"Spirit returns to Woodstock concert site"

     First day of festival is calm, with an estimated 12,000 spectators at original
     counterculture location

     ELIZABETH BENJAMIN
     Staff writer
     BETHEL -- Although turnout didn't meet promoters' hopes, "A Day in the Garden'' --
     the sanitized, commercialized, '90s version of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair
     -- went off without a hitch.

     Not everyone is pleased with the event. Critics -- including some who attended the
     original Woodstock event -- argue that Gerry is desecrating the site, which rightly
     belongs to the people who have been making pilgrimages there since 1969.

     A legal battle is raging between Gerry and members of the Woodstock Nation
     Foundation over who has rights to the site.

     Roy Howard and his wife, Jeryl, who own Max Yasgur's farmhouse, barn and 103
     acres of land about two miles from Gerry's site are also embroiled in a legal tug-of-war
     with Town of Bethel officials over whether they can host an alternate Woodstock on
     their property while Gerry holds his concert.

     By Friday, more than 2,000 people had set up camp on the Howards' land. While the
     parking lot at A Day in the Garden was filled with Hondas, BMWs and Saabs, beat-up
     Volkswagen buses and Beetles emblazoned with peace signs made their way to
     Yasgur's former home.

     The Town of Bethel obtained a permanent injunction to prevent Howard from holding
     "mass gatherings'' on his property, which they reminded him of via a letter Wednesday.
     Howard posted "No Trespassing'' signs on his land, but the people came anyway, he
     said. Howard and his attorney, Michael Sussman, are planning to hold a "political rally''
     today, protesting what they say is biased treatment by Bethel town officials in favor of
     the Gerry Foundation.

     "I'm protesting government using different, illegal tactics under the color of law to get
     favors through to their own people,'' Howard said, reached Friday at his business, The
     Beer Store, in Monticello.

     No stage was built and no music was scheduled at Yasgur's old farm. Still, vendors
     sold tie-dyed T-shirts and vegetarian food to the campers, some of whom drifted
     between their tents at Howard's place and the Day in the Garden site.

     But some die-hard hippies refused to set foot on the original site during Gerry's
     extravaganza. A woman dressed in fatigues who said she was part of the "peace
     patrol'' at Yasgur's farm and gave her name only as "Mary Poppiins,'' Gerry had
     stripped the site of its spirit, which is why many continued to visit the Howard's land
     seeking the true Woodstock experience.

     "Woodstock is a way of life, it's not a three-day event once a year,'' Poppiins said.
     "This doesn't have to be advertised, it's a reunion.''

     Others, though, have resigned themselves to the inevitability of change.

     "I think it's wonderful what one man can do for his county,'' said Duke Devlin, a
     bearded 56-year-old, free-lance photographer working during the concert for the
     Gerry Foundation. "Allan let the genie out of the jar and brought the magic back to
     Woodstock. Sure, it's different, but I'm a little different than I was then too. The times,
     they are a changin.''

     First published on Saturday, August 15, 1998
 

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