Leonard Cohen Regional Allusions Card #1: Victoria, BC – Seagull Visits Leonard’s Hotel

When I asked Coco Éclair if there were any features at the March 6, 2013 Leonard Cohen Victoria concert, she responded that there were no new songs, acrobatics, or such, but there was a bit of stage banter about one of Victoria’s ubiquitous seagulls visiting Cohen’s windowsill, which was, as Ms Éclair parenthetically noted, “one of those ‘specific to the city where he is playing’ jokes.”

Indeed, the Canadian singer-songwriter’s stage presentation often includes a recognizable local reference to a specific location. Some, for example, have been to poets who lived or worked in the area, some to local customs (e.g., locking a padlock on Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne), some to local foods… In Victoria’s case, the allusion was to a bird – one on a windowsill rather than a wire.

It struck me that Mr Cohen’s seagull returning to that hotel in Victoria whenever he’s in town is just as notable as a batch of swallows vacationing every year in Capistrano and, certainly worth commemorating. Thus was born …

The New & Improved Leonard Cohen Local References Trading Card

And #1 in the Leonard Cohen Local References Trading Card series honors that seagull that recurrently visits Leonard Cohen’s hotel whenever he plays Victoria.

Note: The seagull photo used for this card was found on the Webb Sisters” Facebook page. While it does depict a seagull on a windowsill of the hotel at which Leonard Cohen and his troupe resided during their stay in Victoria, there is no evidence this specific bird is Leonard Cohen’s guardian seagull. No animals or Canadian singer-songwriter-icons were harmed in the production of this trading card.

So, buy them, sell them, collect them all, trade them with your friends, play them, put them in the spokes of your bike …

Text on back of card:

March 6, 2013: Leonard Cohen tells the Victoria Concert audience that whenever he comes to Victoria a seagull visits his hotel window. Further, he knows it is the same seagull each time because it is white with some grey. He goes on to say he fed the bird his breakfast – first his toast, then his eggs, then his iPad.

 

From the Cohencentric New & Improved Leonard Cohen Merchandise Emporium

I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted March 10, 2013 at DrHGuy.com.