While the original Woodstock Music and Art Festival was revered for its aura of Peace, Love, and Music, Woodstock 99 was characterized by heavy metal, chaos, and destruction.
As a regional captain for one of the nine camping regions, I witnessed carnage and capitalism at its worst. I suppose anytime you get 300,000 people together, mix in alcohol, drugs, and some angry music, you might have a ticking time bomb. Add some mismanagement, and price gouging, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I stopped by good friend and Woodstock 99 boss Brian McDonnell’s headquarters in Lake Clear last week and he said, “Your column on Woodstock 99 brought back some real nightmares.” I asked him to share three things he remembered. He said, “I’ll give you four.”
“Number one, it was held on what was originally an airbase for B-52s carrying nuclear weapons for God’s sake. If you can keep nuclear weapons safe, you’d think it would be easy to provide security for a music concert.” You might want to think again. Security broke down in less than 24 hours. The fence line had sheets of plywood tied to 3400-pound concrete blocks. That should’ve worked, right? Well, it had one weak link: The plywood was fastened to the blocks with 2-inch nylon straps. So, all the scofflaws had to do was cut the nylon straps with a knife and the walls collapsed. And then, in the immortal words of Michael Lang, co-creator of the original Woodstock, “Well, I guess we now have a free festival.”
It was bad enough that the fences collapsed, but once they did, the yellow shirts (our nickname for security people because of the color of their shirts) disappeared. I didn’t see one security person along the perimeter walls (or what was left of them) or the camping zone after the first 24 hours.
Brian shared the second problem – the trash pick-up and porta potty emptying. Despite Brian's constant requests, I don’t believe the garbage was picked up once during the entire event.
Emptying of the porta potties was only marginally better. The company contracted to empty them didn’t want to venture into the mayhem with their sewer pump trucks so they remained in the safety of their onsite offices. Brian had to beg, and then threaten them to get off their behinds to pump out the porta potties. By the time they got there, people were wading through a stream of ankle-deep poop and taking their frustration out on the porta potties.
It was hard to tell if the trash and porta potty folks were afraid to go out into the crowd or they were just lazy and figured they’d get paid whether they did their jobs or not. They shouldn’t have been afraid because there was a three-mile concrete runway for them to drive on and the crowds would have welcomed them, with full bladders and open arms… of garbage.
As Brian and I sat around his picnic table at MAC’s world headquarters last week I asked what his next memory was. He instantly said, “Water!” At which point he went on a long diatribe about how poor the engineering was, and that the water line was too small, and the drain pumps inadequate.
All of a sudden, I had flashbacks of Tracy Santegate, captain of the red camping region (and all the showers). She and her staff were trying to cope with thousands of campers overwhelmed with low water pressure, and overflowing shower drains up to their ankles in shower water.
The final item on Brian’s list was price gouging. The vendors knew that with a captive audience that they would sell all their inventory, so the plan was to keep their prices reasonable. Yet we saw capitalism at its worst, with bottled water selling for $4.00 a bottle in ninety-degree temperatures. And this was when the going price for bottled water in the free world was less than a dollar.
By this time at MAC’s picnic table I was afraid I had stirred up some PTSD for Brian, so decided I better leave.
As I headed back to town I tried to bring some closure to my Woodstock 99 memories. It was a mixed bag.
It was the most stressful four days of my life helping strung out, lost, and dehydrated campers. Dealing with overflowing porta potties, not enough water, temperatures in the nineties, inadequate security, the tearing down of walls, looting of vendors, participants setting fire to anything combustible including tractor trailers, stages, and sound towers.
On the other hand, I worked with some great people who tried to provide care and support to the tens of thousands of campers under less-than-ideal conditions, I listened to some fine music, got a bicycle, and of course… a souvenir t-shirt.
Just don’t contact me anytime soon to help manage camping for Woodstock 2029.
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