cannabisnews.com: Smokers Left Singing the Blues at Folk Festival! 





Smokers Left Singing the Blues at Folk Festival! 
Posted by FoM on August 15, 1999 at 10:36:29 PT
By Aileen Soper, Inquirer Suburban Staff 
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Once a year, Charlotte Hummel joins a throng of 20,000 at the Philadelphia Folk Festival for three days of music, camping and merrymaking on a Montgomery County farm. It is a scene plucked from the 1960s -- with men in skirts, all-night acoustic jam sessions, and marijuana.
"I wear my hippiest clothes," said the 42-year-old mother of two from Cheltenham. "I act the way I would have if I was this age during the dawn of the Age of Aquarius."But the pack-a-day smoker is fuming because she won't be able to light up this year as she takes in performances by such folk luminaries as John Prine, Stacey Earle and Chris Smither.The Philadelphia Folksong Society, which started the event in 1961, plans to enforce a new nonsmoking policy in the main concert area -- and on the stage -- of the festival, set for Aug. 27-29."What bothers me about this is not the inconvenience," said Hummel, adding that she would not attend if the ban extended to the campgrounds, where 5,000 sleep. "It just seems like one more regulation in what should be a freeing experience."The society considered a smoking ban for years but finally acted after a chorus of complaints, festival chairman David Baskin said."It might be an outdoor event, but it is a real problem if you have to sit on a blanket next to a smoker all night and the wind is blowing it right in your face," he said.Once the society announced the policy, there were complaints from smokers, said Baskin, though he did not recall how many. He said the policy, however, had not affected ticket sales for the festival, the premier event of its kind on the East Coast.Bans on indoor smoking in public places -- many government imposed -- have become increasingly common, spreading from California to New York City, but such prohibitions remain rare at outdoor events.Philadelphia's Mann Center for the Performing Arts and Camden's Sony Waterfront Entertainment Centre allow smoking on their open-air lawns but restrict it in concession and reserved-seating areas.A few open-air venues have taken the step. Baskin said some folk festivals in Canada, as well as the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas and the Strawberry Music Festival in Yosemite, Calif., limit smoking."If it's a business decision that they are making, independent of any government mandate, then more power to them," said Michael Hambrick, senior vice president of the National Smokers Alliance, a nonprofit group based in Alexandria, Va., that lobbies for smokers' rights.The ban at the Philadelphia Folk Festival will include the concert, food vendor, craft and workshop areas. Smoking will be permitted in parking lots and campsites. A smoking area for spectators will be situated just outside the main gate."You'll be able to go in and out and have as many pipes, cigarettes and cigars as you want," Baskin said. "At night, there will be closed-circuit TV, so you won't miss the show."Performers will be asked to smoke backstage, which is not considered a public space, said Fred Kaiser, the festival's programming chairman."We certainly don't want to flaunt smoking in front of our spectators if they are asked not to smoke," he said.Organizers will rely on in-house security -- including some of the festival's 2,000 volunteers and some hired guards -- to enforce the policy."It will, hopefully, work by peer pressure and by gentle reminder," Baskin said.But Rich Machlin, co-owner of the Tin Angel, a 100-seat indoor concert hall in Philadelphia that shuts down for two weeks each summer so as not to compete with the festival, said: "I personally think it's silly if it's an outdoor venue, where the smoke goes into the air."It's not just the smoking ban, meanwhile, that bothers Hummel. There are other rules. In recent years, for example, the society has cracked down on drumming on Dumpsters and Port-A-Potties (some people stayed up all night pounding on them), unauthorized commercial enterprises (Hummel said she saw an 8-year-old girl peddling ice from her toy wagon get a warning last year), and unsupervised minors (campers under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult)."It's ironic because it started as a revolutionary thing, yet now the people who used to break all the rules are the ones making them," Hummel said.This year, the festival also will ban open fires in campsites, percussion instruments, fireworks, bathing at faucets, pets, and trespassing on private property. And coolers are occasionally inspected.The rules are there so that everyone can have a good time, Baskin said. He took issue with the notion that the festival is, as some people have dubbed it, a "Schwenkstock" -- an odd merger of Woodstock and Schwenksville, the small town near the 70-acre Old Pool Farm, where the concert is held."There's a widespread perception that once you hit the festival grounds . . . it's anarchy," Baskin said. "The festival was started as a place to make good music; it was not a place where anything goes."The festival also bans alcohol and illicit drugs, though regulars said the policies do not keep people from partaking -- often in plain view. Most years, there are some arrests, usually for selling drugs.Gene Shay, the festival's master of ceremonies and one of its founders, said the smoking ban could be difficult to enforce, though he understood the reasoning for it: the fumes that collect like an airy mist over the densely packed festival grounds, a natural amphitheater.Bob Brant, 44, a lawyer from Collegeville who has attended the festival for a decade, was not surprised by the ban because, he said, many members of the folk-song society are now in their 50s -- a time when health concerns become all too pressing."Is it going to curtail attendance? I don't think so," said Brant, a self-described yuppie who quit smoking three years ago. "I think people come to the festival for the music, the ambience, the scene."As for Hummel, she plans to do this year what she has done the last five -- bring her air mattress, tent and husband and stake out a camping spot near the Jug Band, four guys who have played a washtub, washboard and jug at the festival for a quarter-century.Last year, while snoozing soundly in her sleeping bag after hours of jug playing, Hummel was awakened at 4 a.m. to the strains of a bagpiper walking through her campsite."That's the guy who should be banned," she said.Pubdate: August 15, 1999© 1998 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. 
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