He quit his job to manage a mime troupe.

In 1965, Bill Graham gave up a promising, well-paying career as a middle manager at a farm equipment company.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe wasn't mimes, exactly. It was a broke, radical street theater company that did political satire in the parks. Graham, 34, became business manager and handled the money, permits, and show logistics.

Then the city yanked the troupe's park permit, calling the shows obscene. R.G. Davis, the founder and director, performed anyway. In front of a thousand people in Lafayette Park, he put on a mask, announced the troupe would now perform “an arrest,” and threw himself into the arms of the nearest cop. Now the troupe needed bail money and lawyers.

So Bill Graham threw a party. He called it the Appeal Party and held it in the troupe's warehouse loft on Howard Street. Room for maybe 400 people. At least a dollar to get in. Then he put together quite the bill: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg reading poetry, the Fugs, jazz saxophonist John Handy, and a brand-new band that rehearsed in the same building, Jefferson Airplane.

Graham didn't know rock and roll. His music was the mambo. But he stood in that loft and watched strangers walk in off the street and start dancing with each other. He later called it the most significant night of his life.

A month later he wanted a bigger room. He went to Charles Sullivan, the entrepreneur who held the lease on a faded dance hall at Fillmore and Geary, where he'd been booking James Brown and Ike & Tina Turner for years. Sullivan let Graham run a second benefit there under his own dance-hall permit.

Jefferson Airplane came back. Grace Slick's first band, the Great Society, played. So did a Palo Alto band that had just changed its name from the Warlocks to the Grateful Dead.

It went well, so Graham asked for more dates. Sullivan offered his off nights, and by early 1966 they had a deal: every open date at the Fillmore that year, and a four-year lease option if anything happened to Sullivan.

Something did. That August, Sullivan was shot dead on a street south of Market. The case was never solved. The Fillmore lease passed to Graham.

Bill Graham came a long way to get there. He was born Wulf Grajonca in Berlin in 1931, the only son of a Jewish family. After Kristallnacht in late 1938, his mother put him in an orphanage to keep him and his sister safe. In 1939, the orphanage got him out of Germany on a kindertransport to France. After France fell in 1940, he was smuggled out with a group of Jewish orphans, on foot, by train, by bus, through Spain and Portugal and finally across the Atlantic.

By his own count, 64 children set out from the château in France. Eleven reached New York. His sister was not among them, she died of pneumonia on the journey. His mother died on the way to Auschwitz. He was ten when he landed with a foster family in the Bronx. He picked Graham out of the phone book because it was the closest thing to Grajonca.

Then the Korean War. A Bronze Star. Waiting tables. Acting classes that led nowhere. A drift west to San Francisco, and that desk at the farm equipment company.

From the Fillmore, things moved fast. Winterland. Fillmore East in New York. Day on the Green. Live Aid. And a lifelong friendship with the Grateful Dead that started when he tried to glue Jerry Garcia's smashed guitar back together at the Trips Festival.

The Dead settled in Marin. In the late 1970s, Graham followed. He bought 11 hilltop acres at 800 Corte Madera Avenue and named the place Masada, after the Jewish fortress that held out against Rome. Giant props from Dead New Year's Eve shows lined the driveway. Janis Joplin's tambourine was inside.

Graham was flying home by helicopter on October 25, 1991. He'd gone to the Concord Pavilion to see Huey Lewis and the News and talk them into a benefit for victims of the Oakland hills fire, which had burned five days earlier. It was raining hard. People at the show begged him to drive home to Marin, but he flew instead. The helicopter lifted off around 9:45 p.m., flew low along Highway 37 through rain and cloud, and hit a 223-foot power tower near Vallejo eleven minutes later.

Bill Graham was 60. He had fit several lives into those years: the orphan who outran the Nazis, the middle manager who took a flier on a mime troupe, the man who built the rock concert as we know it.

If you’d like to be considered for Photo of the Week (nature, architecture, wildlife), please fill this out!

The composer behind The Lion King, Dune, and Interstellar brings his new stage production to Chase Center on April 4, 2027. Amex cardholders get in Wednesday 9/23 at 10am, artist presale is Thursday 9/24 (register here), and general on-sale is Friday 9/25 at 10am.

Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse reunite for their first tour in 18 years, hitting The Masonic on Thursday, November 5. Citi cardholders and Spotify Premium subscribers get in Monday 9/21, the artist presale runs Wednesday 9/23 (registration closed Sunday), and general on-sale is Thursday 9/24 at 10am.

Because leaving Marin might take more planning. Look for our Marin events in the Wednesday email.

The 20th anniversary edition takes over the historic Mare Island Shipyard in Vallejo. Check out robots, rocketry, Rube Goldberg machines, and talk to the actual makers. 10am-3pm Friday. 10am-5pm Saturday and Sunday. Tickets start at $24 with discount code MARINBUZZ.

Union Square fills with rhinestones, sing-alongs, and tribute acts honoring Dolly Parton. Come dressed to shine: rhinestones & ruffles encouraged. Noon-3pm, free.

California's oldest wine festival returns to the Sonoma Plaza with a grape stomp, a blessing of the grapes, a 5K, and a vintage car show. The Saturday daytime festival is free, 10am-5pm.

A zucchini race, a pie contest, chicken bingo, and a watermelon eating contest in the Graton town square, with live music and food vendors. 1-5pm.

Please note that this property isn’t associated with the banner sponsor above or Marin Buzz in any way. It is just a unique home you might be interested in seeing, for entertainment purposes only!

12788 - 12790 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Inverness

Two tiny cottages under 500 square feet each. You know these are special when they have an asking price of $2,872 per square foot. That’s about four times the Marin median!

These homes share something that almost no one else has: a private pier. It’s no longer possible for homes to add piers like these under Coastal Commission regulations. So this is the rare home that has one on Tomales Bay.

These cottages have been operating as short-term rentals, which could make sense to continue if you don’t plan on living there full-time. And while there aren’t many properties to compare this to, does $2.7M seem slightly aspirational?

Web link

If you’d like your pet to be considered for Pet of the Week, please fill this out!

Thanks for reading. We will be back with the regular events and activities email Wednesday morning!

— Allison + Brian