i first came across reitman's story when i stumbled across "sister of the road: the autobiography of boxcar bertha." the book is fantastic and i couldnt put it down. at the end there was this afterward that talked about the doctor that wrote it and the guy seemed so totally crazy and unbelievable that i was drawn to find out more. that led me to a couple other books and eventually to the ben reitman papers at the university at illinois, the newberry library and the interviewees in the video.

i had been doing all this research when i got a call from filmmaker bill daniel, who said he wanted me to show something before his "bozo texino" flick. so i put something together, a preview of sorts, but it wasnt intended as a finished piece. i hope to make this into a feature someday; there's a lot of material to cover.

for more info about reitman check out "the damndest radical" by roger bruns, "no regrets" by mecca carpenter or this piece i wrote for street roots.

streetnewsservice.org/index.php?page=archive_detail&articleID=819

xoxoxo

man, that was a good video!

dood this was really good, you totally should make a feature legnth, this looked like something that could be on the history channel

Wow, I didn't know the old Reliance Building had any association with America's anarchist history. It is amusing that it is now a bougey hotel.

The base of the hotel is darker because it was built 4 years before the rest of it. The architect died (J. Well Born Root) mid-project and the architect that took it over (Charles Atwood) went in an entirely different, kind of modern gothic, direction. I've always thought that was kind of cool.

Anyway, thanks for making this video. Stories of forward-thinking progressives like Reitman tend to get drowned out by all the patriotic and political hoo-haw we general study in history books.

Good Work