August 16, 1969: Woodstock, Day 2

John Sebastian. Although I'm a fan of his,

I chose this photo more for the panorama of the crowd.

August 16, 1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair resumes on Max Yasgur's dairy farm outside Bethel, Sullivan County, New York.

This is the day everybody remembers, but hardly anybody remembers the act that began the day's proceedings at 12:30 PM: Quill. The group had 5 members, and if you can name 1 of them, then you're 1 up on me.

Santana, the San Francisco-based psychedelic band led by Mexican-American guitarist Carlos Santana, had trouble getting their equipment together, so Joe McDonald, lead singer of Country Joe & The Fish, also from San Francisco, and scheduled for the next day, went on in their place.

He did "The Fish Cheer," asking the 500,000 or so people on hand, "Gimme an F!" They all yelled out, "F!" He then asked them for a U, a C, and a K, and they obliged. When he asked them, over and over again, "What's that spell?" they answered enthusiastically, every time. And then he launched into the one Fish song that everybody remembers, "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag," with its chorus:

And it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn.

Next stop is Vietnam.

And it's five, six, seven, open up the Pearly Gates.

Well, ain't got time to wonder why.

Whoopee! We're all gonna die!

The last 2 lines were an homage to Alfred Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade": "Theirs not to wonder why, theirs but to do and die."

At 2:00, Santana were ready, and made themselves legends. But several acts that were scheduled weren't ready: The traffic jam caused by the festival meant that Arlo Guthrie was right: The New York State Thruway was closed, man. Good thing it wasn't Induction Weekend for the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, or a lot of baseball fans would have been really pissed at the Hippies.

John Sebastian of The Lovin' Spoonful was there, and at 3:30, someone handed him a guitar, and he started singing. He later said that it was the worst performance of his career, and on the film, he does both look and sound stoned.

The Keef Hartley Band went on at 4:45. The seriously-delayed Incredible String Band finally took the stage at 6:00. Canned Heat did so at 7:30, Mountain at 9:00, and The Grateful Dead at 10:30. They played for 1 hour and 35 minutes, the last half of which was one song, "Turn On Your Love Light."

It was now after midnight, Sunday, August 17.

*

Major League Baseball games played on Saturday, August 16:

* Chicago White Sox 5, New York Yankees 4 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Bill Melton hit a home run off Jack Aker in the 8th inning, to win it for the Pale Hose. Horace Clarke hit a home run for the Yankees.

* Doubleheader at Shea Stadium. 1st game: New York Mets 2, San Diego Padres 0. Tom Seaver pitched 8 shutout innings, allowing 4 hits, and Rod Taylor pitched a perfect 9th. Bobby Pfeil went 3-for-4 with an RBI. 2nd game: Mets 2, Padres 1. Cleon Jones hit a home run in support of Jim McAndrew.

* Philadelphia Phillies 7, Houston Astros 0 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. Rick Wise pitched a 4-hit shutout and hit a home run, foreshadowing the day 2 years later when he hit 2 home runs and pitched a no-hitter for the Phils. Dick Allen also hit a home run in this game.

* Washington Senators 6, Minnesota Twins 5 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington. Graig Nettles and Rich Reese hit home runs for the Twins, Harmon Killebrew went 2-for-3 with an RBI, and Rod Carew did not play. Frank Howard hit a home run for the Senators.

* Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Montreal Expos 3 at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* St. Louis Cardinals 8, Atlanta Braves 1 at Atlanta (-Fulton County) Stadium. Joe Torre hit a home run, and Lou Brock went 1-for-4, in support of Bob Gibson. Hank Aaron went 1-for-3 with a walk.

* Cincinnati Reds 5, Pittsburgh Pirates 2 at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. For the Reds, Lee May hit a home run, Pete Rose went 2-for-4, and Johnny Bench went 1-for-3 with an RBI. For the Pirates, Willie Stargell hit a home run, and Roberto Clemente went 2-for-4. 

* California Angels 4, Cleveland Indians 0 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Andy Messersmith pitched a 5-hit shutout, beating Luis Tiant.

* Doubleheader at Kansas City Municipal Stadium. 1st game: Boston Red Sox 10, Kansas City Royals 1. 2nd game: Royals 8, Red Sox 7. Carl Yastrzemski went 3-for-9 with a home run over the 2 games.

* Oakland Athletics 4, Detroit Tigers 3 at the Oakland Coliseum. For the Tigers, Norm Cash and Don Wert hit home runs, but Al Kaline didn't play. For the A's, Reggie Jackson went 1-for-4, and John "Blue Moon" Odom pitched 9 innings and hit a home run himself, but it went to extra innings. Rollie Fingers gave up Wert's homer in the top of the 10th. But in the bottom of the 10th, Reggie drew a walk, was singled over to 2nd by Sal Bando, and Danny Cater drove them both in with a walkoff double.

* Chicago Cubs 3, San Francisco Giants 0 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. In a battle of Hall of Fame starters, Fergie Jenkins pitched a 3-hit shutout to defeat Gaylord Perry, who got 1 of the 3 hits. Willie Mays did not. Ernie Banks did not play.

* Baltimore Orioles 15, Seattle Pilots 3 at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. At different points in Jim Bouton's book Ball Four, Pilot pitcher Fred Talbot said, "We got no business scheduling these guys. This Baltimore outfit can sure fluff up your ERA," and somebody else tells the Pilots, "You guys are going to get killed in Baltimore." Apparently, it didn't matter whether the Pilots played the O's home or away.

In this game, Chico Salmon hit 2 homers for the O's, while 1 each was hit by Paul Blair and Boog Powell. Frank Robinson went 0-for-3, but did draw a walk. Brooks Robinson did the same. Tommy Davis had 2 hits for the Pilots. Dave McNally was the winning pitcher, Diego Seguí the loser. Bouton pitched the 7th and 8th innings for the Pilots, allowing 3 runs on 4 hits, walking 2 batters and hitting another.

August 15, 1969: Woodstock, Day 1

August 15, 1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair begins on Max Yasgur's dairy farm outside Bethel, Sullivan County, New York. Around 500,000 fans attended the 3-day event, a landmark in rock and roll history.

John P. Roberts and Joel Rosenman were New York entrepreneurs, and were building a recording studio in Woodstock, in Ulster County in the Catskill Mountains of New York. They thought of holding a rock concert to promote the studio. In the end, the studio became an afterthought, and was never built.

They contacted Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld, who had organized the Miami Pop Festival the year before, bringing in 25,000 fans over 2 days. Between them, they began setting up what they had hoped would be an East Coast equivalent of the Monterey Pop Festival that had been held outside San Francisco in June 1967. Monterey Pop had gotten 50,000 people. The Woodstock promoters planned for 3 times that many, or 150,000.

Except they couldn't get a place to hold the show. The Town of Woodstock denied them a permit. So did Saugerties, and then so did Wallkill. Finally, Max Yasgur, a dairy farmer in Bethel, offered his farm as a site, as it had a slope which made for a natural amphitheater. It was 57 miles southwest of Woodstock, and 103 miles northwest of Times Square.

Tickets were $24 for the whole 3 days -- about $189, or $63 per day, in 2022 money. Sounds like a bargain. Maybe it would have been, if not for the rain and the mud.

Sure, it looked like a blast, if you saw the movie Woodstock, which was released on March 26, 1970, 7 months after the festival. Because that meant you didn't have to live through...

* The traffic jam, as bad as any as has ever hit the New York Tri-State Area. When Arlo Guthrie told the crowd, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!" he wasn't kidding. The promoters expected around 150,000 people, and thought they had enough facilities, including the access roads, to handle that.

But, depending on whose figures you believe, anywhere from 300,000 (The New York Times on the day after) to 850,000 (cited by Richie Havens as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show 25 years later) showed up. The best-known figure is 500,000, due to the line in Joni Mitchell's song, "By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong." The next week's issue of Rolling Stone had the headline, "Woodstock: 450,000," and that is usually cited as the most accurate number.

(By the way, Joni wasn't there. Neither was Bob Dylan, whose supposed presence was said to be the reason so many people came -- the reasoning being that he actually lived in the town of Woodstock, which refused to host the festival. By the time they finally got the permit from the Town of Bethel, the posters with the name "Woodstock" had already been printed.)

In the 1970 Census, Buffalo was listed as having 462,768 people. If there were more than that at Woodstock (which is certainly possible), that would have made the Festival the 2nd-largest "city" in the State of New York, behind only the City of New York. And since about 3 times as many people as expected showed up, they had problems with...

* The food situation. There wasn't enough. To this day, there are nearby store owners who say they made a fortune selling sandwiches and soda to people going to the festival.

* The hygiene situation. Anyone who's ever been to a sold-out football game and had to use the bathroom, and has been foolish enough to wait until halftime, understands why baseball has 9 innings instead of 2 halves or 4 quarters. It's bad enough when 60,000 people want to use the john at once, in  a building designed to hold that many.

Now imagine that, out of 500,000 people, at any one time, 1 percent need to relieve themselves. That's 5,000. I don't know how many port-a-potties they had, but imagine that it was 100. That's 1 contained hole in the ground for every 50 people. That's not enough.

And I don't think there were shower facilities there, and lots of people stayed for the full 3 days. (Given the traffic, they may not have had much choice.) And remember, this was the middle of August in New York State. Hot. So even if it hadn't rained, producing all that dinginess and mud, those 600 acres must've given off some serious fumes, above and beyond anything that was being smoked. This, of course, gave rise to the myth of "the dirty hippie," which is also greatly exaggerated, but, at Woodstock, was bad enough.

* The medical situation. I don't know how many "bad trips" or overdoses there were. But the legend of someone getting on the microphone and warning Woodstockers about "the brown acid" (LSD, possibly laced with PCP, a.k.a. "angel dust") has been well-documented. Out of the 500,000 or so people who were there, it's been said that 3 died: One from an overdose, one from appendicitis, and one fool who decided to sleep under a tractor on a hill, and you can guess the result.

Now, there were almost certainly more murders, overdoses, accidents, medical miscues and "deaths by misadventure" that weekend in New York City, with all the modern medical facilities available, including some of the most honored hospitals in the world. But the men running Woodstock were woefully underprepared in this regard.

Anywhere from 1 to 3 births were said to have happened there (although no one has ever found a documented "Woodstock Baby"), to say nothing of the conceptions that happened there, and the couples that met and had children later on, so the deaths are probably more than balanced out. But then, if there were births at Woodstock, those required medical attention, too.

* The weather situation. Yeah, it rained. That's no myth. At one point, somebody onstage got all those people to chant, "No rain! No rain! No rain! No rain!" That worked about as well as chanting, "One, two, three, four, we don't want your fuckin' war!" As in, not at all.

No, on August 15, 16, 17 and 18, 1969, Max Yasgur's 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel Woods, Sullivan County, New York, where the festival was held, was not the place to be. In contrast, the next year, when the documentary about the festival was released, a movie theater showing it was the place to be. There, the millions of people who have said they were there could have a far better experience than the half a million or so who actually were there.

*

A band named Sweetwater was supposed to open the festival at 5:00 PM. But they were stopped by police en route. Richie Havens, who had made his name in the Greenwich Village folk revival of the early 1960s, was moved up. He looked out at the crowd, started strumming his acoustic guitar at warp speed, and just sang the word, "Freedom" over and over again, before segueing into "Motherless Child." He played until 5:54.

At 7:10, an invocation for the festival was given by a Hindu priest, Swami Satchidananda. At 7:30, Sweetwater finally went on. At 8:30, Bert Sommer -- not to be confused with Brett Somers -- took the stage, and got the first standing ovation of the festival for singing Simon & Garfunkel's song "America." (Neither Paul Simon nor Art Garfunkel attended, much less performed.)

At 9:20, Tim Hardin went on, and sang, among others, his 2 best-known compositions, "If I Were a Carpenter" and "Reason to Believe." Then it started to rain. Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar went on at 10:20, after 35 minutes of nobody wanting to play in the rain, and played 15 minutes. The Incredible String Band refused to go on, and at 11:00, Melanie Safka, another acoustic performer, was persuaded to go on, and played for 20 minutes. She later wrote "Lay Down (Candles In the Rain)" about the experience.

At 11:55, Arlo Guthrie, son of folk icon Woody Guthrie, came on, and said, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!" At 12:55, another Greenwich Village folk music star, Joan Baez, came on. She was 6 months pregnant with her son, Gabriel Harris, who has since toured as her lead guitarist. At the time, her husband, David Harris, was in prison for draft evasion. Among her songs were the gospel tune "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," and the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome," which she had previously sung at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. She finished at 2:00 AM, and the show was closed for the night.

*

Major League Baseball games played on that Friday:

* New York Yankees 2, Chicago White Sox 1, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Fritz Peterson outpitched Gary Peters. Bobby Cox, now much better known as the Hall of Fame manager for the Atlanta Braves, went 3-for-4 and hit a home run for the Yankees. 

* Philadelphia Phillies 1, Houston Astros 0, at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* Minnesota Twins 2, Washington Senators 0, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. The Twins achieved this despite Harmon Killebrew going 0-for-4 and Rod Carew not playing. But Tony Oliva went 1-for-4 with an RBI, in support of Jim Perry, who allowed 7 hits in 7 innings, followed by Ron Perranoski allowing 2 in 2 to finish the shutout.

* Los Angeles Dodgers 9, Montreal Expos 2, at Jarry Park in Montreal.

* Atlanta Braves 8, St. Louis Cardinals 2, at Atlanta (later Atlanta-Fulton County) Stadium. For the Braves, Tony Gonazalez hit a home run, and Hank Aaron went 1-for-3. For the Cards, Lou Brock went 1-for-4 with an RBI, but Joe Torre went 0-for-4.

* Pittsburgh Pirates 5, Cincinnati Reds 1, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The Buccos got home runs from Richie Hebner, Al Oliver, and 2 from Gene Alley. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-4, and Willie Stargell went 2-for-5. Pete Rose went 1-for-4, and Johnny Bench went 0-for-4.

* Cleveland Indians 2, California Angels 1, in 12 innings at Anaheim (now Angel) Stadium.

* Oakland Athletics 4, Detroit Tigers 0, at the Oakland Coliseum. Lew Krausse pitched a 4-hit shutout, and hit a home run, to outpitch Mickey Lolich. Reggie Jackson and Al Kaline both went 1-for-4.

* San Francisco Giants 9, Chicago Cubs 0, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays and Dick Dietz hit home runs. Ernie Banks went 1-for-4.

* Baltimore Orioles 2, Seattle Pilots 1, at Sick's Stadium in Seattle. Brooks Robinson went 1-for-4, and Frank Robinson went 1-for-5. Mike Cuellar outpitched Gene Brabender. While Pilots pitcher Jim Bouton (who did not get into this game) did mention the Moon landing in Ball Four, and also provided several discussions each on the subjects of music, fashion and hair, he did not mention Woodstock at all.

* Rained out, to play doubleheaders the next day: The New York Mets and the San Diego Padres at Shea Stadium in New York; and the Boston Red Sox and the Kansas City Royals at Kansas City Municipal Stadium.

Also on this day, John Fetterman was born, later to be elected as a Democrat to be a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.

May 26, 1978: Resorts International Opens, Atlantic City's 1st Casino-Hotel

May 26, 1978: Resorts International opens, the 1st hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey with a legal gambling casino.

On November 2, 1976, the day that Jimmy Carter was elected President, New Jersey voters approved casino gambling in Atlantic City, making New Jersey the 2nd State, after Nevada, to legalize it.

This would one day have repercussions in another Presidential race, as Donald Trump ran in 2016 despite building 3 casino-hotels in A.C. and buying a 4th, and having them all go bankrupt. Some businessman he turned out to be.

Resorts was followed in 1979 by Caesars and Bally's; in 1980 by the Brighton, Harrah's and the original Golden Nugget; in 1981 by the Tropicana, the Playboy and the Claridge (in a hotel established in 1930); in 1984 by Trump Plaza; in 1985 by Trump's Castle; in 1987 by the Showboat; in 1990 by the Trump Taj Mahal; in 2003 by the Borgata; and in 2012 by the Revel.

Perhaps I was a bit too harsh on Trump: In Atlantic City, the casino-hotel business has proven not to be very stable, especially since other States have since legalized gambling as well:

* The original Golden Nugget became Bally's Grand in 1987, the Hilton in 1996, and the Atlantic Club in 2011, and, as of May 26, 2022, has sat vacant since 2014.

* The Playboy became the Atlantis in 1984, Trump Regency in 1989, Trump World's Fair in 1996, and closed in 1999.

* Trump's Castle became Trump Marina in 1997, and the new Golden Nugget in 2011

* The Brighton became the Sands shortly after opening, closed in 2006, was demolished the next year, and is still an empty lot.

* Trump Plaza closed in 2014, and sat vacant until being demolished in 2021.

* The Revel became The Ocean in 2014, and the Revel again in 2018.

* The Claridge still operates as a hotel, but without a casino since 2014.

* The Showboat closed in 2014, and reopened as a hotel without a casino in 2016.

* And the Trump Taj Mahal closed on October 10, 2016, just 29 days before his "election" as President, replaced with the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in 2018. It's a bit ironic that the last remaining Trump casino had a Middle Eastern theme. But then, Dumb Donald is so dumb (How dumb is he?), he didn't know that the actual Taj Mahal isn't in the Middle East, it's in India.

Atlantic City had long been controlled by organized crime, including by the families of nearby New York (128 miles to the north) and Philadelphia (61 miles to the northwest). This reputation was hammered home by the 1980 film Atlantic City, Bruce Springsteen's 1982 song "Atlantic City," and the 1990 film The Godfather Part III. The New Jersey Casino Control Commission, a 3-person group appointed by the Governor, keeps a tight lid on such things, so, as with Las Vegas, Mob control is severely diminished from what it once was.

The growth of Atlantic City as a casino resort city, combined with the growth of the cruise ship industry and the reduction of its prices, led to the decline of the resort hotels in the Catskill Mountains of New York and the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania, despite their being closer to New York City than Atlantic City is. (Both the Catskills and the Poconos had their resorts, on the average, 90 to 100 miles from Midtown Manhattan.)

The legendary Catskill hotels, mostly catering to Jewish families that, at their arrival in America, hadn't been welcome elsewhere, fell by the wayside in the 1990s and the 2000s: Grossinger's, Kutsher's, the Nevele ("eleven" spelled backwards)... they're all gone. A few derelict buildings are left, with the promise of new developers turning them into new resorts, but it hasn't happened.

The Poconos have fared a bit better, maybe because the people running them have been smarter. The people running what a TV commercial jingle called "beautiful Mount Airy Lodge" saw the writing on the wall, and converted their facility into Mount Airy Casino Resort. The Sands went the other way: When their Atlantic City casino went bankrupt, they opened a casino-hotel in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, not far from the Poconos. Except that went bust, too, and is now Wind Creek Bethlehem.

UPDATE: As of November 2025, the only notable change to the above information is that the owners of the land where the Sands stood are planning an extension of the Claridge.

*

May 26, 1978 was a Friday, the start of a Memorial Day Weekend. Football was out of season. The day before, the Montreal Canadiens had beaten the Boston Bruins in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals, to win their 3rd straight Cup.

The NBA Finals were between Games 2 and 3, and the Washington Bullets would beat the Seattle SuperSonics in 7 games, with the Sonics reversing that result the next year, beating the Bullets in 5. (The Bullets renamed themselves the Washington Wizards in 1997, while the Sonics moved to become the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.)

And these Major League Baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays, 4-3 at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees trailed 2-0 in the bottom of the 7th, but Jim Spencer hit a grand slam, making a winning pitcher of Sparky Lyle in relief of Jim Beattie. Reggie Jackson went 1-for-4.

* The New York Mets lost to the Houston Astros, 5-4 at the Astrodome in Houston.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-3 at Fenway Park in Boston. Dwight Evans hit 2 home runs, Jim Rice 1, and Carl Yastrzemski went 0-for-4 with a walk.

* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-3 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. Eddie Murray went 1-for-4.

* The Atlanta Braves beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2 at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. Mike Schmidt went 0-for-3 with a walk.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Montreal Expos, 2-1 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. All the runs came in the 7th inning: Larry Parrish hit a solo home run for the 'Spos, but Manny Sanguillén hit a 2-run homer for the Bucs. Willie Stargell did not play.

* The Oakland Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-1 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

* The Chicago Cubs beat their arch-rivals, the St. Louis Cardinals, 6-0 at Busch Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Dave Roberts pitched a 7-hit shutout, oddly without either striking out or walking a batter. Bobby Murcer went 2-for-4 with an RBI for the Cubs. Lou Brock did not play for the Cards.

* The Seattle Mariners beat the Texas Rangers, 6-4 at Arlington Stadium in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas.

* The Cincinnati Reds beat the San Diego Padres, 3-1 at San Diego Stadium (later Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Pete Rose went 2-for-3 with a walk. Johnny Bench hit a home run. Dave Winfield went 0-for-4.

* The California Angels beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-5 at Anaheim Stadium (now Angel Stadium of Anaheim). Robin Yount went 1-for-4, and Paul Molitor went 0-for-5.

* The San Francisco Giants beat their arch-rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, 6-1 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

* And the Kansas City Royals and the Minnesota Twins were rained out at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. The game was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 16. The Twins won the opener, 5-1. The Royals won the nightcap, 11-7. Over the 2 games, Rod Carew went 5-for-9 with a walk and 3 RBIs, while George Brett went 2-for-6 with a home run, 4 walks and 3 RBIs.