Dear Chicago (if that is your real name),

We here at Thoughts on the Dead have read your latest decision to not allow camping near Soldier Field during the Farewell Shows. Soldier Field Spokesman Luca Serra took time out from being something an Italian widow would yell at you if you took her parking spot to issue this statement:

Whaddayou think-a you doin’, you wacky-a Deadheads-a, you! You jussa wanna poop in-a da parkin’ lot!*

Mr. Serra has a point. TotD did, just weeks ago, offer a plea to Chicago to allow public and semi-public defecation during the weekend. There was also a petition that skirted the issue of doody to concentrate on safety and money and boring stuff like that. Both were ignored.

So, Windy City: we now race past the “asking” section of the program, to find ourselves at the “telling” portion.

Chicago, we will be pooping in your parking lots.

For twenty-five years, the Grateful Dead toured America. And for twenty-five years, a sizable contingent of dirty, but friendly, people followed. And pooped. Deadheads have copped squats in Miami, provided DNA in Austin, and left turds in San Diego. This is not to mention the rampant public pooping in San Francisco that was probably not related to the Dead at all and continues to this very day.

We weren’t asking you permission, Chicago: we seeking your blessing. The pooping will commence, undaunted by official ban. In fact, you’ve now made the act of leaving a loaf in a bush forbidden fruit.

Are you still in America, Chicago? I’m pretty sure George Washington killed Hitler so that we could freely and publicly (or semi-publicly) poop outside football stadia.

Deadheads pooping in your parking lots: you can’t stop them, you can only hope to contain them.

Sincerely,

TotD

* I am both paraphrasing and being racist.