July 23, 1999: camping trip in upstate new york

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July 23, 1999: camping trip in upstate new york

god, what happened?
actually, no that’s not true, its all clear since I was on the no drug kick during this small art festival and camping trip I went to on thursday.

i met someone from cromwell, a small-town located not two towns away via icq, this funky way to talk to people anywhere in the world, but we were talkin not 7 miles away. a couple weeks before, she icq’d me cause she got super bored after a trip from europe, cause ct isn’t known for its... anything. well, anyhoo, i told her to come to my work to pick up her nondairy mac and chreese and say "hello" cause its one thing to talk to someone all night with little text messages, its another to actually say hello to a stranger, at least in ct where we’re all too coo to say hi while walkin down the street. but shyness was the cause this time, i was almost certain she did come to pick up her yummy vegan treats, but she didn’t say who she was and i usually don’t query people they’re name and life story while ringin up tofu delights. work that day was weird, there had to be 20 very very attractive women that decided to shop that monday and it was extremely hard to try to pick her out.

but wednesday, my guess proved out correct, it was her, she confessed bout being shy, "but hey, lets do somethin!" so that day we (her name is kelly btw, sometimes i forget to add these little things in) went to see a movie with her lion maned hair Ian and somehow i got talked into going with her to rome, ny for a little r&r.

"but i have to work on sunday and monday!, i’m goin to a play on thursday, i want to see my girlfriend soon, its been like a week, i have a doctor’s appointment on monday, i’m supposed to go skateboarding and swing dancing on saturday, a friend i haven’t seen in a month and won’t ever see again is coming for one day on friday, i have so much stuff to do before i move!"

"hey, your goin, its woodstock"

i had to agree.. "let me see what my girlfriend says, i’ll know at about 1am... when do you plan on leaving?"

talked to her, actually tried to talk her into it to, but theres no way she could go, she was workin too much in an attempt to live a life tat she wanted, a life free of all the crap that surrounded her, and anyways, if she was gone for more than twelve ours, the people she was staying with would put her on a missing person’s list and she would be dragged home. but got a similar statement fromn her: "dude, go i’ll make it up to you when you come back"

so thursday, after some fallouts with other people we were supposed to go with we set out towards rome, actually, meriden, i had to buy a ticket, smarty kelly got hers for a cool 100 off of e-bay, i went to filenes with my gold chain wallet and coughed up $185.50 for the three day pass. all the money coming from my scholarship i was presented to by the good people at cox communications, thanks guys, i’ll remember the trust you gave me as i steal books, live off of credit cards and find a restaurant that’ll let me take 3 square breaks a day on my offtime.

we actually met up with two people we were supposed to meet up with, a twenty three year old girl who wouldn’t stop talkin bout her boyfriend and her mother, who had total control of her life. be in their car they had a radar dectector, guaranteeing a speeding trek across the native american named cities and counties of upper NY, so it was all coo, till we found ourselves stuck behind them for hours on end in the left lane goin 55, angry people behind us, angry people in the car, actually, just kelly and i, kelly used to getting passed once a trip, flooring that blue tercel, now stranded behind a prism with a homemade psychedelic "woodstock or bust" poster. the second rest stop we went to, we decided to lead with our car, and as i dozed, we somehow lost the other car, i looked at the speedometer, a cool 85, as the the tercel began to shake and vibrate from the shear magnitude that 12 cylinder beast mustered up.

we made it to rome at a pitiful time, it was 730, the air was cool but choking with anticipation and fumes of cars full of rampumctious youngins just ichin to have a good time. traffic was extremely tolerable, we parked right by one of two stages, and walked with our belongings :

me, sleeping bag, 3 shirts, snowpants (i dunno either) long underwear, 2 pairs shorts, two pair pants, no extra boxers or shoes,

kelly: sleeping bag, one person tent, food (p+j, two loaves of bread, rice crispie treats, crackers) clothes, lactaid pills.

we were set, be prepared my mom/scout leader told us, yeah we’ll make it 5 days, no problem.

it took about an hour to walk around the whole airport/concert area to get to our campsite, loo did we know, this little excursion would be just routine. they checked for no metal, no glass, no cans, but didn’t care bout drug at all, and i really didn’t care. i’d rather have 200,000 lazy tired paranoid people around me as i wandered throught ny’s third largest city than having a quarter mil drunken people slobbering around me, beer couldn’t be brought in cause of the container, but rest assured they were sold at $5 so all the rich kids could get their kicks, hey it was cheaper then water.


pitched tent in the slapdash tenement, tried to figure out the spider web road system, and went out to wander the vendors, concession stands and music that had already started early.

checked out all the hippy bead places, hot dog stands and saw parliament funkadelic. good day. i guess a local radio station was given out free woodstock frisbees in mass. i small corner of woodstock’s airspace turned into the testing ground for 300 frisbees to fly this way and that, the effect was curiously calming and just a taste of what the vibe would be for the weekend, just everything goin everywhere but nothing horrible happening, just enough anarchy to have a good time.

found the tent and found some visual cues to tip us off....

yellow caution tape mucked around a tree... crappy bright orange tent before ours... flying high tie dye wearing college student on the fence... ok, all set.

got up early, too early, the sun touching the tent made an instant humidity machine, i woke up sweating from my chest and stuck to my coleman sleeping bag, getting up to see our once vacant campsite full and new neighbors to meet.

so kelly and i began to wander some more stands, saw the tatoo shop and watched some awful good looking girls go topless so some middle aged man could airbrush their chest to decency, at least woodstock decency.

walked to the main stage to catch the ending of james brown getin down with his black self as the intermission gave me time to check, or steal someone's schedule to see the next band, jamiroquai, not my fav, but thi shat he had on and his dancin "cried homosexuality" as my girlfriend sez, but thats all good, he made me shake my ass and start off my day all soul funked out. live came next with their serious rock all about the water, they impressed me with their state of mind. sheryl crow came next, so we decided to get the fug outta there to eat or wander some more, anything's better than that.

came back to see the last of dmx, and readied for a triple line up of the offspring, korn and bush. offspring was fun to listen with, honestly, safe punk for everybody, but they made nsync jokes so they were go enough for me, korn were kinda korny to me, i’m still with the opinion bloody beavis and butthead had with them being kinda unoriginal and lost in a soup of mirroring bands, but the lead singer guy was wearing a kilt, so big ups to that. kelly was totally in love with bush so we had to weasel ourselves to the tippidy front of the stage, i’ll have to admit that i thought gavin, the lead singer guy, was cute in a totally non homosexual way, and so 4 people to the front up went kelly to crowd surf to the front to leave me alone with her $300 elph camera singin to bushe’s cover of "this one goes out to the one i love"

found moby was playing at the aircraft hanger rave afterwards, so after the show, i found the veggie burger stand, got one with everything, a big cookie, a frozen nonfat yogurt and icky food bar, then realizing i had 3 more days to survive the retardedly high prices and only seeing $20 of the $300 i took out in my wallet, oh well, guess i’ll just make alot more pb and j sandwiches....

but made it to moby and moby was awesome. for a techno "artist" he came out with drummer, bass player and guitar and an odd assortment for himself, along wit hthe usual electronic keyboard thingy.

moby was blazin on the guitar, bangin on the drums, makin good noise that made me happy happy. go see moby if you have a chance, that little vegan can make some good tunes. his last song(?) was just him and the computer, making a low, hollow beat the progressively got fast and faster while he stood up on the table and looked all krovy krovy scary with white lights mimicking campfire ghost story sessions.

after moby, moby fan needed to get home, but home was hard to find after all that music and miles to walk with little knowledge of where mi was supposed to go. i literally was walking for an hour and a half through the maze of tents, people and port o potties tryin to find that damn tent, i gave up and decided to sleep in a corner under a huge american flag a tent circle brought, one of those monsters that you have to steal from a government building, and wait till the mourn. passing the same guy in the chair with the unsightly look on em, the same people playing the drums, the same 40 year old bastards tryin to get all the girls to show em their titties was too much. i turned around and saw in the trees the caution signs, turned slightly left, saw the crappy orange adobe, looked beyond, and their was my hokey tent, i climbed in at 4:00 am and woodstock day one ended.

i’m not sure when i got up, but it was way too early. at what was now the usual pb and j sandwhiches, the bananas were getting a little too ripe there, especially after i stepped on them from the night before. but such is life. saw this massachusettes band named guster, which was coo, got passed out free condoms which was excellent and checked out all the grassroots independent tents trying to make a difference. signed a million petitions on gun violence, abortion, kelly bought this weird thing you fill with water and it keeps you warm for ten dollars, we then found the same thing for 3 for ten dollars, heh heh. got miself to the anti racist action tent and saw all the cd’s that they were givin for donations and realized i had all of them cept 1, i made a note to buy it and this book on the philosophy of punk, good reading.

counting crows was ahh... boring ("this is a song about when i was in my twenties and i wasn’t doing anything") , limp biscuit was unapologenically dumb, rage against the machine rocked (of course) and metallica got silly after the 4 t h encore. after metallica, i once again went back to the rave this time to see norman cook, who i deemed the dork of woodstock. i got real close and saw how he mixed his rhymes, ciggarette in one hand, beer in the other, dopey buck toothed smile and horrible haircut, makin the jocks and hippies dance dance dance. i honestly don't know how he does what he does, it looked like he had like two turn tables, he'd take a live sample, screw around with it, make a transition from the last beat while looking at the crowd and flailing his arms, and unlesh his new tune, it was interesting, but got kinda boring when you have no room to dance and people wanted to crowd surf (?).

oi

got outta there in time to see the smoke from a fire near the mountain bike course lurking towards the aircraft hanger rave spot and found my way home first shot.

third day last day, totally tired of my wet shoes, the bathrooms or lack of them, the cost of food, the smell of other peoples sweat on me, the amount of change i didn’t have, the fact that i had to go home, the fact that i didn’t know wat was up with my girlfriend.

did the last of the wandering of the stores, kelly finally got a green shirt she dug, i couldn’t find anything for my girl jess, for the quarters i found in my wallet, but i kept searching.

saw elvis.....

costello, sat down twenty people away to listen to jewel yodel, kelly once again fell in love at the lead singer, this time of creed, and i got myself physched to see my favorite band of the show, the red hot chili peppers,

i really wanted to be close for the peppers, got about 9 people away from the front, the feeling that there is 250,000 people trying to get to where you are is pretty core. i looked around my backside to see what the hell was sticking out and saw a mother and her two little children right in front of the stage. the mother was obviously in total delusion, thinking she would somehow make it through the set, she was trying to get all these tall strong guys near her for added protection. kelly and i noticed that we were surrounded by lots of teenage girls, which usually means that we’re in no fly zone for crowd surfers and mosh men.

this being not the case as flea comes out stark naked and starts the chilli’s set. which rocked unequivetly, i sang with them in all there songs, as the crowd in back of me pushed with the force of the trojan army’s opponents. i had to hold on to kelly, who held on to anything she could to survive this total crushing force of the fans persecuted with the same conditions as i, but i didn’t care, the songs were good, the peppers were inside, anthony’s hair was bleach and short, the songs melancholy, funky and honest, the crowd fuckin crazy, the set seemed to short, the fires

the fires!?
before the planned encore by the red hot chili peppers, it was announced that there was a small fire near one of the towers and if we all cooperated the firetruck could go in and take it out, i looked around my shoulder and saw three nice blazing demons all scatter brick a brack around the whole place. earlier that day the pax tent, which worked for less gun violence in the usa, was giving away free candles for a vigil, i didn’t see no vigel, so i think everyone used them for the song "under the bridge" and then later these little waxy things made great starters,oop. the peppers i guess wanted to finish and they did, the only thing i could say that sucked was no higher ground, but a new tradition was made; all menstruating women had to throw their tampons on stage, i think i heard of that one before, but people did it, great another thing being thrown at me.

 

walking back after the last set was interesting. kelly’s sandled feet weren’t quite operational, so i offered to piggy back her all the way back to camp, missing the rioters, the fires, the drunken masses, just the masses, the people throwing whole tables and metal cans into the fire, the leaking bathrooms and drinking fountains. the fires were awesome, i totally dug the whole anarchy fuck everything mentality thang, i didn’t dig it when i thought of fires near my tent, and the rioters near the tent and the grrr.... not a happy night.

finally got all set to collapse in my stinky sleeping bag with kelly, got into that nice happy floaty feeling and then i hear.

"oh my god, get out get out!",

i look up to see about five people flying away from my tent. i honestly thought the tent next to me caught on fire, which wasn’t much of a leap of faith since they kept me up with their drunken/high/wasted philosophy about life and breakfast cereals, this guy’s laugh was unbearable, hyena like, uncontrollable crap.

but lo, my fear/hopes faded just a bit as i saw it was a bunch of darn hooligans that stole one of the souped up golf carts to take a ride, he rode over one tent, which was vacant i think and got the fug outta there with a winter ass shade on his face just mowing throw everything.

yells of, "i heard this is has been deemed a national disaster, the fuckin national gaurd is coming, their closing us off, we’re under martial law!!!"

but i was tired, i put on my contacts just so the next time i get awaken by screams of tripping out girls or a tank rolls by, i could at least see myself die. i needed to get to work on monday, it was supposed to be my last day, i couldn’t miss that.

3 hours of sleep is all you need.

i looked over to the tent next to me that was giving me hell. deserted. no one there. just a box of cereal samples, the collapsed tent, trash, (shit that stuff was everywhere) and a prize for me. three beat up bead necklaces. two purple, one green, showing the hellbent week in their condition, and free for me, perfect. i plan on telling an extrapolated version of that itty bit and give her the beads, maybe for a goodbye gift, maybe just to end a night of talking and holding each other. we’ll see...

 

3 frapachinos later a large (i mean large) hazelnut coffee and 2 hours into driving back to ct, i was filled with astonishment of the show i went to the people i saw, the good times, the fuckin bathrooms, the messed up showers, the bands the bands. a new friend to miss when i move, couldn’t beleive i didn’t see anyone i knew. got to work a half hour late, high on adrenaline and caffeine, no one even asked what that green band around my neck was or those 3 sets of beads around my neck. went home.. tried to collapse, went out again skateboarding. which in the state of my knees, legs feet and mindset should have been impossible, but those kickflips kept coming out. i found myself screaming at anyone i saw, being totally rash and filled with the fucked up mentality that the show gave me. it hasn’t calmed down, i hope it doesn’t. life’s too short to play it safe, i’m glad i blew off all those important things, spend all my college money, went with someone i barely knew and had alot of fun. summers been so good to me, i’ve been living this song mark told me about, i’ve been doing so many crazy things this summer, i thought the worst was getting into a relationship with a girl i just met and have to leave in two weeks, but this show is quite a close second. i know people are goin to blow off the show as what it eally was, corporate sponsored greed, media driven hype, spring break in the summertime, but screw that, it was fun, it was scary, its something i’m glad i was apart of and something now that i have to get the vdeo for just to see myself again.

 

good things:


no fights
i don’t think i saw one person get there ass kicked. my theory for this is simple. i could have beat the shit outta someone during a show that ticked me off, but about twenty people would do the same thing to me. kinda a nuclear war, no winners scenario, kept the balance because of fear of the outcome. either that or everyone was too tired to fight or didn’t want to get all stinky after taking that one shower for the week.

canadian pride

i didn't check a map or anything, so i'm not sure how far from canada i was, but everyone from canada showed it by wearing the red and white maple leaf flag on em, patches, t-shirts, whatever, it was really cool maybe they didn't want to be thought of as american while goin to woodstock, maybe their government has brainwashed their little minds, maybe i should be so proud of my country (ha!) but thats not gonna happen anytime too soon lots of stuff to fix.. canada actually looks pretty good. vive canada or however you say it in franche.

kelly

kelly is cool, we’re both dorky computer people that hooked up online, she made me realize you can start a real world relationship in the www world, heck shes been doin since she had her 8086 and chatting on west harford bulletin boards way before aol. i keep getting drawn in by really laid back people, sorry kids no sex took place, we didn’t even wake up in embarrassing positions in our teeny tent, so jess rest assured.

watermelon

food was inflated to the point of idiocracy. 4 dollars for water?! yeah. but there was a stand sellin watermelon for a dollar and that waterelon was gooood. other good eats was the big meal at the tibetan stand and al the vegetarian delights offered to me, its nice to not have to go to a hot dog start to ask for just the buns.

bad things

bathrooms

250,000 young adults can not use port of jons correctly, they’re too much of a target to deface, push over and screw up. i would have certainly paid 20 bucks more on my ticket for something, anything better. the small was quite a scream, and having the bathrooms right next to the clean water was a really good idea, really.

the water system

there was free water available to us. it came out of pipes that were attached to these huge concrete things, but by the second day, all the fixtures were busted and not in any shape to use, so water got scare or just hard to get to. what was really something they must have looked over was the drainage to all the water that freely flowed outta the pipes. ie, there was none. there was a group of bathrooms on the top of a small hill in the concert area. each day i walked near it, the muddiness of the grass that sat beside it got larger and larger till it covered clear across the whole aircraft field, it was impossible not to get your feet wet and muddy and as such my feet stayed nicely wet for four days, dish pan hands are nothing compared to my feet these days.

the playlist

the list of when the bands were playing was available but it got as specific as what day they were on and of what order. there was even groups not on the bil that weren’t on the list at all, which made trying to schedule your day impossible. the violent femmes were supposed to play, they weren’t even there, damn website. i hate when informaton is falsified, oh well.

the prices

everything was expensive

big shock

when i got halfway through writing this, i realized i could never write everything that happened to me, theres too many details and odd stuff that happened. i guess this is just goin to be something to remind myself, to look at one day to use to get all the finer points back into mi noggin. maybe you went to this show, and have another twist to it, i’d love to hear, i’ll link to yours, or even post it for you lets hear it.

sorry i didn't take any pics, something bout bringing my canon ae-1 with all its lenses, flash and motor drive didn't sit well in my mind, luckily, this crazy person snaps some good ones


update 8/7/99: my friend kelly who i went with put up her story, with lots of pictures of the whole thing, yeah!

some just random thoughts

the king of woodstock :: the hugging guy :: the trash :: cool glass pipes :: the op iv shirt i lost :: gelatin :: no sunburn :: broken sunglasses :: sunscreen :: too many jocks :: uconn riots :: crossroad :: peer pressure from a quarter million people to take off her shirt :: frozen chai :: sid and nancy playing in the hanger :: free bottled water :: raisin crunch samples :: no pancakes :: kelly lost 4 pounds! :: all that trash everywhere :: skateboard ramps and me without a deck :: walking 15 miles a day :: the feeling on my teeth after not brushing for five days :: mail order is fun 2 :: first kiss with jess after i got home again :: failing asleep during ultimate fighting championship 4 :: the trash :: no working showers :: eating on a yellow frisbee :: mustard pretzels have fishes in them? :: icq tats :: tongue rings :: hemp cookies :: getting home.

skazat is a sketchbook of mine. My name is Justin Simoni. I am an artist living in Denver, Colorado, USA. I like music.

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camping trip in upstate new york

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