Revelers at the Rock N Roll Resort festival last weekend in Kerhonkson. Photo via the Rock N Roll Resort Facebook page.
To stay in the black, a Borscht Belt resort needs to branch out into tie dye and bongs, according to the Times Herald-Record, which wrote yesterday about the efforts of the bankrupt Hudson Valley Resort and Spa to stay solvent.
The resort, located in Kerhonkson and facing $22 million in debt, has been hosting music festivals all off-season, reporter Michael Novinson writes:
Music festivals help keep the Hudson Valley Resort afloat during the off-season, which stretches from November until the start of Passover.
The resort hosted at least eight festivals in 2010, [resort general manager Orest] Fedash said — a figure that doesn't include the biannual contra dancing weekends.
On Saturday, dozens of concertgoers with dreadlocks and tie-dyed T-shirts and bandanas perused what concert promoter Shannon Plaquet dubbed the "vending village" — roughly 10 stands selling everything from bongs and bead necklaces to healing stones and hacky sacks.
But pinning your hopes on a music festival is a risky gambit for a Catskills resort, as Kutshers in Monticello found out in January when the organizers of the indie-fest All Tomorrow's Parties suddenly decamped for New Jersey, taking thousands of concert-goers and their dollars with them.
