Gallery
People set up their base camps for an overnight stay at Woodstock ’99 on July 25.
An estimated 100 people pose nude for photographer Spencer Tunick on July 24.
Woodstock 99 was held July 22-25 at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York. More than 220,000 people attended, temporarily making Rome the third-largest city in the state. But organizers left them to combat 100-degree temperatures atop a tarmac runway virtually on their own. And $4 water bottles led to fiery tempers.
As chronicled in the HBO Max documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage, the music itself had changed from the acid-induced psychedelia of the ’60s to the rage-fueled resentment of the ’90s. Multiple sexual assaults and rapes went unchecked as 700 people suffered heat exhaustion. Crowd members overturned cars and set them on fire.
Few attendees has prepared for the heat wave. With bottled water priced out of reach for many and few public water stations, drinking fountain lines took hours. There was a 1.5 mile walk between the two main stages across sweltering tarmac, during which many people fainted from heat exhaustion. Even the most harrowing Woodstock 99 photos could never capture the oppressive intensity of the heat. And with temperatures only going up, tensions rose rapidly.
