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The Rochdale Free Klinik, created by Dr. Perry Kendal, was the extension of the Yorkville free Klinik. The first clinics in Canada a youth could go to without the consent of their parent or guardian. The first successful open clinics that respected underage privacy. You did not need your parent’s permission and the prescriptions you were given were your own. You had the right to tell your parents you were pregnant on your own time. Free schools were started and parents were teaching their own children in the building as well as some going to the local public schools. The Rochdale lifestyle was sponsored and promoted by sex & drugs & rock & roll. We loved it. I never got VD. The pot and hash dealers, while creating problems of excess, megalomania & in the worst extreme didn’t give a fuck, they did keep the party going and nobody complained about that. The dealers were a form of cash creation and cash sharing within the community. Along with the black marketeers came the booze cans and all-night card games. Those elements floated around the building and were never in one place for long because the other residents would complain. They usually only closed down for as long as it took to move. Maintenance would follow up and cleanup the mess, at the building’s expense. We would clean and repair the last bar or games room and make it ready for the next tenant. The action would move on to another floor or another wing. You could set up any kind of shop in the building you thought you could make money at. The worst of these small operations was the ice cream stand in the front lobby. Their freezers had a habit of breaking down. The ice cream had a habit of melting in the tubs and running out all over the floor. The bone head that owned the stand refused to clean it up, we wouldn’t touch it and as a result the front lobby was a sticky gooey mess until the health inspector came by and closed it all down. It then took a good week to clean it up. Shortly after, the whole scenario would be repeated. This happened about twice a summer. The spirit of Rochdale was to promote creativity. This creativity was usually unmonitored and the individual was free to pursue his or her manifestation until somebody else’s toes were stepped on. This form of anarchy very quickly eradicated Rochdale’s meager resources. By 1969 all 6 of Rochdale's pianos were torn apart and or stolen. The wood working machinery had vanished as well. Now everybody started to bring in their own materials & tools for their projects. Some of these projects turned into lifelong careers such as paper makers, weavers and potters. Some turned into halfhearted fiascos that maintenance had to dismantle, clean up after and finally throw out. Projects like hydroponics systems that had no controls were left to run by themselves. Sometimes they would be simply abandoned. The system would then leak or it would run over the top and create a large spill. These water spills often ran down the plumbing pipe ways into the apartment below. Causing many more ceiling, wall and floor structural problems. These grew into mechanical and health problems when the water froze in the winter. Once we found a closet full of dirt, I think the tenants were going to grow mushrooms in it. But they couldn’t keep it together long enough to do anything. They lost interest and turned it into a garbage dump & kitty litter box. Then they moved out and left it. Leaving an apartment that was a true biohazardous infectious materials wasteland. But the maintenance crew shouldered on and cleaned it up. Would be (Hey Man! I got to get some bread together) candle makers or leather workers would lose interest in their latest fantasy and leave a room destroyed. Sometimes half burned out or covered in animal litter. We found foul smelling rooms with aquariums full of fish that had been dead for days. Fridges that were broken down and left full of rotting food and bathrooms full of dirty diapers were not uncommon. In some rooms we couldn’t figure out what they had left on the floor but it was often a greasy slimy mess. Maintenance had to clean it up. We were a bit of an experimental testing grounds for Zep cleaning products. Barry Green, our cleaning materials supplier, was the Canadian distributor for this new product line. Abandon leaky waterbeds full of algae would ruin the parquet floors of the apartment it was in as well as the ceiling and walls of the apartment below. I had a hard time keeping a crew on those details. The men would stomp off refusing to do the job and the women would cry. Stoned & lazy people can sure leave a complicated, disgusting mess. Residents would regularly “borrow” materials, tools & equipment from the maintenance department and not return them. Leaving somebody on the crew searching the building for them. The vacuum cleaner would disappear for days. We had to buy another one or we could not have kept up. The Heads of Maintenance, before the receiver, had autonomous control. They made the rules and kept the building functioning as best as their uneducated selves could do. Resident complaints were dealt with on a direct one to one basis. The shit list of things needing done, was huge and in a state of constant growth. As Head of Maintenance after the receiver took over, I was caught between the residents and the receiver. Everybody would blame me for damage done and not cleaned up or repaired immediately. The tenants would try to gross out the “Greenies” (Community Guardian building police installed by the receiver) by partying and running naked in the halls. The Greenies would try to “rat out” so called trouble makers. Once exposed the instigators would then retaliate by making more of a mess somewhere else in the building. The nastiest retaliations were when they started fires in the garbage rooms. I had to deal with one particular garbage fire on Christmas day 1972. Ten years later Dirty Dan, one of our more notorious and outrageous residents, confessed he started it. I never understood the lack of respect the residents gave each other, sometimes they acted like spoiled brats not caring about the results of their actions. Much the same as what is going on in many parts of our society today. After the retaliations both parties would then show up at my office blaming each other. The receiver blamed the tenants for unreasonable conduct and the tenants would complain about the poor service the management gave the residents. When I sided with no-one it was then entirely my fault as far as both sides were concerned. Why wasn’t it cleaned up or repaired immediately & how did I let it happen in the first place. I had no training in this styled “fuck up” behavior. But the perpetrators on both sides did. The Greenies were retired police and many of the instigators on our side were university educated and knew the law as well as the bad guys. Not taking some of these people seriously raised residents’ rights issues. Moving people out of the building became a chess game as the residents formed the Toad Lane tenant’s association. This was the first residential tenant's association in Canada. This group proceeded to stop all evictions on the grounds of the newly formed provincial residency rights. These actions actually started taking ahold in other city public housing buildings. Being between both parties was very difficult to deal with. It created a constant riff between the maintenance department and what we were trying to do as a community. Which was to keep the building society together as a subculture. Maintenance head was a tiring & monotonous position with assassination attempts all around you. Apparently the two people that took over after me could only take it for a couple of months each. Previous Exit Next |