o the estimate that only ten to fifteen-thousand people would be attending the concert on his land (Woodstock Music).The concert was widely advertised, but the unexpectedly large crowd it attracted, about 400,000 people, suggested that the potential significance of the event was spread by some kind of an underground network. "If you were a part of the culture,"said one pilgrim from Bethel, "you had to be there." Consequently, the crowd was too big for the police to handle, only one-fifth actually paid the admission for the concert, the remaining attended for free ("All Nature 194-96"). Law was nearly impossible to enforce due to the massive crowd, and the police were outnumbered considerably, one for every two-thousand attendees. Drugs were used widely at the festival, yet out of fear of rousing the crowd to hostility, fewer than 100 arrests were made on drug charges (Grunwald 227). After the first day of the festival, the promoters hired the Hog Farm hippie commune to police the fair. They took care of kids on bad drug trips, and acted as nurses to the few doctors at Woodstock. Along with the mass drug use, thousands of people suffered from injuries such as colds, broken bones, and sore throats. Due to the unexpected large group of people, there was poor sanitation and very little water. The conditions became so bad that the festival doctors declared a "Health Emergency" and over 60 doctors were flown from New York City to help Shakoor 5with the crisis (Huges 334). The mishaps at the Woodstock were numerous, yet they failed to put a damper on the high spirited crowd. It rained through the entirety of the weekend, turning everything to mud. It rained over the instruments, and yet the bands continued to play. Consequently, several performers were treated for electrocution burns. There was even a power blackout during the middle of the Grateful Dead set, which lasted for several hours ("Woodstock"). Max ...
