Gypsy Jan
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4275
Registered: 1-27-2004
Member Is Offline
Mood: Depends on which way the wind is blowing
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Remembering Mark Cohen, The Divine Gypsy
He was a friend and an outcast who lived his life his own way.
He graduated from Swarthmore with a degree in Engineering and taught classes...then he went to San Francisco for graduate studies and fell into the
counter culture and never left.
When we knew him, he was a large, bluff man with a big laugh. He had a beard that reached down to his navel. He rode his rice rocket with his cat on
his shoulder and was always dressed in tie dye T-shirts, saggy board shorts and flip-flops.
He wrote a society and advice column for a biker magazine based in Orange County, CA. He was never a member of any gang, but because he had a legal
background from attending classes at the UC, the local biker gangs, Hell's Angels and Mongols, sought him out for advice and he also negotiated peace
agreements when needed.
His family had long ago disowned him, but his sister, a heavyweight DA in Arizona, always welcomed him into her house on the holidays with the proviso
that he wouldn't drop in unannounced when she might be entertaining people she needed to impress.
That same sister later disclosed to me that he told stories around the table about visiting us in Baja and announced, "When (not if) I am
reincarnated, I want to come back as one of their dogs!"
The last time he visited it was during the Hell's Angels Toy Ride for the children in Tijuana and we took him to Puerto Nuevo #1 restaurant in Puerto
Nuevo for a lobster feast.
When we entered, the very full and busy restaurant quieted down for a brief second and then someone yelled, "There he is!" and a great many of the
customers rose to their feet and saluted him with upraised hand displaying only one middle finger.
His funeral was conducted in a church in a part of Riverside near Chino. Over six hundred people attended and the local police mobilized everyone
they could haul in so to have a visible presence at all the intersections near the event.
[Edited on 12-8-2013 by Gypsy Jan]
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64755
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
Member Is Offline
Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Sorry for your loss...
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vgabndo
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3461
Registered: 12-8-2003
Location: Mt. Shasta, CA
Member Is Offline
Mood: Checking-off my bucket list.
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Jan, what a beautiful tribute. Thanks for helping me remember that our culture is woven of many different threads; some salute differently than
others. He earned the respect of his peers. I'd be happy with that. I hope he was. RIP until you come barking back into this dimension Mark.
Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. Sam Harris
"The situation is far too dire for pessimism."
Bill Kauth
Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
PEACE, LOVE AND FISH TACOS
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