NathanDrug Use Was Rampant
Many of the people who attended the Summer Jam festival took drugs. There was an overflow of drugs that led to many overdoses too. Reporter John Wisniewski who worked for Post-Standard said of the event, “[b]uying, selling and use of drugs was blatant. Little, if anything, was done to curb such activities at the concert area. To do so, said one deputy, would be as fruitful as a mosquito trying to have sex with an elephant.”
Dealing In The Open
Since there were so many people who did not have a problem with taking drugs, the dealers were doing their business out in the open. Concert-goers were able to buy off high-quality Jamaican weed that cost around $15 an ounce. That was not all, even LSD was sold for about $1 per hit. Scalpers took advantage of the event and would sell six-packs of beer for $3 or even more.
A Tragedy
Even though the event was about peace and love, there were a series of incidents that contradicted this sentiment. A skydiver fell to his death and it absolutely shocked the crowd. An eyewitness told revealingly “There were all kinds of aircraft… making flyovers that day. Just after I sat down from my trip from the stage I noticed one plane flying in circles overhead. Then I saw a parachute open and pink smoke swirling in the sky.”
Who Is The Skydiver?
So who is this skydiver and why did he do what he did that particular day? Well, the skydiver’s name was Willard “Smitty” Smith. He was a 35 years old man who had been carrying a pink flare while he was jumping. Unlucky for him, the flare set fire on the suit and so he tragically to his death as he fell. You can see Smitty in the photo above.
Comparisons to Woodstock
We have to accept that Woodstock and Summer Jam will always be linked. So on August 1973, an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Judy Klemesrud in her article about Summer Jam read, “There were the same nude bathers in the same muddy ponds. The same casual sex. The same rampant drug scene, only this year ‘ludes’ (Quaaludes, or downs’) were the hot sellers — along with an ocean of booze — instead of Woodstock’s amphetamines and LSD.”
Not So Impressed
She further wrote about the festival and said, “Why ‘downs’? ‘Because since Nixon took over, everything has been a downer,’ one hirsute drug dealer who was selling mescaline at ‘$3 a hit’ told me.” Klemesrud then shared a long list of various reasons as to why she had found the festival to be a “letdown. She was clearly not a big fan of the festival that raked in over 600,000 people.