We are stardust
we are golden
and we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden.
--from"Woodstock," by Joni Mitchell, "Ladies of the Canyon," 1970
By Jay Jochnowitz
Staff Writer
Bethel-- Neither stardust nor gold will get
pilgrims to the garden this year.
Only with a $69.98 ticket
and proper credentials will outsiders get near the natural amphitheater
on Max Yasgur's farm, the site of the original Woodstock Music and Art
fair in 1969.
Bethel officials, State Police and private promoters
are readying to seal off the concert site and at least part of Sullivan
County in order to stage "A Day in the Garden," featuring some of the legendary
music festival's original acts. The event is set for August 14th-15th,
the 29th Anniversary of the first Woodstock. Ticket sales are limited
to 30,00 for each day of the event, modest against the estimated 1969 turnout
of 400,000 to 500,000.
But before the hoped-for yuppies arrive with the
BMWs and credit cards, Bethel may get a llittle crowded with lawyers.
And one of the potential cases could bring to a head a long-simmering question
that is at once a legal issue and, for many past and present flower children,
a matter of the heart:
Who
owns Woodstock? And they mean who really owns it.
Multimillionaire Allan Gerry, whose not-for-profit
Gerry Foundation holds the deed to the property and is sponsoring the concert
with the Bethel Local Development Corp., calls this year's recently announced
concert "the beginning of a renaissance" for the property.
Unofficially dubbed "Boomstock," the concert
is aimed at well-heeled baby boomers, the "Beemers and Benzes" crown looking
for a piece of nostalgia and willing to pay for it, according to Michael
DiTullo, vice president of the Gerry Foundation. Gerry's organization
depicts the concert as the first step in creating an international music
theme park on the site and some 1,500 surrounding acres the organization
owns.
"They should be thrilled," DiTullo said of
critics. "What we're doing there is bringing the site back to life."
But this corporate approach to managing a mecca
of the anti-establishment of the 1960's has at least one group of Woodstock
purists fuming.
Abigail Storm of the Woodstock Nation Foundation
Inc. says the question of ownership is not simply one of paper deeds and
title.
The Woodstock Nation is a self-appointed guardian
organization that "preserves the historic Woodstock site in Bethel, N.Y.,
as a Planetary Sanctuary," according to it's web site.
Storm and her husband, Daniel Eggink, argue that
because the public used the property for years, the amphitheater has effectively
fallen into the public domain. They note that thousands of human
feet that have trod there annually created a dirt road -- and a public
easement.
"They want to put up a toll booth on a well-traveled
highway," said Storm.
DiTullo declined to publicly debate Storm's assertion,
stating only that the title to the property is clear. "It's private
property, and it is owned by the Gerry Foundation," he said.
But the idea the public might have some inherent
right to Woodstock isn't just a fanciful notion of a few flower children.
"Easement by adverse possession" is a legal argument, one that Storm and
Eggink's attorney, Richard Newberg of Monticello, tried to use last year
to stop Gerry from barring people from the site on Woodstock's 28th anniversary.
Gerry allowed visitors, but barred overnight camping.
Newberg said he sought a temporary restraining order
last summer in Supreme Court in Monticello to allow his clients to
use the site, based partly on the easement issue. The motion was
denied.
But Newberg said he thinks it's worth pursuing,
provided the foundation can muster the money to wage such a complex case.
"I think it has a chance," said Newberg. "That,
of course, would be quite an involved action and take considerable funds."
Storm is advertising for attorneys and support on
the foundation's web site and said she is talking with several lawyers
now about taking on the case. With Newberg acknowledging the easement
isssue would take years to fight, it's unlikely it will have any impact
on "A Day in the Garden."
About a mile away on Yasgur Road, meanwhile, yet
another legal issue is brewing, for which the question is not who owns
the site, but who can be there.
Roy and Jeryl Howard, who own Max Yasgur's house,
barns and 103 acres of his original farm, have sought for two years to
open their land to people chased off Gerry's property. After playing host
to a modest crowd in 1996, the Howards lalst year arranged a free concert
featuring bands from around the region and south Africa. They fixed
up the barn and obtained state Health Department permits, only to be told
by the town they needed a mass gathering permit, too.
After trying unsuccessfully to fight the permit
requirement in court, the Howards said they canceled their plans and posted
their land with no trespassing signs, but to no avail. Bands and
thousands of people showed up. The Howards are now under court order
not to play host to any large affairs on their property without obtaining
a permit.
They aren't applying for one, arguing the town's
requirements are onerous and that Bethel wouldn't give them a permit even
if they applied. They say officials want the kind of moneyed customers
Gerry is attracting, not live-off-the-land hippies.
"This is the Mississippi of the North," said Roy
Howard.
Next week, the Howards plan to talk with their attorney,
Michael Sussman, about bringing a property rights case against the town.
"Our case is pretty cut-and-dried." he said. "We own property.
We're being prevented from using that property."
The foundation has also gone to the U.S. Attorney's
office in White Plains, asking it to investigate alleged civil rights issues
at the Woodstock site. A spokeswoman said the U.S. Attorney's office
could not comment on potential cases.
The foundation objects to plans to set up checkpoints
on roads around the concert site and allow only residents, businesses and
ticket holders to get near the farm during the concert. How far the
checkpoints will extend is still under discussion, according to Maj. Alan
Martin of the State Police Troop F, but DiTullo said the range would probably
be about 6 to 10 miles.
A similar tactic was employed for the 1994 Woodstock
25th anniversary concert in Saugerties, although that zone was about 2.5
miles.
Martin said not many people who live in the rural
area would be inconvenienced by the checkpoints. "You're talking
three houses on one road, two houses on another," he noted.
How many people will try to come to Bethel without
tickets and test the security measures is anyone's guess. Security
fell apart at both the original Woodstock and Saugerties concert, but Bethel
promoters say Bethel's lineup-- including Joni Mitchell, Ten Years After
and Richie Havens -- isn't likely to incite many would-be-gate-crashers.
Given the current age of most Woodstock veterans, "It's really a demographic
that wouldn't storm the gate," DiTullo said.
But people who have witnessed the annual pilgrimages
to Woodstock say things could get, as Storm put it, "heavy."
Reunions, she said, usually attract at least a few
thousand people, while the 25th anniversary crowd at Bethel was estimated
at 50,000-- a throng that came with no assurance of a concert. They
were rewarded with surprise appearances by acts including Melanie, Mountain,
Canned Heat, Arlo Guthrie, Country Joe McDonald and the Rascals.
And while this isn't a silver anniversary, Storm
noted, the closing of Woodstock could inflame passions enough to prompt
people to come in protest. "People are offended by that," she said.
"This is spiritual. People think of the Woodstock site as holy ground."
Here's a link to original source of this, and the following, story:
JAY JOCHNOWITZ
Staff writer
The U.S. Attorney's Office is asking the FBI
to look into claims of
civil rights violations by organizers of a
29th anniversary concert on
the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art
Fair, according to a
letter obtained Tuesday.
The FBI review comes amid a broader battle
between the site's
owner and music fair organizer, the Gerry
Foundation, and the
Woodstock Nation Foundation, over whether
the public has a legal
and spiritual claim to a 37-acre chunk of
Max Yasgur's old farm,
where an estimated 500,000 people gathered
in the summer of
1969 in a high point of the counterculture
movement.
Abigail Storm of Woodstock Nation said the
government's interest
could strengthen the foundation's effort to
prevent owners from
keeping flower children off the site. "It
shows that they think there's
something worth looking into,'' she said.
Gerry Foundation Vice President Michael DiTullo
did not return
calls for comment, but earlier asserted that
his non-profit group,
founded by Sullivan County millionaire Alan
Gerry, owns the land.
Working with the Town of Bethel, the foundation
plans an Aug.
14-15 concert. Organizers, who are bringing
in some of the original
acts and limiting attendance to 30,000 people
with ticket prices of
$69.98 a day, describe the event as a prelude
to developing a
musical theme park around the natural amphitheater.
But Woodstock Nation contends the hundreds
-- in some years
thousands -- of pilgrims to the concert site
each year have created a
public easement, and that the property can't
be fenced in. The group
says it isn't trying to stop the concert,
but objects to plans to bar
non-ticket holders from the area and commercialize
the holy site of
hippiedom.
"They've robbed the church, and now they're
running off the
congregation,'' said Storm. "There's nothing
peaceful or loving about
their actions.''
The federal review focuses on the arrest last
summer of Storm, her
husband Dan Eggink, and several other people
on trespassing
charges on a complaint from Gerry's organization.
Before Gerry, the farm had been owned by Louis
Nicky since
1981. Nicky, before his death, separated from
his wife, Helen
Necketopoulos, and lived with June Gelish.
Gelish sold the site to
Gerry for $1.1 million, but Necketopoulos
claimed partial
ownership. Necketopoulos in 1991 obtained
a court order barring
sale of the land, but last October settled
for $250,000.
Because the dispute was outstanding last summer,
Storm and her
co-defendants contend that their arrest was
unlawful and
unconstitutional. Appealing their conviction,
they also took their case
to the U.S. Attorney in White Plains, alleging
civil rights violations
and a conspiracy by Gerry and his associates.
In a response Monday, U.S. Attorney Mary Jo
White did not say
whether she considers the charges valid or
not. But White wrote that
the complaint was being sent to the FBI for
"their review and
disposition,'' a move one federal official
said signaled that officials
considered it worth at least checking out.
First published on Wednesday, July 8, 1998
Capital Region
The articles on this page are (c)copyright 1998 Times Union, Albany,
New York
