Eighteen Floors of Hippie !
This building on a Toronto main street opened in 1968 as Rochdale College, a co-op student residence cum educational facility. Its relaxed polity soon became anarchic and the building became maybe the world’s only high rise hippie haven. I remember visiting a friend, the general atmosphere was…well…funky. The joke was that the Jesus freaks lived on one floor, the speed freaks on another, the bikers on another, and the dealers on the top (to have more time if there was a police raid). Eventually it became more and more a drug distribution centre for a biker gang and finally in 1975 the last person was ejected and the doors welded shut. It’s now an old folks home.
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