By Skip

There’s a funny scene in “Here Come the Videofreex” that documents the search for our upstate Media Center in Lanesville/Lanesville TV pirate TV station/home, Maple Tree Farm. Each of the Freex had personal and group reasons for wanting to move out of NYC that included:

• it was getting too busy in Prince St studio to get any work done
• it was a route to join the back-to-nature movement, which was gathering momentum in the counter-culture
• it was cheaper to all live together than in the multiple Manhattan apartments we were paying for individually plus the Prince Street loft
• it was getting crowded in our NYC apartments especially Carol’s, which Nancy, Parry, me, Ellen Sherman and a few cats also shared.
• there was a grant opportunity to have a better chance and to receive more funding from NYSCA by residing and working in an under-funded county
• we started looking close to NYC, like Nyack, and looked further away to find the right place at the right price for living and working space, a garden, and country lifestyle for our growing group.

ergo… we finally found Sam & Miriam Ginsberg’s Maple Tree Farm, former rooming house in Lanesville, a small village in the town of Hunter, in a narrow valley in the midst of the Catskill Mountains