John Sinclair was quite a countercultural figure in the early 70's. He was a political activist in Michigan who got busted for 2 joints and sentanced to 10 years in prison. Out of that grew the Free John Sinclair Movement. At that point in his history John Lennon was getting his feet wet in "radical politics" and took up Sinclair's cause. One of Lennon's few post-Beatles live performances was at a Free John Sinclair Rally in Michigan. He even wrote a song called (of all things) John Sinclair. As I recall the chorus was "they gave him 10 for 2, what else can the bastards do". (You can find the lyrics at
http://tinyurl.com/k58b5 )It wasn't the artistic high point of Lennon's career but what the hell. In April my wife and I were hanging around the Dolphins quite a bit and we noticed an older guy who was incessantly typing on his laptop, loudly telling anyone who would listen that he was a poet and kind of generally being a pain in the ass. Little did I know until reading it here that the disheveled guy at Dolphins was the once quite famous John Sinclair. I heard him say that he lives upstairs. So there you have it, a real live cultural artifact, one with Beatles connections none the less, is in residence at the Dolphins.