{"id":1259,"date":"2010-11-13T01:46:42","date_gmt":"2010-11-13T05:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=1259"},"modified":"2010-11-13T01:46:42","modified_gmt":"2010-11-13T05:46:42","slug":"new-york-state-thruway-july-2009","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2010\/11\/13\/new-york-state-thruway-july-2009.html","title":{"rendered":"New York State Thruway. July, 2009."},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tI feel like I shared these pictures already, but maybe not.<\/p>\n

Hours ago I remembered this night (July, 2009) when a bus ride home from the Bethel Arts Center (site of the original Woodstock and a handful of yuppie wanna-becreations) lingered disasterously long into the morning. I attempted to make some productive use of the time by capturing minutes-long extended exposure shots of the passing highway vehicles and lights. We reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal at about 3am, at least 2 full hours later than advertised. This experience left us gasping at the air for some trace of joy.<\/p>\n

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The concert event itself was a hostile bore, not on account of the performers but on account of the power-starved security guards who invented fresh rules at the gate, rules which allowed them to (among other things) confiscate my precious Minolta film SLR. That confiscation of my belongings is among the most obnoxious powergrabs I can remember. I would, without hesitation, have turned around and gone home were I not out in the middle of fucking nowhere with no real way out. And I was with friends, friends who were as embarrassed for me as was I for I after my camera was confiscated, but friends who were also able to help absorb the borderline humiliation I felt for having my possessions seized.<\/p>\n

I would have gone home if I could.<\/p>\n

(The security bandits did not seem to notice that I had 2 other cameras in my bag. I saw people taking pictures and shooting video with their cameras everywhere<\/em> that night.)<\/p>\n

As much as I would like to say, in direct response to these asshat security trolls, that “I will never go to Woodstock or the Bethel Arts Center again” I doubt I would ever go up there again anyway. It is too far, the place is annoyingly idyllic, and I am not a big-concert kind of person to begin with. I went because a friend had a free ticket for me, a ticket the fine-print of which I read and re-read, finding no warnings to suggest that cameras and food would be seized at the gate and thrown away and\/or spirited away to God-knows-where under the care of God-knows-who.<\/p>\n

God, I still get mad thinking about that incident. I barely remember the event for anything but the motherfuckingly asinine and ham-handed security intrusions.<\/p>\n

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Security guards at Bethel\/Woodstock also demanded that I take about $30 worth of food out of my bag and deposit said food into a trash recepticle. That garbage can was overflowing with food that others had been forced to throw away. Who got to eat it? Who got to eat the food? The security guards? Who got to eat the food that we were forced to waste? The security guards? The security guards?<\/p>\n

I assume these “security” policies were concocted in response to the destruction of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and that we live in a safer country because of them.<\/p>\n

Fuck Woodstock. Fuck the Bethel Arts Center. Fuck Improvisational Security Guard Theater. And fuck these pictures. (I don’t really mean that last one, except that I am not sure what else to say about them.)<\/p>\n

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\"Extended<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I feel like I shared these pictures already, but maybe not. Hours ago I remembered this night (July, 2009) when a bus ride home from the Bethel Arts Center (site of the original Woodstock and a handful of yuppie wanna-becreations) lingered disasterously long into the morning. I attempted to make some productive use of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-181-2","category-digital-hoarding","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-kj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}