Your Uncle Dave was 15 and on vacation in Michigan with my parents and brother when I opened the newspaper at breakfast to find a huge aerial photo of a vast crowd in front of a stage somewhere in New York. It said up to a million people were at something called Woodstock listening to music, doing drugs, having sex and just having fun in the mud. Later, an Oscar winning movie would chronicle it all.
The Woodstock festival in 1969 was a one of those strange moments in our culture where you knew something important was happening (writers told you so) beyond the event itself. In this case, it, along with the murderous Rolling Stones concert at Altamont a few months later, signaled an end to the Peace and Love 60’s that so many (naively) hoped would change the world. Childhood was over. Evil Nixon was in power, the war in Vietnam wasn’t going to end until more of your friends and people you didn’t know died, and there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it. One last party before you had to grow up, cut your hair and get a soul crushing job, you hippy scum.
Now the farm where it took place is for sale. A mere 8 million capitalist pig dollars will buy it.
On August 15, 1969, a farmer named Max Yasgur addressed one of largest assemblies ever to gather when he addressed the crowd at the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in the name of peace, love and music.
Mr. Yasgur, now a cultural icon, allowed 40 acres of his 1,100 acre farm in upstate New York, to be used for Woodstock, thus making the musical and cultural event of the century possible.
Today, the home, barn and lands of the world’s most celebrated farmer can be yours, as the “For Sale” sign has gone up on the original homestead of Max Yasgur.
Yasgur and his farm were celebrated in Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock,” popularized on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s album, Deja Vu, with the following words: “I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm. I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band…”
For the past 12 years the Yasgur Homestead has been known as the host farm of the annual Woodstock Reunion.
Click pic for better view
And like the yuppies that were once part of that old movement and have become the same thing as they detested in their parents; so too their only hoopla is up for sale like all their nostalgia.
And before long the gen X prople with their tatts, grunge and dressing like some dirty excuse for a wisconsin farmer from 1920, will suffer a similar fate with nostalgia and nailing their sacred cows to themed restaurant walls.
Every generation has it throw into their faces and put up on the block.
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Cash in, it is the American Way
Far out man.
I live about 40 miles from the place, and I thought that it was made into a ‘cultrual center.’ It’s a nice concert venue. Check out their website: http://www.bethelwoods.us/
#4 Thank you for putting an end to this hippie pity party.
Rabble Rouser got it right. I go to concerts at the Bethelwoods Center for the Arts and understand it is the site of the concert, grown into an excellent facility for all.
The Max Yasgur homesite is but one part of the place. His farm was huge.
I think it would be in the best interest for everybody if anybody who reports on the sale of a Woodstock-affiliated property to accurately relay the current state of the area.
The Woodstock world-view can’t die off fast enough. Bye bye.
I see the monarchist is back. He’ll miss King George – again.
Hoooooray! From the woodstock wiki: “There is another woodstock event planned for 2009!”
Thats a damn shame