FREE THE WEED 96
A Column by John
Sinclair
I might as well start
with the bad news: My attempt at establishing a smoker-friendly coffeeshop in
Detroit, which looked so hopeful just two months ago, came to an unfortunate
and untimely end when we were asked to leave the site of the John Sinclair Café
in a place called the Psychedelic Healing Shack at 18700 Woodward Avenue at the
end of February.
Adam Brook and I
opened the John Sinclair Café on New Year's Day and tried hard to implement our
ideas as enumerated in last month's column, but instead of the cooperation and
support we'd been promised by the Shack's proprietor, a character called Dr.
Bob, assistance was consistently withheld and repeated promises of improvements
were never to be forthcoming.
Other than the
consistent lack of respect and consideration we encountered, the worst
disappointment was Dr. Bob's failure to provide a coffee machine to produce
espressos, lattes and cappuccinos as required for the operation of a coffeeshop.
To this day there is no coffee machine and thus no coffee shop, so our mission
didn't get its first foot off the ground.
As a proposed
coffeeshop, it was impossible to operate without being able to make and serve
coffee. With no product, it was impossible to hire baristas and waitpersons to
serve the patrons, so we had no staff of our own and weren't able to rely on
the inexperienced and often addled volunteer personnel recruited by Dr. Bob.
I hate
to sound like a broken record, but this is a problem we couldn't overcome.
Having announced the opening of our coffeeshop, we really couldn't really
promote the Café any further without being able to deliver on what we had
advertised.
Day
after day for the month of January Dr. Bob and his chief factotum, a troubled
cat named Jeff Chenowitz, promised over and over again that the requisite coffee
machine was being (a) ordered, (b) repaired, or (c) traded for, and finally
they had the coffee machine company confirm for us that the new machine would
be installed in the Shack on January 27th.
I had
planned to institute a nightly music program beginning with the opening of the
Café and had lined up Jeff Grand on Tuesdays, Tino Gross on Wednesdays, Billy
Davis on Thursdays, RasKente on Fridays, special events on Saturdays, and a
poetry assemblage led by M.L. Liebler on Sunday afternoons, plus the weekly
broadcast of my Radio Free Amsterdam program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, now in its 15th year, live in the
Café on Monday nights.
Without
anything to serve the public and no one to serve it, it seemed insane to start
the music without yet being a coffeeshop, so I canceled each night's
performance until the end of January. When the imminent arrival of he new
coffee machine was announced, I scheduled the music to start on January 29th
and hoped for the best.
Within
a couple of days, however, Dr. Bob and his sidekick confessed that there would
be no machine because they couldn't afford to purchase one.
Then the most
incredible thing happened: Dr. Bob began shaking us down for money. It turned
out that he thought I was rich and famous and could be bamboozled into bailing
him out of his financial difficulties with the Psychedelic Healing Shack.
The Shack is
actually a fine old house located at the corner of Woodward Avenue and
Goldengate Streetthat's been under Dr. Bob's ownership since early in the 21st
century. He has his chiropractic and therapeutic massage office in the front,
two large open rooms in between, and a vegan kitchen and dining area in the
rear, capped by a built-on, enclosed back porch area that opens onto Goldengate
Street.
The open rooms in
the middle were until recently occupied by a herbal, root, and crystal counter
operated by Dr. Bob's now estranged wife, who took the installation with her
when she moved out. The open space evidently prompted Dr. Bob and Jeff to
contemplate my idea of opening a smoker-friendly coffeeshop that I had proposed
to them a couple of years ago, and while I was in the rehabilitation facility
in November recovering from a serious fall at my apartment on Peterboro
Street just north of downtown Detroit, they invited me to open my Café in their place
on New Year's Eve.
Now, anyone who
knows anything about me knows that I am not and have never been a rich man. I
am an impoverished poet and writer who survives on my SSI allowance, my monthly
writing fee from this magazine, and whatever little money I can make from
occasional poetry performances and public appearances centered on marijuana
legalization. I have amassed a certain amount of notoriety through my many
years of achievement in the arts and other fields and by means of my battle to
overturn the Michigan marijuana laws from my prison cell during 1969-1971.
I'm perhaps best
known as the subject of a song by John Lennon and as the beneficiary of his
appearance in my behalf at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Chrysler Arena in
Ann Arbor on December 10, 1971.I got out of prison three days later as a
result, but I have never received any cash or royalties as a result of the
song. I was the manager of the MC-5and secured them major recoding contracts
with Elektra and then Atlantic Records, but they fired me in June 1969 and I've
never received any payments or royalties from their record sales.
As a poet and
writer I'm lucky to get my little books and musical albums published by my
friends and fans and fortunate to receive a few hundred dollars now and then
from my efforts. In fact, anyone who knows me knows I'm not in it for the money
and that I've been following a fairly selfless bardic path since my golden
experiences with peyote and LSD in the mid-1960s that shaped my life ever after
and unto the present day.
The idea that I
could channel money into Dr. Bob's operation is simply ridiculous. I don't have
any money and I don't know where to get any. In fact, I don't even want any,
and I'm in the process of giving away all my intellectual rights and properties
to a non-profit entity based in Amsterdam called The John Sinclair Foundation.
My agreement with
the so-called Psychedelic Healing Shack was to attempt to attract customers for
Dr. Bob's operations by installing a classic old-school coffeeshop on his
premises, pay the musicians from the door receipts, pay the servers from their
sales revenues, and direct excess monies to Dr. Bob. Adam Brook and I are
serving the John Sinclair Foundation in a voluntary capacity and had no
intention of taking money out for ourselves.
This might sound
crazy to you, but this is the way I am and always have been. I thought people
in metropolitan Detroit deserved to have a place rich in art, music and poetry rooted
in the Detroit Artists Workshop and the genuine Trans-Love Energies of yore where
they could relax, have an espresso, maybe smoke a joint and enjoy themselves in
the company of other like-minded individuals, artists, musicians, and fellow
intellectuals.
I should mention
that I am still recovering from physical injuries suffered last October. I came
to the Shack in a wheelchair every day during January and have since graduated
to a walker. I left my apartment and moved my bed into Dr. Bob's nearby garage,
where I've been sleeping the last two months so I could get up and spend each day
in residence at the Café.
That was my
commitment, and to make a long story short, I did my job but it came to naught
and my time at the Shack is up. I'm moving out and closing up the John Sinclair
Café for now, but Adam and I and our associates Matty Lee and Mike Boulanare hoping
it might open again in a different location during my ever-shrinking lifetime.
I'm sorry to go on
so long about this fiasco, but so many people were pulling for our success that
I wanted to explain what happened to my attempt to realize my dream, and of
course it feels better to get it off my mind.
My publisher
wanted me to tell you about the lawsuit I'm spearheading to get marijuana
removed from the Board of Pharmacy's controlled substances list, where it sits
with heroin and other Schedule I drugs even though legalized in Michigan last
November by popular vote, but I'll have to do that next month because I'm out of
space for March. See you at the Hash Bash Cup next month! Free The Weed!
—Detroit
February 22-23, 2019
(c) 2019 John Sinclair. All Rights
Reserved.
