Our Towns

50 MILES AND 40 YEARS FROM YASGUR'S FARM, WOODSTOCK TRIES TO MOVE ON

WOODSTOCK, N.Y. - Of Michael Esposito, who heals and sells old bikes
out of an old cow barn called the Old Spokes Home, you can, for
starters, say the following.

He was once the guitarist for the briefly famous '60s rock group the
Blues Magoos, dimly remembered for their one hit, "(We Ain't Got)
Nothin' Yet," for their breakthrough album, "Psychedelic Lollipop,"
and for performing in black suits with Day-Glo piping and
battery-powered psychedelic lights that gave them periodic shocks when
inspiration met perspiration.

He came to Woodstock in 1967 at the age of 27 and was so taken with
things he soon bought his burial plot in the Woodstock Artists
Cemetery for $125.

He hasn't driven a car since 1977, wakes up at night worrying about
being six months behind on his house payments and is the son of a
professor of military history at West Point with two brothers who
graduated from there. Along with running the bike shop, he's an
aspiring painter and plays bass with young musicians in town and with
the eclectic musician and songwriter Marc Black.

And as we yet again amble into the moldy nostalgia zone of Woodstock
lore and concerts by skeletal remnants of ancient bands, he's one of
those pondering a question that hangs in the air like wisps of
funny-smelling smoke: Is it now becoming possible to decouple the
future of Woodstock the Town from Woodstock the Concert, which wasn't
even held there?

He figures maybe it is.

"There was the concert and everything that came after, and then we
went through a long 20-year period of what? Mediocrity? Malaise? I
don't know," he said. "We just kind of slept for a while, but now it's
coming back to life. There's really a resurgence here."

Woodstock is a little like the Middle East, one of those places where
everyone has his own view of reality. (And for those unable to
actually set foot here, there's the WoodstockUniverse.com social
network.) But the anniversary of the concert, which ended up about 50
miles away at Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, is prompting renewed
appreciation for the way the town's history and spirit produced the
concert.

After all, long before the concert, hatched and originally planned to
be held here, there were Woodstock's two original attempts to get back
to the garden. First was the Byrdcliffe art colony, founded in 1903 as
a utopian, anti-industrial community of artists and artisans. Then,
beginning in 1905 and peaking in the 1920s, came the Maverick
community and festival in which hundreds of free spirits gathered each
summer for music, art, theater and drunken orgies in the woods.

Before Woodstock, from 1967 to 1969 there were small-scale,
noncommercial musical festivals in the woods called Sound Outs that
helped the promoter Michael Lang come up with the idea of the
Woodstock Festival. (The main observances of the anniversary are in
Bethel, but Woodstock's version of Woodstock at 40 is a concert on
Saturday billed as a celebration of the Sound Outs. Performers will
even include Mr. Esposito and the reunited Blues Magoos.)

The concert, of course, made Woodstock famous. And complaining about
it at this point would be like complaining about gravity. But a
recurring theme in town is that the concert that came to define
Woodstock was only the latest and most gargantuan iteration of the
town's creative core -- that Woodstock is much more than Woodstock.

"This town has been a spiritual center, a mystical zone that people
have been coming to for 100 years," said David McDonald, who produced
"Woodstock Revisited" a film on the town and the concert's
antecedents. "That's re-emerging. It's going to stop being 'Come to
Woodstock and get high,' and become 'Come to Woodstock and get
creative.' "

One sign of that is Alchemy of Woodstock, billed as a combination
coffeehouse, bookstore, music venue, art gallery and gathering space,
and remarkably, one of the only places to hear live music in a town
full of famous musicians. And, some say, one positive byproduct of the
recession has been to drive down housing costs, keeping the town
affordable to artsy types and pulling the plug on much of the boutique
Hamptons North dynamic.

But others say, creative or not, Woodstock remains doggedly stuck in
time. There's virtually no construction in the main part of town that
wasn't there in 1969, the Woodstock T-shirt/nostalgia industry is an
economic staple and the economy is now dominated by the second-home
owners.

"For young people the only career paths are law enforcement or lawn
care," said Peter Cantine, an owner of the Bear Cafe, a popular restaurant.

Still, you don't get the feeling anyone's too bummed by it. Even the
young people hanging out downtown with skateboards and iPods and rap
pouring out of car windows seem to think whatever Woodstock is, it's
just fine.

"It's all New Age hippies now," said Nicole Krieger, 20, who sells
hemp jewelry in town. "It's still really cool."