Bob Weir was cold.

It was a partly cloudy night in July and temperatures dropped as Dead & Co. played to tens of thousands of fans in San Francisco, the ancestral home of the band’s legendary predecessor, the Grateful Dead.

Typical summer weather in the city, and Nancy Pelosi knew what to do.

Socks, she told the Birkenstock-shod guitarist during a visit backstage. And a hat.

It might be easier to imagine the former speaker, still one of America’s most influential women, surrounded by suits and wingtips than beads and sandals. But Pelosi, who grew up listening to opera waft through the streets of Baltimore’s Little Italy, is a true die-hard Deadhead, as cultists and aficionados of the group are known.

She is friends with Weir and drummer Mickey Hart and has seen the Dead and various iterations more times than she remembers. On several occasions, the elegantly styled legislature has done just that

seen dancing in the wings, four-inch heels and all.

It was not certain that she would make the band’s farewell performance

that night, one of Dead & Co’s last recently concluded farewell tours. The House of Representatives was under another onslaught, with clumsy Republicans springing into action, legislation stalling to pass, and restless lawmakers anxiously eyeing the exit.

But in the end, the House passed the necessary defense spending bill while there was still time left, and Pelosi made it home easily for the Friday night show, mingled with the band and scored the night’s souvenir setlist.

When Weir returned for the second half, he was still out of socks.

But he had a hat on.

While rummaging through a closet not long ago, Pelosi came across a “Deadheads for Dukakis” wallet from the 1988 presidential campaign; she was a freshman legislator at the time.

Nearly twenty years later, several of the band’s alumni played at a gala in Washington in honor of Pelosi’s groundbreaking election as speaker. (One review describes a tense audience largely on its hands, though “Iko Iko,” the New Orleans standard, finally got some of the Beltway slugs moving.)

Hart watched in the House gallery as Pelosi claimed the gavel for a second time in 2019.

How and when did they meet?

“I have no idea,” she says.

Over the decades, San Francisco’s yeasty music and political scenes have faded into each other, but no, it’s not because of some bad acid.

It’s been a long, historic journey.

“They’re great musicians,” Pelosi said of The Dead and

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company

cq no & here

, spouting a lie about the idea put forth especially by haters that the group’s kaleidoscopic catalog can only be enjoyed in a drunken stupor or chemically-induced haze. (Pelosi doesn’t drink and has never taken drugs.) “It’s great music.”

Maybe it’s a matter for the Congressional Democrats.

The late Harry Reid, another teetotaler and leader of the Senate when Pelosi was speaker, had a Dead poster signed by the entire band hanging at his home in Searchlight, Nevada. He called it his “living property.”

As he peruses the menu at San Francisco’s Delancey Street Restaurant, a favorite of local politicians staffed by ex-cons and recovering addicts, Pelosi tastes the freedom of living as just another member of the House of Representatives.

“You mustn’t forget,” she says, “that you’ve been working as a speaker or as a speaker for 20 years [minority] leader, I was responsible for everything that happened on the floor…in terms of what happened to the Democrats…and I didn’t even realize it was a burden until it was gone and I was like, ‘Oh my God. What a relief.’ “

She continues to study the menu.

“Obviously I’m still interested in the legislation,” Pelosi continues, “and I’m still fundraising for the Democrats,” but not the $1 million a day she raised as a speaker. “It’s a whole different story.”

Other diners look forward to seeing the celebrity in their midst, seated in a booth slightly removed from the main dining room.

Orders are being placed. Soon lunch arrives, an international smorgasbord of latkes, kale salad, a chicken quesadilla, and matzo ball soup.

“Freed” and “emancipated” are words Pelosi often uses in her new incarnation. She has started a book, not a memoir, but a record of certain decisions. Her husband, Paul, is still recovering from the horrific hammer attack by a QAnon madman who broke into their San Francisco home last fall, looking to take the ex-speaker hostage.

Will she run for a 19th term again next year, something many in this politically hyperactive city are anxious to find out? “I have to make up my mind,” Pelosi replies deliberately obscurely, “and then see what I want to do.”

Back to music.

She ran a finger down the crumpled setlist and pointed to several favorites Fire On The Mountain, Ramble On Rose, the trippy sound collage Drums/Space and Standing On The Moon, with the native lyrics:

Somewhere in San Francisco / On a porch in July / Just looking up at the sky / At this crescent moon in the sky.

So beautiful, Pelosi rhapsodized, I could listen to it forever.

When it comes to music, Pelosi says, she’s an omnivore, with a penchant for “everything from rap to opera.” Drake, Taylor Swift, U2, Keith Urban, Elton John, Metallica, Stevie Wonder.

The Democrat does

on a first name basis with Bono and Cyndi Lauper, as well as the other Paul and Nancy. (That would be McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevall.)

She’s difficult

–

pressure to choose an all-time favorite show, but talks about seeing Bob Dylan with the Rolling Stones in Argentina on the “Bridges to Babylon Tour,” Pelosi specifies. She brought a fellow Democrat

,

former New York Representative Nita Lowey, attending her first rock concert. (Of course, the performance included “Like A Rolling Stone.”)

At one point during the show, there was an announcement, says Pelosi, seeking donations to help fight HIV

AIDS. A young man walked through the crowd and, after receiving a contribution from Lowey, handed her a thank you note. “She’s like, ‘I don’t know what this is,'” Pelosi recalled, “it’s all in Spanish.”

A break.

“Condoms!” pelosi

call out.

The dishes are cleared. Time for dessert.

Pelosi considers the profiteroles, but abstains. She had eaten three peppermint pies on the way to lunch, she confesses, and ice cream for breakfast.

It’s new times. She gets serious.

“I strongly believe that art is the secret, our best hope for the future,” says Pelosi.

She describes the warm reception she received years ago when she was introduced at a Barbra Streisand concert.

“In that audience… they are not there because they are Democrats.

You have a very mixed group of people

. And it made the point perfectly clear…and that’s that [music] is a unifier. People forget their differences, they don’t even think about them. They laugh together, cry together, are inspired together, find common ground together and I think that’s our hope.”

“That’s our hope,” she repeats.