cannabisnews.com: Rome Sees Hope in Legions of Rock Fans!





Rome Sees Hope in Legions of Rock Fans!
Posted by FoM on July 17, 1999 at 11:02:40 PT
By Alan Wechsler, Staff Writer
Source: Times Union
 The sign was wrong, but Mayor Joseph Griffo didn't mind. Standing 50 feet up in a bucket lift Wednesday morning, right next to Woodstock '99 concert organizer Michael Lang, Mayor Griffo cracked jokes and posed for media photographs.
Next to them, fluttering above Rome's busiest street, a banner read: "Countdown to Woodstock: 10 Days.''Actually, it was nine days until the show begins at noon Friday. But the mayor was unfazed."Don't worry about it,'' he yelled down to the press. "Anybody want me to do anything ... besides jump?''Rome officials may have difficulty counting days, but they have had no trouble counting on the Woodstock concert to revive the city's flagging economy. Some of Rome's 44,000 residents think the concert, which will be held July 23-25 at the Griffiss Business and Technology Park, is a bad idea. But Griffo and many others see the concert as a depressed community's chance at a comeback.Hard times have visited Rome in the 30 years since the original Woodstock concert was held in Bethel, about 150 miles to the south.From the 1940s on, Rome was home to Griffiss Air Force base and one of the largest runways in the country. In the 1960s, more than 60,000 people lived here. The population began a gradual decline from that peak, but the bottom really dropped out in 1993, when the Air Force announced it was closing the local base.Rome's Woodstock is being produced by the four promoters who held the original Woodstock concert in Bethel in 1969, when they were young entrepreneurs, and who later organized a 1994 Woodstock concert in Saugerties. So far, about 150,000 people have purchased the $150 tickets, but organizers hope to sell around 250,000 by the time the show starts.The Oneida County region expects the concert to pump $30 million into the economy, and officials like Griffo are doing what they can to make the thousands of concertgoers feel welcome. That means posing for cheesy photo-ops and supporting Lang even when the county threatened to fine Woodstock organizers $1.5 million for failing to get permits in time. On Thursday, the county waived the deadline for paying the fines, which threatened to cancel the concert.But money is only one reason Rome has rolled out the tie-dyed carpet. The other reason: name recognition. After all, 2,500 members of the press will be in attendance, and that could help put Rome back on the map."It's going to be great publicity,'' said William Guglielmo, president of the chamber. "If it goes well, it'll help a lot.''Woodstock Ventures say they've done all they can to minimize the impact a quarter of a million people will have on this small city. But many locals still wonder if publicity is worth the price Rome will pay when Woodstock begins."People say, 'It's just a weekend,' '' said city resident Joanne Bush. "But it's not your weekend.''Bush, owner of Joanne's Flower and Gift Studio, is worried how she'll be able to get deliveries out with traffic caused by the event -- after all, traffic from the 1969 Woodstock festival in Sullivan County closed down the New York State Thruway.Mayor Griffo said concerns are understandable but unwarranted."They will not experience an ordinary lifestyle next weekend,'' he said. "But they will be able to function.''Some don't even want to try. For instance, Rite-Aid's vast distribution warehouse in the city will close down for four days, beginning Friday, with the expectation that traffic will be too difficult for trucks to get out. Workers will work longer hours the next weekend to make up for the delay."It's putting me out of business for three days,'' added John Chmielewski, a farm-stand owner who is closing because of the expected traffic problems."They say the concert has brought a lot of business in,'' he said. "But for who?''Bertha Hall, for one. At least, she hopes so. The 71-year-old owner of the gift shop "Elegant Expressions,'' Hall hopes to sell anything from incense to $7.50 Woodstock T-shirts to the folks who come into town."I think it's a good opportunity,'' she said. "It's pretty dead around here.''The Chamber of Commerce agrees. Their members have agreed to pay to hire 20 school buses to ferry concertgoers from the concert to downtown. One pizza place even spent $500 so the bus would stop right outside their parlor. Even the local Price-Chopper has a sign out front saying, "Woodstock, 24 hours, ready to serve.''Woodstock officials say locals shouldn't expect too many people to want to leave the concert. And the question remains whether people spending $150 for the summer's hippest weekend will want to leave to visit downtown Rome.At least one Woodstock employee clearly wasn't enjoying the business district earlier this week. John Marks, an 18-year-old who came up from Philadelphia to work in the concert parking lot, said he was bored of Rome as he browsed through a CD store several miles from the site."There's nothing to do,'' he said.Rome, 15 miles northwest of the similarly depressed city of Utica, began as a fort on a popular trade route. Home of Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, Rome did well as a farming and industrial city in the early part of the century.Today, the city still retains its small-city charm, but since the 1993 base closing, a number of stores are closed and downtown sidewalks are nearly empty.Still, Mayor Griffo, a 42-year-old Republican local radio stations call the "MTV Mayor'' due to his love of rock 'n' roll, says the city is on its way up.For starters, Rome is spending $2 million in grants to tear down a failed Urban Renewal shopping center and pedestrian bridge (from which the "Welcome to Woodstock'' sign dangled). And the former Air Force base -- still used by several federal organizations -- has been re-groomed into an industrial park that has already attracted tenants."We're excited about this,'' the MTV mayor said. "Despite the problems, it'll be a great 10 days.''Nine, actually. But who's counting?Times UnionPubdate: July 16, 1999 Woodstock '99 to Rock Ex-Air Force Base - 7/15/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread2059.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by FoM on July 17, 1999 at 19:23:09 PT:
Woodstock Part III Seeks an ID! 
Woodstock Part III seeks an ID Times Unionhttp://www.timesunion.com/Saturday, July 17, 1999  Five years later, another Woodstock. What will this one be like?"Each generation has an opportunity to define themselves at events like these,'' waxes Phil Gitlen, a rock 'n' roll lawyer associated with all three Woodstocks. He was a long-haired, blissful attendee in 1969 at Yasgur's farm, a proper on-site lawyer representing promoter Mike Lang's Woodstock Ventures '94 down in Saugerties, and now again as one of three legal beagles tending to the brain-numbing details of Lang's '99 version at the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome next weekend. Woodstock Three is officially a go. Any glitches have been resolved, says Gitlen, so that now this Woodstock can begin to take on a life of its own, a distinctive personality. Part of the generational definition he alluded to. Will the expected 300,000 be reminiscent of the Peace and Love congregation at Bethel that started it all? Or more like the spoiled X-Generation leaving their toys behind after nonstop partying and moshing at Saugerties? Or will this crowd take us into a whole new direction?One thing's for certain, says Phil: There's a dynamic that comes into play whenever 300,000 cram into a tight space for something called Woodstock that's just a little scary.State Police, in charge of external security, and State Emergency Management Office personnel, on hand just in case we have us a disaster, are predicting the traffic jams should begin around noon on Thursday. By the time the opening act takes the stage a full day later, all the roads in should be in paralysis.Not surprising, since every Woodstock is about a paralysis of one sort or another, and about lots of rules that somehow get broken. Although civility seems magically preserved anyway.Security is the classic issue with lots of rules that don't work out. I remember 30 years ago walking into a small construction trailer down the road from where the main stage was to be constructed for the first Woodstock. Mike Lang himself was behind the desk and we talked about his outrageous idea for a music festival that grown-ups weren't taking seriously at all. I was perhaps the 15th person to inquire for credentials and tickets, which Lang insisted be picked up personally. He assured me security was not an issue. Events showed he was right, but not the way he meant. Most of the 300,000 or more who materialized for one of the most spectacular gatherings of modern times just walked in and didn't pay a nickel.So that was going to be corrected for sure at the 25th anniversary, profit-taking venture down in Saugerties. By now, credentials had to be ordered from an L.A. firm handling worldwide media. Lang assured us there would be State Police, a huge internal security force and a wire fence around the whole shebang to keep out non-payers. Plus, a shuttle system to keep walk-up crowds away.Right. John Scher of Polygram Records, co-producer with Lang at Saugerties, estimates that at least 125,000 and probably a lot more just walked in. Absolutely prohibited beer and other stuff was everywhere. Cops and security wisely made no effort to curb the flow, and I recall watching a regular torrent of humanity pour in and out of a gaping hole in the perimeter fencing for three solid days.So pardon my skepticism that The Wall will work. The Wall is a 12-foot-high reinforced plywood perimeter around 700-acres of the former miliary base that will contain the various stages, 200 acres of camp sites, 2,500 toilets, food concessions and three beer gardens."To get in, everybody has to go through 200 feet of security zone, through several gates,'' says Gitlen. Any glass, metal, flammables or alcohol will be taken. Looming all around will be The Wall. The Alcatraz of music festivals. LeBrun can be reached at 454-5453. 
Woodstock Part III Seeks an ID 
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on July 17, 1999 at 15:07:29 PT:
The Village Voice: Feature: Back To Which Garden?
Back To Which Garden? The Squabbling Spawn of Woodstock July 14 - 20th, 1999 Click the link to read the article.
The Village Voice: Feature: Back To Which Garden?
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