Weed changed this California town. Now artsy residents are all in on psychedelics

On a brisk mid-March night in the small Northern California town of Grass Valley, more than 100 people crowded around a Grateful Dead cover band in a drafty warehouse. They were an eccentric mix: aging hippies, hypebeast college kids and burners bundled in faux fur rainbow coats, swaying to guitar riffs. In the parking lot, people exchanged cigarettes, joints, pills and powders.

This is a typical night at the warehouse — home to an art gallery called the Chambers Project and a new nonprofit, Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust (PACT). It sits just off State Route 49 and shares its parking lot with a natural foods store. From the road, it can be identified only from its logo: an illuminati eye nestled into a pyramid, which sheds a tear into a river that vanishes into the horizon. The image was drawn by one of the most famous psychedelic artists, Rick Griffin, who created seven album covers for the Grateful Dead.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.