From Canyon To Cove: Yearning for Woodstock

Last weekend was the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, and here at the paper we jumped on the bandwagon, inviting people to a “reunion” event at the Marine Room on Saturday.

It seemed like a great idea.

I still have my original tickets from the three-day festival in upstate New York, which wasn’t that far from where we lived in Connecticut. I went with a high school friend, Joanna, who got us tickets well in advance. But tickets stopped being collected long before we got to the event, and for some reason the untorn tickets for all three days — at $6 a day — turned up in a box of my things at my mother’s house two years ago. I also have a leather belt I bought at the crafts tent for my then-boyfriend, which I ended up keeping.

I thought it would be fun to get together with other people who might have similar relics, or treasures, to share, along with memories.

I got into the recesses of my closet and dug out a “period piece” garment: a pink tie-dyed shirt, or dress, that I used to wear over jeans, or not. I also found three dashikis and an Indian bedspread, all from that long-ago era. One of the dashikis is actually a wall hanging; I was in the midst of turning it into a splendid garment for another boyfriend when we broke up, so it only has the head hole finished. He never would have worn it anyway.

The dashikis have that iconic African floral design that decorates the 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition DVD set featuring “The Ultimate Rock Concert Movie” and assorted goodies, and is festooned in leatherlike fringe that calls to mind David Crosby. Apparently it was the fastest-selling DVD in history when it came on the market a couple of months ago. I saw it in a Best Buy ad and ran out that day to get it, only to learn that it wouldn’t be on the store shelf for four more days. Maddening.

When we finally got the DVD, Sharon and I sat down and watched the entire movie in one sitting, like gorging on a 20-pound box of See’s candies. It must be four hours, plus there are “extras” that we haven’t even gotten into.

I looked for Joanna and me in the crowd of half a million souls, and thought I saw someone who looked like me but was probably not.

I was surprised by how excited I was about the Woodstock anniversary.

Apparently a lot of other people were too, and decided that Woodstock needed to be remembered and celebrated. Maybe because it’s been 40 years and many of the people who were there are probably still around and still have their memories intact. There were two other Woodstock celebrations over the weekend, one at the Orange County Swap Meet and one at Lake Irvine. I hope theirs were more successful than ours.

So, on the appointed day and time, and wearing tie-dye, bell-bottoms and my Woodstock belt, carrying Xerox copies of my Woodstock tickets and the large dashiki for decoration, I headed off to the Marine Room, where photographer Mark Dustin was waiting.

We set ourselves up at a back table, trying to avoid the noise, and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Finally a man wearing an obviously faded T-shirt with a raised fist on it approached: a Woodstockian!

Laguna Beach resident Jonathan Lukoff had quite a story to tell. He was a pre-med student at MIT in Boston, and active in the anti-war movement, when Woodstock drew his attention. He hitchhiked all the way without a ticket (it was a free concert, after all) and when he got there ended up being conscripted into the medical tent, where he worked for two days before finally bailing.

Wanting to enjoy some music, he headed off toward the concert venue, only to be pulled into the “Freakout” tent, where the organizers were desperate for people willing and able to help those on bad acid trips.

Apparently this trial by fire at Woodstock didn’t dissuade Lukoff from pursuing a career in medicine: He became a doctor at Kaiser Permanente.

Kathy Van Velzen also came to our table. She wasn’t at Woodstock, but has vivid memories of putting “flower power” stickers on her Opal Cadet and driving up the canyon road to her job at Disneyland, dreaming of being there. And her boyfriend has a tale about heading out to Woodstock and breaking down on the road.

I was disappointed we didn’t get a bigger turnout.

At this point, Mark and I decided that we might have better luck at the Sawdust Festival, where a Beatles’ Day was going on, so we packed up and headed out. Since there was no parking for miles around the Sawdust, we ended up walking a half mile or so from a remote lot. Shades of Woodstock.

Mark was determined to find someone who had been at Woodstock, and kept urging me to walk up to likely-looking people and ask.

One man said he wished he had been at Woodstock; another said he knew a lot of people from his home town of Pasadena who went, but he had family and couldn’t go; a woman said no, she hadn’t been to Woodstock but she had seen the Beatles perform (I have too, so there).

One woman said her best friend had wanted desperately to go, but her mother stopped her.

In the end, I couldn’t find a single person at the Sawdust who had been to Woodstock, but a lot of people who would have liked to have been.

For them, I recommend the Ultimate Collector’s Edition Woodstock 3 Days of Peace and Music Director’s Cut DVD.

The next day, Lagunan Michael Farley e-mailed to say he had thought the reunion was at Hennessey’s, across the street from the Marine Room, and had headed over there. Farley also pointed out that the ads we ran about the event had a typo in the phone number and apparently the poor woman whose number was listed got 40 phone calls seeking information.

So there was interest, after all! Well, Woodstock wasn’t perfect and neither was our Woodstock reunion. But we were all together in spirit.

CINDY FRAZIER is city editor of the Coastline Pilot. She can be contacted at (949) 380-4321 or cindy.frazier@latimes.com.