Claremont, California is an impressively pleasant, affluent college town replete with tree-lined streets, small stores, boutiques, art galleries, and restaurants. More importantly, for our purposes, it is located just 16 miles from Mt Baldy Zen Center, where Leonard Cohen resided for six years during the late 1990s.  The “nice guy” description of Leonard in the title, for example, comes from Greg Gianakos, the manager of Yiannis, a Greek restaurant Leonard frequented in his trips to Claremont “to relax, run errands or indulge vices.”

That quotation is found in Leonard Cohen: Mt. Baldy monk, Claremont consumer by David Allen (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin: Nov 26, 2016).

From that same article, we also learn about

• Leonard Cohen’s interest in “red potato salad versus the German potato salad”
• His purchase of Prince cassettes
• His typical Yiannis order “the assorted appetizer platter — stuffed grape leaves, feta cheese, olives, spinach and cheese pie and other items” along with ouzo
• His routine apparel, either monk’s robe or “T-shirt and loose-fitting pants”

All this and more can be found at the link.

Credit Due Department: Photo of Claremont, CA taken in 2007 by Kent Kanouse

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 Nov 28, 2016.