Homeless people and drunks on the street usually have something to say to you when your near them and expect you to listen to there wisdom.
One of my favorites was this drunk guy yelling and mumbling: “What the *ucks up with this K2Y man, its the K2Y thats *uckin things up!”
He was complaining to me about the Year 2000 bug.
“Dreams concur”, he mumbled, not necessarily to me, as I walked past him. I’m not sure he used the mot juste.
I have always rated my contribution according to the quality of the rap. My favorite was a three-minute stream of consciousness rap. We were literally the only two people in the entire bloody Chicago Loop (late Saturday afternoon it gets like that). About all I got out of it was how he had just been released from the Ohio Institute for the Criminally Insane. Good enough; he got five bucks in 1974 money.
I may appreciate impromptu art, but I’m not stupid, either.
Wife is a massive fan of the ravings of schizos. There’s a newsletter devoted to them, but I don’t know where to find it. I suppose ten minutes with Google would do it…
0.5 seconds is all it took.
I know it’s mean and everything, but I couldn’t help laughing at what my friend said to a man who asked him for money. The man smelled of booze, and when he asked for five bucks my friend, always tactful, replied:
“Go away ya bum, you’ll just spend it on booze”
The man swore and kicked him in the shins (I love that part).
When I was waiting among a group of people at a crosswalk while I was in Seattle, a grizzled old man wearing sunglasses and a red windbreaker with “Ohio State” printed across the back came up next to me.
The light changed and everyone started to cross the street. This man decided to warn me against ever crossing the steet against the light. He said that he knew this was a bad idea because he was a “lawyer.” He couldn’t “take responsibility for me” if I crossed against the light and got hit. Even though he was a “lawyer,” there was nothing he could do to help me if I got hit.
Street people in Seattle have been memorable. Seattle has a lot more street people than where I’m from so it was unnerving at first to walk down the street surrounded with them. I learned quickly to avoid eye contact, and how to repel them before they had a chance to plea for money.
But one guy was different. Amidst the sullen crowd of people panhandling for some change, this guy was bopping along the sidewalk next to me singing. Not just murmuring to himself to make the walk go by faster, but belting out a tune. He had a paper cup to hold his coins, and he held it like it was his microphone, just screaming this song into it. And he shook it to make the coins rattle, adding instrumental accompaniment. Brother had some soul!
So we get to the corner and he finishes as we’re waiting for the light to change. He says he takes requests. I say I’ll give him a dollar to hear Proud Mary, and he apologizes - says he only sings gospel, but he’ll try.
He made a valiant attempt at the song with all the intensity he could muster. He cut it off halfway through the song and apologized for not knowing the song very well and offers to sing something else, which he proceeds to do. (Years later I find out it was “Ascension”)
Digging through my jacket to find a dollar, I had nothing but a five dollar bill and some change. He got it all.
I saw him again in Seattle two years later going the other way on the other side of the street. Still singing.
Well first of all, I want to make it clear that the reason any “schizos” are on the street is because we elminated the institution system but didn’t come up with anything to replace it. So some increadibly sick people got shoved into the street without any access to food, shelter, or their medication. I’d drink too.
Now that I’m done with my pinko liberal rant, I was in Berkley, which I hold is the warm weather version of my hometown, Burlington. Warmer weather equals more homeless, and as I was walking telegraph, this bedraggled looking guy walked past me and loudly exclaimed “Nice sweater!” My sister said something to the effect of “Well, at least the homeless population approves of your fashion sense.” I still have the sweater, it’s a blue vintage cardigan with this HUGE sparkly broach that I attached. And I just like to think that particular homeless gentleman had stellar taste.
On Halloween night in New York City, two years ago, a young African-American male stopped me at the corner. “Excuse me,” he says, “but I’m wondering if you could spare some change.” Before I could answer, he interrupts “Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Oh no, not another panhandler’, but it’s not like that. See, I have a costume.” Then he held up a cardboard cutout of a white guy in a polo shirt, which had probably been part of a display advertising ice cream or something. Standing behind it, he says “I’m a white panhandler! Waka-waka!!!”
I gave him some money.
Maybe, but remember, this isn’t MY hobby, it’s HERS.* 0.5 seconds was more than I cared to invest.
When I was in downtown Tempe last summer, I was with a group of people and this one homeless guy came up to ask for a quarter. The guy he asked (dress in shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals) kind of ignored him so the homeless guy started screaming “uck you, you rich motherucker, why don’t you just shove that silver spoon a little bit farther up your *ss,” and so on for another 10 seconds. Then he immediately stops and asks another guy for a quarter. I guess that this guy refused to because he started yelling the exact same thing. We could hear hime doing this like 2 more times until we were out of earshot.
Went to NY last December with 3 other friends. (I’m in Scotland, first visit to the city that never sleeps) Walking through Central Park (doing the touristy thing) and this old homeless guy walks past, looks me in the eye and says “If I was you I’d put a gun in my mouth and blow my head off!” Then as he’s passing one of my friends behind me he says “and the same goes for you, you lesbian bitch”! That was the catchphrase for the rest of the holiday (one of anyway) said in a bad american accent 
This happened to a friend of mine. Now, things like this happened often to my friend, he was just a weirdo magnet. He also can’t control his laughter, so you can imagine him running around a corner to crack up after this encounter.
A sleazy looking latino gentleman sidles up to my friend. He sits down next to him on the bus bench, and says to him, “Hey man, did you ever fuck a girl?” (accents on fuck and girl)
My friend, taken aback, says “Uh, yeah…”
“Don’t you hate it when you’re going at it (at this point he makes full-body screwing gestures) and they QUEEF! You’re like ‘smell man, get outta here!!!’”
My friend, trying his best not to look like a tomato about to explode, says “uhhhh, yeah!” and RUNS!
The best is watching my friend telling it with the gestures, and the accent and everything. It’s HILARIOUS!
If they’re shaky and/or honest:“I need a drink”…
they always get whatever I can spare.
(Been there, done that. Not pleasant.)
funnest weirdo story every
I live in West Virginia, so we don’t see many homeless people here, mainly because they they can just move into an old abandoned building an be considered a normal person here. (I have ver little love for this state). Any back to the topic.
I go with my friend Jill down to the bar where she works, it’s like eight o’clock, so where opening the bar up getting everything ready for the night. When this guy about 40 to 50 comes in to the bar. He has a hikers back pack style thing with him. Sets it down by the bar orders a pitcher of natural lite.($4.50) Then proccedes to unloaded two dollar bills and the rest in change from his back pocket.
Me and Jill kinda where like why did he come here? Why didn’t he go to the liquor story next door and get a couple cheap 40oz.? So anyway me and Jill are playing pool before it gets busy, when this guy comes back to watch. He starts giving Jill (very close friend) sexual “complements”. Then I told him to “lay off” and just to shut him up she says “yeah lay off or my boyfriend will kick your ass” The bum backs down and appoligizes.
Ten minutes later he starts yelling at Jill telling her she can’t shoot pool blaaaa…bllaaaa…bblllaaa… I told Jill I’d take care of it and she said no.(she knew what I’d have done) She grabs one of the other bouncers, who I like to think of him as “nice guy”, because of the way he handles situations. So he talked the guy into going to the front of the bar away from everyone else and finish his pitcher and then to leave. Well the guy did do just that, it’s what else he did that was the real hoot. Anyway he is sitting there sipping his beer, and singing along with the jukebox, then he starts singing his own song about the railroad? By this time he was attracting “spectators” after the song he proceded to tell everyone about how he used to work on the railroad, and how he worked along side John Henry. Then he asks this one girl if she would want to meet to other friends of his, the girl didn’t know what to say, but he reach down to his back pack and pulls out to little stuffed animals. (they both had names, full life histories, embarassing stories everything) By this time there is a crowd of about 15 people listening to this guy rant’n’rave, also this is when I get the great idea to buy the guy a shot. A couple other people caught onto what i was trying to do, so we get this guy really trashed, and tell him it’s time to go home. We called the police department and filled them in on the details and the sent a cruiser down to pick him up, so we tell the guy it was time to go home and that we had called him a cab. So he gets picked up and probably locked away and medicated for a long time. I hope he, and his two little friends, get out of the psyho-ward and come back to the bar sometime soon.
Well that wasn’t very nice. Poor guy just wanted a beer.
This isn’t my story but the story of a guy I used to work with.
There is this guy who walks around Vancouver who is sort of infamous and is known as Opera Man because he walks around singing opera at the top of his voice and he is good. I don’t know if he is homeless or maybe he is just some guy who likes to sing opera really load and it bugs his wife. Anyways one day my friend was having a romantic dinner with his girlfriend when he hears Opera Man coming down the alley singing away as always. He goes over to the window and offers Opera Man a bottle of wine if he will stand under thier window and sing for a while. He agrees and my friend and his girlfriend enjoyed half an hour of opera while making love.
A little background here is necessary.
It is 1988, I was 14, with a baby face taking the bus from Pearl City to Ala Moana (that’s in Honolulu which has a surprisingly large number of homeless thanks the perfect weather) I’m sitting in the front of the bus and this old, grizzly stinking guy sits down next to me and says something like “Hey Ted!” <not Ted but can’t recall what it really was> and proceeds to launch into this huge conversation with me thinking I was this Ted guy he knew. So rather then try to anger him I just play along. Hi how’s it going stuff like that. We talk about Vietnam and how bad it was. How much it sucks that his government check is late and he can’t buy his alcohol. How great Jack Daniels is. We must have had a 15 minute conversation chatting about these things before we get to the mall and part our ways. And not once did he figure out that I wasnt’t Ted, had no idea who Ted was, never fought in Vietnam, heck I was born after the whole shebang. But it sure passed the time.
–I have another one too–
My friend Justin lives in columbus and goes to CCAD (Columbus College of Art and Design) Anyway there is this homeless guy/drunk who rides a tricycle up and down high street he has a really funny name can’t remember–sorry So anyway my friend Justin has this show on the public broadcast system for class, who else does he get but this guy to come on the show. The episode was on why you shouldn’t become an alcholic, they offered this guy some money for more booze, if he’d come on the show “drunk” and tell people of his life story. (kinda like a whole howard stern “let’s pick on the nobody person” kinda show) It was hilarius he is going to bring me a copy of the show and I’ll put it online so you guys can see it. I’m not going to tell you what happenned on the show it’ll ruin it you’ll just have to wait, but know I laughed for an hour afterwards when i visited him and saw this tape.
A friend of mine and I were walking around his neighborhood, and we went behind a Food Lion. There, we found an awesome hobo, a Vietnam veteran at that. he was smoking weed, and he asked us if we wanted any. No, we replied. Then, he proceeded to talk about how strong he was, and he made my friend squeeze his muscle. Then, after my friend did that, he made him poke his belly button. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen.