Coventry Village

Coventry is associated with Northeast Ohio's artistic, musical, bohemian, hippie and emerging hipster communities and is the center of Cleveland's creative class, inviting comparisons to the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York City, although on a smaller scale.

As demand for large houses declined in the coming decades, and Calhoun's realty company became insolvent in the 1910s, unbuilt lots in the portion of Euclid Heights near Coventry Road were sold at foreclosure sales.

As one writer explains, this transition was sudden: "In addition to the problems facing aging communities everywhere...the Jewish community of Cleveland Heights faced two additional problems at the end of the 1960s: the dramatic takeover of a small area of the city by hippies and motorcyclists, and the quickening pace of integration....The counterculture flower children with long hair, health food, music, and, most significantly, drugs virtually took over [Coventry Village] during the second half of the 1960s.

Hippies overflowed the Gothic apartments, cardboard "Store for Rent" signs seemed to be everywhere, and motorcycle groups (if not gangs) dotted the corners in the evening....[P]olice had begun to probe recurrent reports of drug use (marijuana and LSD) among Cleveland Heights High School students."

(citation and footnote forthcoming) Record Revolution, which opened in 1968 and continues to operate, became a destination for rock stars passing through Cleveland, and most of its famous customers autographed the store walls.

Among them were members of Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Bad Company, The Who, Mott the Hoople, Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny, Hall & Oates, Brian Eno, the Psychedelic Furs, Deborah Harry of Blondie, and the Pixies.

When WMMS management added to its playlist a new album or a new artist, particularly one on the cutting edge or left of center, an early indicator of success was sales at Record Revolution.