Ornette

In 1969, I was working and living with the WIMP collective.    Briefly put, WIMP was a printing collective that "inherited" the SDS printing shop/office in the basement of a building onSpring Street in SOHO district of Manhattan.  Tangential to the main story, it happened that Ornette Coleman (avant garde saxophone player) lived in one of the upstairs lofts.   It was pretty wild....we'd be printing day and night to the mad clatter of the printing presses, and could here him working out on his horn upstairs.   This was during a period when he was not playing out, and just working on his music.   We got to know him and I visited several times in his loft and played pool with him.   The story kind of goes down hill.  At one point he was behind on his rent and we as members of the coop ownership supported keeping him on till he could pay.   At a later date there were a few bomb threats against us in the building because of our activities.   We didn't think they were very serious.   He voted to throw us out.   We did stay till we decided to close down on our own a year or so later.