I pulled his phone violently out of his hands. “Jesus Christ, man! You’re supposed to be my advisor, but you’ve yet to do any actual advising! You’ve barely looked up from your goddamn cellphone!”
Separated from his screen, my advisor screeched in terror. “Give it back! Give it back!”
“Tell me where our goddamn stop is! Then I’ll give it back!”
He fell to his knees and began tearing up. “I don’t know where our stop is! Give it back! I need it! Give it back!”
I stood on a seat, holding his phone above my head while he reached for it. “Tell me! Tell me where our stop is!”
Suddenly, the train screeched to a halt. I lost my balance and fell over the back of my seat into the laps of two burly-looking men dressed in leather. I began to introduce myself, but they stood up, grabbed me by my shirt, and tossed me, my advisor, and our luggage out the train door and onto the red-orange tiles of the underground station.
“This is your stop now,” one of the men said as the doors shut.
My advisor and I, winded and in shock, sat up and looked around. A sign that read ‘16th St Mission Station’ hung from the ceiling.
“Would you look at that!” my advisor said cheerfully, “this really is our stop!”
San Francisco. The City of Fog. The City That Knows How. Baghdad by the Bay. The City of Love.
And, most importantly for my writing, the city that birthed the Grateful Dead—and the city that will be hosting Dead & Company, Bob Weir’s current iteration of the original band, for a three-night celebration of the band’s 60th anniversary. I, Michael P. Vincent, was sent into town to cover the aforementioned events for my employer, the lauded magazine Shrieks & Whispers.
This is, of course, something of a softball assignment from my editor, which is frankly just what the doctor ordered. A year ago, I was given a similar assignment—to cover a single weekend of Dead & Company’s first residency at Sphere in Las Vegas—which culminated in my having to take a position as a busboy at a gentleman’s club in order to back a debt I owed them. My editor eventually bailed me out, but to pay back my debt to him, plus the steep interest he charged, I was forced to take on a variety of side gigs, such as food delivery and wholesale herb cultivation.
After spending almost a year in vast fields of parsley, dill, and mint, I was ready to return to my real love: low-stakes culture writing. I was thrilled to hear that my editor would be sending me to San Francisco, but less thrilled to hear that I’d be reunited with the same advisor that I’d been paired with in Vegas. I felt condescended to by my editor’s insistence that I needed an advisor at all, yet I was in no place to ask my editor for the favor of sending me alone. He told me that without somebody to “bring me into the scene where the action really is,” I’d be unable to “really get in touch with the Bay Area’s free-love energy” and was bound to “sit around chewing mint leaves.”
Sitting on the floor of the 16th St Mission Station, I reflected on this conversation with my editor. I stood up and spat out my mint leaves. “Come on,” I told my advisor, “let’s find our hotel.”
“Not until you give me my phone.”
I unlocked his phone and quickly opened his Screen Time menu. He reached to grab it out of my hands, and I sprinted away, clumsily creating a one-hour password-protected limit on the Teases app. I tossed his phone back to him. “There,” I said, “now you only get one hour of Teases a day. Maybe you’ll be able to use the extra time to actually be my fucking advisor.”
“Fuck you! I hate you!”
“Where’s our goddamn hotel?”
Our goddamn hotel was about a fifteen-minute walk away. We dragged our suitcases down the Mission St sidewalk, lined by Victorian architecture, bay windows, and small businesses in colorful buildings—pawn shops, restaurants, tattoo parlors, smoke shops, shoe stores, and produce markets.
A loud rumbling noise to the north caught my attention; I turned around to watch a cavalcade of white motorcycles, all adorned with golden religious iconography, speeding down the road in a formation that stretched over the bus lane. A few onlookers, who appeared to be locals, clapped and cheered.
“Who the hell are they?” I asked aloud.
A resident standing nearby looked at my luggage. “You must not be from around here,” he said politely with a slight Spanish accent. “Those were the Angels!”
“Who?”
“The Heaven’s Angels, man! They’re a traditionalist Catholic motorcycle gang! They’re keeping the streets safe!”
I blinked a few times in confusion, then shrugged and kept walking. “Whatever,” I muttered.
“Hey!” my advisor shouted, “where are you going? A traditionalist Catholic motorcycle gang? That sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t we look into it for your article?”
“Absolutely not!” I scoffed. “Whatever that group is, it absolutely reeks of factional conflict. Let me guess—their sworn enemies are Protestant motorists? Or maybe there’s another group of Catholic motorcyclists who are identical in every way except for a minor difference in the wording of one of their creeds?” I laughed sarcastically. “No thank you. Read my lips: no factional conflicts. We’re not doing that this time. We’re here to enjoy ourselves, do the story we came to do, and go home.”
“Okay,” my advisor muttered. “Whatever you say.”
“No insane B-plots, no press conferences, no investigations. That’s the stuff that drove me to the parsley fields.”
“Okay, okay. I get your point. Jesus.”
He skulked behind me as we made our way down the street toward the one-star Hotel Banotanque, which was presumably the cheapets option our editor could find. After checking in and climbing up two flights of stairs, we arrived outside our room.
“Listen,” I said, fidgeting with the keycard, “I’m going to drop off my stuff in the room. Then I’m going to walk to the bar across the street, have one beer, and then I’m going to come back and go to sleep.”
“Aw man, really? Don’t you want to get some food?” my advisor asked.
“Do whatever you gotta do, man. But I intend to have a quiet night with no surprises.”
The lock finally beeped, and I swung the door open. An attractive blonde woman in her mid-20s wearing a strapless black dress sat on one of the beds. She stood up as the door opened.
“Why, you’re Mr. Vincent, right? The journalist?” she asked. “Forgive me for imposing, but I need a favor and I’m afraid you’re the only one who can—”
I slammed the door shut. “I don’t think this is our room,” I told my advisor.
“What? What do you mean?” he replied incredulously. “She said your name! She was beautiful!”
“I’m not getting involved in whatever this is.”
“But she’s so beautiful! She needs our help!”
“I told you not even ten minutes ago! No B-plots.” I pointed to the door. “That woman? I know her type. First, she asks you for a favor. Next thing you know, you’re reuniting her with a biological parent or hunting down an ancient family relic. It’s not worth it.”
My advisor glared at me. “We’re going in there and we’re going to talk to her.”
“I won’t do it.”
“As your advisor, I strongly advise that we talk to her.”
“This is a terrible decision.”
“Weren’t you complaining earlier that I wasn’t doing any advising? Well, here I am, advising. We’re going in.” He reached for the doorknob, but it was locked.
With as much spite as I could muster, I held the keycard to the lock until it beeped once more, grabbed the handle, and pushed the door open.
“I’m terribly sorry to be a bother,” the woman said. “If I could just have a moment of your time?”
I avoided eye contact with her as I made my way into the room and began unpacking. “It’s no trouble at all,” I said through tightly clenched teeth.
“Why, you’re ever so gracious,” she purred. “My name’s Shannon. Shannon Cutdonna.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” my advisor said graciously. “What can we do for you?”
“Well… it’s about my husband, you see,” Cutdonna said. “I believe he’s seeing another woman.”
I stopped trying to smooth out the wrinkles in the khakis I had just refolded and finally looked her in the eye. “You think your husband is having an affair? What do you think this is, Chinatown? I’m a journalist, lady, not a private investigator. Why don’t you—” I stopped when I realized that she looked genuinely hurt. I looked helplessly at my advisor, who was giving me a death stare.
“Don’t listen to him, Shannon. He’s cranky from the flight. What makes you certain your husband is… seeing somebody?”
“He’s been different lately… distant, preoccupied. He doesn’t tell me what he’s up to, where he’s going, what he’s thinking. A wife can tell—I just want to know for certain.”
“Shannon,” I said, “do you know the expression ‘let sleeping dogs lie?’”
“I have to know.” She asserted sadly.
“I understand,” my advisor said, “and it will be our pleasure to help you. What’s your husband’s first name?”
“Oh, my oh my! I can’t thank you enough! Bruno—his name’s Bruno! Can I send you his work address? And perhaps you can see where he goes afterwards? Because he certainly isn’t coming home to me, I can tell you that!”
“We’ll see what we can do,” he reassured.
“Oh! My heroes! I’m ever so grateful! If you go now, you’ll be able to catch him on the way out!”
My advisor and I sat on a bench outside of Bayfront Park, facing Bruno Cutdonna’s Mission Bay office building.
“I asked Oracle-4 for its top ten PI tips,” he began, “and the first one was just ‘be patient.’ I think that’s good advice.”
“You really needed AI to figure that out?” I complained. “Fuck! I don’t fucking believe that you talked me into this.”
“It’s just gonna be a few hours, man. Then we can get back to your boring idea of a good time.” He paused to look at somebody exiting the building. “Wait! I think that’s him!”
“No way. He’s too fat.” I handed my advisor the photograph that Shannon Cutdonna had given us. “Look—Bruno is in much better shape. And taller.”
“You’re right, you’re right.”
“Listen—we don’t even know who this woman is. I mean, who still prints out photographs? Don’t you think it’s a little suspicious that she just showed up at our hotel room and already knew who we were? Why us?”
He smirked. “Oh, my sweet summer child, it’s moments like these when I am reminded of the reasons you need an advisor. Don’t you know the first rule of succeeding with women? ‘Never ask why she picked you.’”
“Oh yeah? What’s Rule 2? “‘If she shows up at your hotel without needing to be convinced, it’s never free?’”
“Wait! That’s Bruno! It is!”
I squinted at the photograph, then at the man leaving the building, who was wearing a black suit and white fedora. “I’ll be damned, you’re right. Play it cool.”
“Shit. He’s heading right toward us.”
“Don’t stare!”
We watched, trying to look inconspicuous, as our target approached the Bay Wheels docking station—the Bay Area’s bike share program, powered by Lyft—and unlocked an electronic bike. As soon as he mounted it and began riding south, we hurried toward the docking station and rushed to unlock bikes of our own. Luckily, I already had the Lyft app on my phone, since I got 3% cash back on transactions on one of the six credit cards I was forced to open while I paid my editor back the debt I owed him—but my advisor was not so prepared and had to download the app and create an account.
As he fumbled around the App Store, I watched Cutdonna turn the corner onto 16th Street. I told my advisor to catch up to me and then sped off.
Keeping a safe distance, I followed Cutdonna down 16th until he made a right turn onto 7th—I stayed 10 or 15 feet behind as he took two more quick turns. I struggled to stay balanced on my bike as I frantically texted my advisor the directions. He finally caught up with me, panting loudly, on Page Street. The climb became steeper and steeper.
“We’re heading toward Golden Gate Park,” I noticed. My advisor breathed heavily in response.
Sure enough, we followed Cutdonna as he rode into the park through an eastern entrance, flanked by tall cypress trees, and took JFK Drive to Pompei Circle, where he dismounted and locked his bike into the Bay Wheels station. We did the same about a minute later, keeping a close eye on him as he approached the iconic glass Conservatory of Flowers. He stood outside the building’s right flank and looked around as if expecting somebody; my advisor and I walked past him and idled by the main entrance.
“Look at him!” my advisor hissed. “Fucking adulterer!”
“Relax!” I whispered. “We don’t know what he’s doing. Maybe he’s meeting a drug dealer or something.”
He shook his head. “That’s a cheater if I ever saw one. I don’t believe he’d do that to Shannon.”
Cutdonna, his head on a swivel, spotted who he was apparently looking for—an attractive young blonde woman in a tight red dress who was walking quickly up the path.
“Hmmm,” my advisor mused, “do you think she’s hotter than Shannon?”
“What’s your problem?” I snapped, glaring at him. “Why the fuck would you ask me something like that? We’re supposed to be professionals.”
“I’m trying to get inside Bruno’s mind, that’s all,” he replied, watching as she reached Cutdonna and shook his hand.
“Their body language doesn’t look all that romantic,” I observed as they started talking.
My advisor had taken out his phone and was covertly snapping pictures of the duo. “Maybe he has a formality kink.”
“A what?”
“It’s when a person gets turned on by—”
“Stop. I don’t want to know, I don’t know why I asked. Can you hear what they’re saying?”
“Not a fucking word. Should we get closer?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe one of us should just walk casually by; this way it doesn’t seem so suspicious.”
“I’ll go,” my advisor volunteered. He walked away, passed Cutdonna and the mysterious woman, then took a turn down the path and looped back to the front.
“Did you hear anything?” I asked.
“Uh, shit, sorry. I forgot. But I don’t think she’s as hot as Shannon—but, like, barely. Shannon is a fucking 9, and this girl is, like, an 8.8.”
“Are you shitting me, man? You weren’t listening?”
“Why don’t you go, if you’re such a good listener?”
“Fuck you. Fine. Stay here.” I approached the two figures we were surveilling—who had not physically touched since their handshake—and stared straight ahead, trying to overhear.
“… but I think it would really be a huge help for us if you did,” the woman said.
“We want to help,” the man replied, “well, I want to help. But the rest of SecondSet has different feelings about…” was all I was able to overhear. I rushed back to my advisor.
“I think this guy works for SecondSet AI!” I told him. “Shannon didn’t mention that, did she?”
“No, I don’t think so. The company that made Oracle-4?”
“Yes! Jesus—he must be loaded! But this seems like some kind of business deal, not an affair. We need to figure out who she is.”
My advisor smirked at me. “What happened to ‘no investigations?’”
“We’ll just tie this one thread up and then get back to the main assignment. Shit—they’re leaving. He’s coming this way. Play it cool. Say something casual.”
“Anyway,” my advisor said loudly, “how about this economy? Man, I was looking at my bonds, and boy oh boy, wasn’t I shocked to see what was going on there?”
Without breaking his stride, Cutdonna looked at my advisor. “You and me both, kid,” he said amiably as he walked away.
“Good improv,” I said once our target was out of earshot. “Should we follow the woman? It seems like the next logical step, but I don’t really like the optics of it.”
“No need,” my advisor said. “I can upload the picture we took to Oracle-4’s image search and find her Instagram.”
“What if she isn’t on Instagram?”
He looked at me as if I were a total moron. “All hot girls are on Instagram. Look, here she is.”
I took his phone out of his hand to look at the woman’s profile. Her name was Faye Ktan, and her bio read: ‘cca ‘23 | bay area lifestyle consultant | co-founder of @newdiggers | never not advocating for @peoplesshakedown.’
“She works as a ‘lifestyle consultant?’” I asked. “Is that why she can’t afford any capital letters? What does any of this mean?”
“You have no idea how old and pretentious you sound right now,” my advisor said. He spent a few minutes tapping his phone while I stewed quietly among the flowers. “You want to know what this means? ‘CCA’ stands for the California College of Art; that’s easy. She must have graduated from there in 2023.”
“That explains the lowercase, then. Kids these days, I swear.”
“Wouldn’t that make her, like, barely three years younger than you?”
“I aged a decade in the fields of dill and mint. I don’t care where she went to college. What does the rest mean?”
“Well, it looks like the ‘newdiggers’ account belongs to a group called the ‘New Diggers.’”
“No fucking shit.”
“They’re, uh… deadhead activists, I guess? At one point, it looks like they ran an anti-tarp campaign, and they’re the ones responsible for producing all the ‘Bobby Says Shut the Fuck Up’ business cards. But their current objective is the People’s Shakedown.”
“Which is?”
“Apparently… they’re against the GGP-sanctioned Shakedown Street because they are charging vendors? And they think Shakedown should be free?”
“Goddamn it,” I muttered. “Does this mean I’m going to have to do actual research on these people for the article?”
For the uninitiated, Shakedown Street—known in previous decades simply as ‘the lot’—is a long-running tradition in the Grateful Dead scene. In the heyday of the original band, groups of vendors followed the band from venue to venue, setting up stands to sell their wares, including drugs, clothing, drugs, grilled cheese sandwiches, drugs, alcohol, drugs, hot dogs, and, lest I forget, drugs.
At some point, the lot earned the moniker ‘Shakedown Street’ after one of the Grateful Dead’s well-known songs. During the rise of Dead & Company, Shakedown Street slowly became more formalized, and venues began designating vending zones. Once the band began their Las Vegas residencies at Sphere, Shakedown was relegated to a single nearby casino, where vendors were required to hold permits. As you might imagine, this nearly eliminated the ‘open air drug market’ aspect of Shakedown Street, which, as it turned out, was one of the main draws for average deadheads.
For Dead & Company’s 2025 shows at Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks department designated a 200-foot section of the JFK Promenade between Transeverse Drive and Blue Heron Drive as the officially-sanctioned vending area. Vendors would not only be required to have permits, but also would be required to pay a fee to the organizer.
This caused a predictable uproar in the online Dead & Company community; people were outraged at the fact that vendors were being charged, and a small protest movement eventually emerged, led by a group called the New Diggers.
In San Francisco in the late 1960s, the Diggers were a group of theatre-kids-turned-left-wing-anarchists who were known for (among other miscellaneous acts of rebellion and activism) organizing concerts, parties, parades, and general happenings. They provided food and medical care to runaways—all for free. The group eventually collapsed, possibly because they gave away everything for free. The New Diggers, co-founded by Bruno Cutdonna’s mysterious liaison Faye Ktan, were apparently a modern-day spinoff, based mostly on Instagram and Reddit.
The New Diggers’ primary goal was the establishment of what they called a ‘People’s Shakedown,’ which they imagined as an unregulated, unsanctioned vending area. Why, they wondered, should they need permission from The Man just to build Shakedown Street? Did that not go against what Ktan called in one of her Instagram posts #TheSpiritOfSanFrancisco? To the New Diggers, permits and sign-up sheets were the very antithesis of what Shakedown was supposed to be.
As evidenced in Reddit threads and Instagram comment sections, their biggest obstacle was the fact they they could not come to an agreement as to where the People’s Shakedown should actually be. The main subreddit, /r/peoplesshakedown, had been created by user /u/wook_wookerson.
“Does anybody else want to take charge of this project?” wookerson wrote in one of the most-upvoted posts in the forum. “I don’t really want to do this and I don’t know how I ended up being the leader of this movement.”
“I agree,” one commenter, /u/hippielove420, chimed in. “Somebody definitely should be in charge of this. Who is going to step up?”
“Somebody really needs to step up,” /u/redrocks78 agreed. “Who’s going to do it? It’s really important that somebody takes the lead on this project.”
Apparently, the group that took over the great responsibility of creating a People’s Shakedown was the New Diggers. On Instagram, commenters made a variety of suggestions—Hippie Hill, a section of Golden Gate Park, seemed to be a contender, as did the parking lot of Kezar Stadium. But the New Diggers, just like the Redditors before them, were unable to form a consensus, and as I write this—the day before the concerts are set to begin—the viability of a People’s Shakedown remains up in the air.
The question remains: why, exactly, was Faye Ktan meeting Bruno Cutdonna, an employee at SecondSet AI, outside the Conservatory of Flowers? Were they truly having an affair, or was there something else going on? Something more insidious?
“So much for having a drink and getting some rest,” I mumbled as my advisor and I left the park.
“Who says we can’t still get a drink?” he countered.
“I’m exhausted.”
He was staring at his phone, typing something. “Oracle-4 suggests a bar just two blocks south of here, Kezar Pub. And I need to eat something.”
“Fine. At some point, you’re going to have to relearn how to make decisions for yourself, you know that? You can’t keep using that stupid fucking chatbot for every—”
He laughed.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just an inside joke between me and Oracle-4. You wouldn’t get it.”
“This world is so fucked.”
We approached the bar to see that a dozen white-and-gold motorcycles were parked in a neat row outside it.
“No,” I said, “fuck this. I told you I’m not getting mixed up in this Catholic biker bullshit,” I protested. “Isn’t there a McDonald’s around here? I’ll buy—let’s get out of here.”
“I’m starving. We’re going in. Just don’t talk to the bikers.”
I groaned as we entered the pub, and I was immediately poked in the ribs by a muscular man in a white leather jacket.
“Who the hell’re you?” he asked. “You ain’t from ‘round here, are you? You ain’t one of them dirty computer-worshippers, are ya?”
“What? No. I’m a journalist—who are you?”
“Name’s Finneas—Finneas McFinneas. I’m part of the Heaven’s Angels. If you ain’t heard of us, you probably still heard us!” A few of his fellow bikers, who had gathered to witness my harassment, chuckled loudly.
“Pleasure,” I said dismissively, watching enviously as my advisor avoided conversation and headed to the bar. “I’m just going to join my friend for a drink—”
“Hold on a second, hold on! How can we be sure you ain’t one of them filthy artificial-intelligent lovers, huh?”
One of Finneas’ friends grabbed me firmly by the shoulder. “Yeah. What did you say you are? A journalist? This here is an Angel’s bar, buddy. You better not be one of those techno-blasphemers! ‘Cuz if you are, then I’ll have to—” he gave me a solid shake, much to the delight of the rest of the group. I watched helplessly as my advisor made pleasant small talk with the bartender.
“Listen, fellas,” I began babbling, “we’re having some kind of misunderstanding here—I just got into town. I don’t know you guys, I don’t know who these, uh, techno-blasphemers you’re talking about are—I don’t know anything. I don’t want any trouble, so maybe we can just—”
“Hey!” McFinneas shouted to somebody out of my line of sight, “Hey, Poppy! We got a live one here! A little devil-worshiper just wandered into the bar!”
A figure emerged from another room, slightly taller than the others. The symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—a heart topped with a cross and wrapped in a crown of thorns—was emblazoned on his white jacket over his left breast. He looked me up and down skeptically. “Hmm. You’re a LaSwayvian, are you?”
“A LaWhatvian? I have no idea what you’re talking about—look, I really just want to get some sleep, can you just let me go, please?”
He smiled at me. “Oh, you’ve got nothing to worry about, my friend. Pasquale and Finneas were just having a little fun. I’m Pauly—Pauly Pattapenzi. But my friends in Christ just call me Poppy. I’m the president of the Heaven’s Angels, Frisco Chapter. Nice to meet you.”
I groaned once again. “Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you, too. Listen, are you guys going to, I dunno, stone me or something? Or can I get a nice, peaceful drink and then head out?”
“You’re safe here, my friend. A journalist, you say? You know, we’ve been hoping for a journalist to come by. Somebody who can tell our story.”
“Is that so?” I asked, trying and failing to come up with a reason to eject myself from the conversation. “I’m actually in the middle of telling a few other people’s stories right now, but—”
“Hey Poppa!” Pattapenzi shouted, waving to somebody across the bar. “C’mere! I got somebody who you should meet!”
Another imposing figure, in the same white leather uniform, crossed the room and shook my hand. “Good to meet you,” he said, “I’m Petey—Petey Pollapenzzo. But most people call me Poppa. Vice-president of the chapter.”
“This guy’s a journalist!” Pattapenzi told Pollapenzzo.
“A journalist! Thank God! We’ve been hoping a journalist would come by—somebody to tell our story, you know?”
“Yeah, I heard,” I replied. “Guys, I would love to tell your story, but I’m afraid—”
“What?” Pollapenzzo asked sharply. “If you don’t want to cooperate, we can negotiate a different way. If you know what I mean. So what were you saying?”
I gulped. “I was just saying that I’d love to tell your story, but I’m afraid I, uh, haven’t eaten all day… any chance I could have a… a… warm…pretzel? Or something?”
Pattapenzi slapped me on the back. “That’s the spirit,” he said, waving down the bartender. “Gibson! Get this man a warm pretzel!”
I took an uneasy seat next to my advisor, who was finishing his second pint. “Oh, there you are!” he said merrily. “Did you meet some interesting people?”
“No!” I whispered, “these fucking Catholics are trying to intimidate me into doing a story about them! We have to get out of here before they—”
As if on cue, Pattapenzi and Pollapenzzo sat down on either side of me and my advisor. “The story of the Heaven’s Angels is really the story of the Spirit of San Francisco,” Pattapenzi began.
“I see,” I said thoughtfully, biting into the pretzel that had just been handed to me. “Is that a plane?”
“Huh? No. I’m talking about the spirit of the city itself. Before the city was filled with sin and degradation, San Francisco was a beautiful place. And underneath all the garbage, it’s still a great city. But it’s a Catholic city—don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
“Gotcha,” I nodded, “Catholic city, alright. But I suppose you take offence to all the free-love granola-munching hippies that are flooding into town this weekend?”
“Well, yes. Of course. But these hippies, they’re not the enemy. They’re misguided, misinformed, but not malicious. Our real enemies are the LaSwayvians.”
Pollapenzzo spat on the ground. “Good-for-nothing devil-worshipping scum.”
I took the last bite of my pretzel and asked the bartender for a beer. “I see, LaSwayvians, right, right, right. Who are they? Some kind of faction with whom you have a fundamental moral disagreement?”
“You got that right,” Pollapenzzo confirmed.
I slapped my advisor lightly on the shoulder. “Are you hearing this, man?” I asked. “The Catholics have a fundamental moral disagreement with another group. And we get to break the story. What a privilege.” I looked at Pollapenzzo. “So, what do you have against these people? Something to do with transubstantiation?”
“Worse. They worship a false god.”
“Oh man, that’s so terrible. Who?”
“Not ‘who.’ ‘What.’ They worship an AI god.”
I laughed out loud. “Seriously? Your worst enemies are a bunch of AI nerds?”
Pattapenzi leaned in menacingly. “Okay, journalist. I see how it is. You think we’re just a bunch of dumb, religious bikers complaining about computers, huh? You want the real inside scoop, huh?”
“Is there one?”
Pollapenzzo laughed and smiled sarcastically at Pattapenzi. “This guy really doesn’t know, does he?” he asked, pointing at me. “There’s a war going on out there, buddy. A war for Golden Gate Park.”
“Right. And this war is—”
“It’s time for you to stop talking and start listening. Here’s what happened: after they announced this whole hippie jamboree, the 60th anniversary of whoever, the Recreation Department cut a deal with some group so they could set up their little booths.”
My advisor looked up from his beer. “Shakedown Street?”
“Yeah, that’s what they’re calling it. So, word got around that this Shakedown Street was happening, and other people started to want a piece of the pie. If they were just handing out sections of Golden Gate Park, well, lots of people would want a section, wouldn’t they? Lots of people did. At first, the Rec Department was telling everybody ‘no.’ But people started pushing back, getting violent. So they did the only thing bureaucrats would ever think to do—they started setting aside sections for their friends. Mainly, they expanded the Shakedown Street, because they knew they’d get a fee from every vendor—so the bigger the Shakedown, the bigger the cut.”
“In more ways than one,” I said, my interest piqued. “What does any of this have to do with you?”
“I’m getting to it. Relax,” Pollapenzo said. “The original Shakedown was supposed to be a little stretch of JFK Promenade, but just this afternoon, in secret, the Rec Department expanded it. Now they have everything from the highway to the Tea Garden, all the way down to MLK Drive. Everything—Blue Heron Lake, Strawberry Hill, everything is gonna be one big marketplace by tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’ll be damned… but if this is really some kind of secret Rec Department plan, how do you know about it?”
“We’re Catholic,” he said slyly. “We know people.”
“Fair enough. But I still don’t see how you’re involved. You said you don’t have a problem with the hippies.”
“We don’t. But guess who got permission to set up in another part of the park?”
“You want me to guess? Uh, Hare Krishnas?”
“No! The LaSwayvians! Those techno-blasphemers were delegated the entire botanical garden! Not to mention the museums and everything in between! Apparently, somebody in the Rec Department is a LaSwayvian, or at least an apologist.”
“So you’re telling me that the city is letting these AI people… do what, exactly, in this area of the park?”
“Satanic computer stuff! I don’t understand it, I don’t want to! But it has to stop! The center of the city is occupied by hedonistic consumerism on one side and technology-worshippers on the other! That goes against the Spirit of San Francisco!”
“He’s right,” Pattapenzi said, finally relieving Pollapenzo from his expositionary duties. “Most people are travelling here to celebrate the 60th anniversary of a band. But for us, it’s the 60th anniversary of the end of order. This used to be a city of Irish and Italian Catholics, but it was taken from us. We’ve been watching the world burn while Sodom and Gomorrah stand tall. So we took a stand. The Recreation and Parks Department wasn’t gonna sign over any land to us—they wouldn’t want to look like they’re cooperating with Catholics. So we took some space for ourselves.” He pointed out the window. “Kezar Stadium over there? That’s Heaven’s Angels territory now. You know Hippie Hill?”
“Sure.”
“Angel territory. If any of those demonic LaSwayvians walks in with some kind of AI? They won’t live to regret it.”
To my great dismay, I found myself becoming invested. I leaned back in my seat. “It seems like there’s something you’re not telling me. Or something you don’t know. I understand why the Recreation and Parks department would want to expand Shakedown Street: they have a profit motive since vendors have to pay for access. What I don’t understand is what reason these, uh, LaSwayvians have to be in the park. And I don’t understand why the Recreation Department would give them a section of the park in the first place. Wouldn’t it be better to keep expanding Shakedown Street? The bigger the Shakedown, the bigger the cut. Like you said.”
The bikers looked at each other, puzzled.
“I understand your motivation,” I continued, “you’re traditionalists, you want to return things to some kind of natural order from the past. You hate AI—”
“With a passion!” Pollapenzo said.
“—with a passion. So it makes sense why you’re involved in this… war for Golden Gate Park, in your words. You oppose the LaSwayvians. But what are the LaSwayvians doing here at all? And, most importantly, who the fuck even are these people? Is LaSway a person? An ideology?”
“Well… uh…” Pattapenzi faltered.
“It seems to me like you don’t even know your own enemy.”
“We know them well enough to know that they are our enemies. How about that?”
“Makes no difference to me,” I said, “I’m just telling your story.”
We walked back to the Hotel Banotanque, though the chilly San Francisco winds. We had been in town for less than a day, and already we found ourselves embroiled in a scheme. The instincts of my journalistic gut told me that we had barely touched the surface of whatever was going on between the Heaven’s Angels and the so-called LaSwayvian AI cult. On top of this uncertainty was the mysterious Shannon Cutdonna, who, as my advisor and I realized, left us with no method of contacting her with our findings. For what reason had her husband, Bruno, met up with the co-founder of the New Diggers, an online activist group? And most importantly, why had I become so quickly embroiled in the mess?
What was to become of Golden Gate Park?
Shrieks & Whispers 
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