Ace in the wrong place at Woodstock

Home Channel News, August 9, 1999 by John Caulfield

Concertgoers-turned-looters ambush 15 trailers containing camping gear dealer was selling at the festival

ROME, N.Y. -- A dealer affiliated with Ace Hardware that had set up a retail site on the fairgrounds of Woodstock '99 here was assessing the damage late last month after the festival mutated into a riot of burnings and looting.

"For three days, the event was fine, but the whole thing started to break down midday Sunday, when people were setting small fires," recalled Ron D'amore, the owner of American Hardwall Supply, a local dealer that sold camping equipment from a 30- by 90-foot tent on the campgrounds of the festival. His "store" was supported by a 40- by 60-foot tented staging area and 15 tractor trailers filled of merchandise.

He said all of those trailers were broken into and looted by concertgoers who engaged in a mini riot that broke out near the end of the four-day festival. According to eyewitness accounts, concertgoers used candles donated by a peace organization to set more than a dozen fires that raged out of control, leading to explosions of several vehicles' propane tanks. Apparently, when the police began dispersing people to put out the fires, many of them were herded onto the campgrounds where Ace's trailers were situated. The crowd began taking out its frustration by destroying or looting concessions, vandalism that spilled over to American Hardwall's row of trailers. Police estimate there were 300 to 500 looters, although thousands more looked on and, in many cases, egged them on.

Some 250,000 people attended the festival held on 250 acres that had been Griffiss Air Force Base. Police reported seven arrests on riot-related charges. Five concertgoers were hurt when a trailer fell on them. Two troopers also were injured. Police also arrested at least 37 people for drug possession and drunken driving over the weekend.

Speaking calmly during a telephone interview on July 28, D'amore said that he couldn't give a full accounting of how much merchandise had been stolen, and declined to state how much inventory had been stocked in the trailers. He did note, though, that New York State troopers, who were called in to quell the mob, confiscated "five dump truck loads" of camping products from people leaving the fairgrounds.

"It's going to take awhile to figure out what our losses are, although my gear will be easy to spot because it's new," D'amore quipped.

He said that his company was covered completely by insurance for its losses, "unless there's a clause in there I don't know about."

As always, location, location

News reports of the melee had quoted concertgoers who speculated that the looting was an extreme reaction to exorbitant prices for food and water at the festival, where bottles of water went for as high as $6, and a 12-inch pizza for $12.

American Hardwall's concession may have been victimized unfairly by this circumstance. "The prices on the items we sold were very competitive with what you'd find in a Wal-Mart or Target," said D'amore. He elaborated that sleeping bags were priced from $23 to $39; a two-man tent went for $39, and a "quality" six-man tent for $195.

"In fact, people who had ordered products before the concert over our Web site said they were surprised how inexpensive the products were," he said.

About two weeks before the festival began, American Hard-wall took orders online for camping equipment -- supplied mostly by Academy Broadway -- that concertgoers could pick up when they arrived. The dealer's buying group, Ace Hardware, supplied other related products like batteries and flashlights, as well as the storage trailers. "We got a late jump on our Web site, so that could have been better, but we still got orders from people [living] in Japan, Brazil, England, a lot from California," he said.

More problematic to this venture, though, was where the selling tents were set up. D'amore said that his tents and trailers took up a total of 62,400 square feet that were enclosed by six-foot-high fencing. A huge balloon overhead and bright lights called attention to the area. Nevertheless, it became evident quickly that on campgrounds this massive, the location got lost.

"We got stuck near a hangar in a corner of the campsite, which looked like a good place to be at first, but turned out to be very difficult to get to, the way people were moving to and from the stages," D'amore explained. "The area turned out to be extremely long and extremely deep." The location proved to be a major impediment to product sales, he said.

D'amore noted that the mood during the first three days of the festival was nothing out of the ordinary, and that "everything seemed to be under control." But in the afternoon of the last day of the event, worn-out concertgoers sporadically ignited small fires around the campgrounds, often using wood pulled from fences and other structures at the site.

"There needed to be a stronger presence of some authoritative control," said D'amore, who was on site for most the festival but wasn't there when the looting began. "There was a 'peace patrol,' but there wasn't someone there who was authorized to make an arrest. I'm not even sure you needed someone the first two or three days, but on the last day, these kinds of things usually occur."