Janis Joplin flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks, and accessories such as scarves, beads, and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin, often in the company of actor Michael J. Pollard, frequented Limbo on St. Mark's Place. Joplin, well known to the boutique's employees, made a practice of putting aside vintage and other one-of-a-kind garments she favored on stage and off. The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their "People Like Us" album, was a tribute. Likewise, Leonard Cohen's song, "Chelsea Hotel #2" (1974), is about Joplin, and lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from
Janis Joplin a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health. Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward. In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont,