Self-proclaimed "old hippy" Wavy Gravy is a living embodiment of everything Woodstock stood for. The New York-born Hugh Romney — given his colorful legal name by B.B. King — grew up in the cultural heart of the Greenwich Village folk scene, where he was lucky enough to make acquaintance with both Bob Dylan and, at the age of five, Albert Einstein. The path those encounters set him on would define his life.
At Woodstock 1969, Wavy Gravy and his Hog Farm commune served as the backbone of the festival's peace-keeping and food service operations. They called themselves the "Please Force" — because the idea of using force to keep peace contradicted everything they stood for. The Hog Farmers were flown in on charter planes, two planeloads of them arriving in New York City, tasked with being the "advance guard." They ended up being the kitchen, the medical support, and the heart of the whole operation.
It was Wavy Gravy who made the famous announcement from the stage warning the crowd about the "brown acid" — almost certainly the most famous drug announcement in music festival history. And it was Wavy Gravy who looked out at 400,000 people in a rain-soaked field and saw, rather than chaos, something extraordinary: a tribe taking care of itself.
Sticking with it — I'm approaching 73 and have been at it awhile. When I start something, I don't abandon it.
— Wavy Gravy
Since the 1960s, Wavy Gravy has taken the ideals of that era and put them into concrete action. He is a co-founder of the Seva Foundation, an organization that prevents and cures blindness in Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Tanzania, and Guatemala. Seva has helped millions of people regain their sight. "For the price of a movie ticket," Gravy has said, "you can restore someone's sight." During harder economic times, Seva organizes benefit concerts featuring Grateful Dead members Phil Lesh and Bob Weir to raise the funds it needs.
Gravy is also the founder of Camp Winnarainbow, a circus and performing arts camp that holds summer sessions for both children and adults. The adult sessions are, by his description, just like the kids' sessions — except with certain modifications:
You get to stay up late and don't have to brush your teeth. You can even procreate if you aren't too loud.
— Wavy Gravy
The camp teaches juggling, unicycle riding, stilt walking, magic, mime, and much more. It even has its own film festival. Across from the Hog Farm where the camps are held, Gravy runs a store called "Nobody's Business" — a remnant of his politically neutral "Nobody for President" campaign, with slogans like "Nobody's perfect" and "Nobody keeps all promises." He has admitted, to the mild consternation of some anarchist supporters, that he voted for Barack Obama. "A lot of anarchists were upset with me when I voted for Obama," he joked. "I told them that Nobody made me do it."
Gravy's activism grew directly from the free kitchen he and the Hog Farmers opened at the original Woodstock. He attended every subsequent Woodstock festival, and has strong opinions about Woodstock '99 — which he saw firsthand. When Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit encouraged the crowd to break things, and the resulting footage of riots was broadcast repeatedly, Gravy noted that the media missed the larger story:
They also said that people were being charged $4 for water — but that was the designer bottled water. The water that came out of the tap, which they didn't mention, was free.
— Wavy Gravy
For Wavy Gravy, the spirit of Woodstock is measured not by the chaos of a bad festival or two, but by the original event's extraordinary achievement:
Out of the 400,000 people at Woodstock, only 6 were arrested.
— Wavy Gravy
At nearly 73 years old at the time of this interview, Wavy Gravy showed no signs of slowing down. Seva continued curing blindness. Camp Winnarainbow was booking summer sessions. His full-length documentary "Saint Misbehavin'" was in post-production and slated for festivals. It doesn't seem as though the hippie ideals of peace and well-being toward fellow human beings will be allowed to die on Wavy Gravy's watch.
I became a clown for when I visited children's hospitals. But when I was invited to demonstrations, I discovered that the cops didn't want to hit me anymore.
— Wavy Gravy