On June 29, there was a shooting.

Headlines like that hardly make waves these days. But this one was just off the Historic Woodstock Square. Yes, that square, the one lauded as the idyllic destination for award-winning farmers markets, cultural festivals and quaint movie locales.

“It was an isolated act of stupidity,” said the mayor in his statement to the Northwest Herald. But after nearly two years of living on the square, I accepted this news as the not-unexpected start of the next chapter in an ongoing tale of two cities. Because the “real Woodstock” of marketing campaigns loses much of its charm once the shoppers, festival attendees and “Groundhog Day” fans go home.

One city is the Woodstock I have grown to love. This is the city with the historic square, still paved in cobblestones, surrounding a beautiful park. It’s a city that hosts a wonderful farmers market twice a week, free summer band concerts and movie nights under the gazebo. It’s a city that treasures its historical spaces and takes pride in its cultural offerings.

But that Midwestern charm is sullied by the other city, “Woodstock after dark,” if you will. This is the city where six bars and a smoke shop occupy a single block – one that is permitted too close to through traffic each summer and establish an outdoor “patio” area where loud, drunken revelry continues until long after the bars close. It’s a city where the drivers of motorcycles and other modified vehicles rev their engines to the cheers of onlookers before peeling off into the night, or blast music so loud that it vibrates the walls of the apartments above, waking residents in the middle of the night. It’s a city where drunken arguments take place in the street; where broken bottles often litter the alleyway; and people urinate or vomit behind trash bins.

This is surely not the city that the “real Woodstock” marketers have in mind when they invite visitors in their brochure to “Stay a while. Get to know us.”

And on June 29 there was a shooting.

Maxine Doolittle

Woodstock