Why the Wheel

The grateful dead community has always had a place in my heart.  Sure the music is great, but what I have enjoyed most out of all the years following the dead is the community, the friends I have made over the years, and the feeling of belonging to something much bigger than just following a band.  Some of the connections for me started when I joined the Well, the Well had a large grateful dead community.  It was a place where you could share your thoughts on the music and also band together for causes like the Minglewood Town Council (our attempt at saving the Kaiser Auditorium for shows).  So that is why I am excited about The Wheel!  I see it as a centralized location for all things Grateful Dead, a place you can find out about upcoming shows, a place to find historical treasures posted by the family members, and most important the community that will evolve here.  You may ask why not just use Facebook?  Facebook is great for connecting with old friends, but information on the band is spread out all over Facebook, and you need to either join groups related to the band, or follow the various family members.  It also is really easy to miss items in the news feed as there is no ordering to the posts, and there is a lot of other stuff that gets thrown into the news feed that you don’t care about (i.e. most of my news feed these days is political).  The Wheel not only is a social network, but as mentioned before will provide a central location for all things Grateful Dead, something that is long overdue!