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    What Fans Wore at the Dead and Company Show In Las Vegas

    Midway through their residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas during a record-breaking heat wave, Dead & Company played its jam band specials over the Fourth of July weekend for an eclectic crowd. The band’s audience — some die-hard fans, others just curious — came from all over the country (and the world) to pledge their own form of allegiance.“You see people who are Sphere tourists who just want to get inside and see what it’s all about. They don’t necessarily have experience listening to the Dead’s music,” said Ashley, 35, a D.J. and an event host from Las Vegas. “It’s totally acceptable because Deadheads are the coolest, most down-to-earth crowds.” (Still, like some other fans, she declined to provide her full name.)Dead & Company, a spinoff of the Grateful Dead that includes both original members of the band and new additions, most notably John Mayer, began its residency at the 18,600-seat Sphere in May. The band will perform at the venue through Aug. 10.The New York TimesAshley had come to hang out at Shakedown Street — the traveling bazaar where vendors sell rose quartz jewelry, crowns of roses, Grateful Dead-themed tarot decks and a virtual sea of tie-dyed shirts.One of the vendors was Alex Mazer, a 40-year-old from Taos, N.M., who also goes by Buttercup. His brand, New Springfield Boogie, makes T-shirts, stickers and internet memes that combine counterculture references and “The Simpsons” (one image combined Bertha, the Grateful Dead’s flower crown-wearing skeleton, with Homer Simpson). Alex said that both characters were icons of American culture, “and they work together in a lot of ways.” He estimated he had already seen 13 Dead & Company shows at the Sphere. “It is an orgy of sensation,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Taylor Swift, Usher and a Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl Win in Las Vegas

    Take America’s biggest game, add Taylor Swift and Usher, and put it all in Las Vegas, and Kansas City’s repeat as Super Bowl champion makes perfect sense.At some point, the Super Bowl stopped being entirely about football and evolved — or is it devolved — into a corporate carnival with lavish parties, halftime extravaganzas and commercials whose budgets seemed to rival a blockbuster movie.The apex of that transformation arrived with the N.F.L. planting this year’s event in Las Vegas, where the prevailing ethos might well be that a bellyful of anything is barely enough.But Super Bowl LVIII, with its attendant flash — and America’s favorite football fan, Taylor Swift, chugging a beer in a private box — demonstrated on Sunday night how sports stands apart from other types of entertainment.If the Kansas City Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime victory over the San Francisco 49ers was as tightly scripted as Usher’s elaborate choreography, the teams might have been pelted with rotten tomatoes or booed off the stage by halftime. It was mostly an evening of stumbles and bumbles: two fumbles, an interception, a muffed punt, a blocked extra point, a raft of untimely penalties — and for the 49ers enough regrets to last a lifetime.But all the mistakes and all those field goals — seven in all — would eventually be subsumed by the tension that unfolded in the fourth quarter and continued on into overtime of what became the longest game in Super Bowl history.Kansas City receiver Mecole Hardman caught the winning touchdown with three seconds left in the first overtime period.Bridget Bennett for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More