Describe your local weirdos.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I mean no offence by posting this thread. I mean no harm or disrespect to the people who it refers to. I am sure that what makes them who they are might be very personal and significant in their own lives.

Most towns have their local weird person or people whom everyone seems to know about (because they stick in your memory). Often they are homeless people, but sometimes they are not.

My example: There’s this guy. He looks like he’s in his late twenties or early thirties. I’m pretty sure he’s not homeless because he wears clean clothes and has an mp3 player.

His weirdness is that he hangs around the town, in those small shelters you get in the entrance to many shops, with headphones in, and the dirtiest creepiest look on his face - as if he’s horny and he’s looking at a very dirty picture.

Partly his expression is also one of satisfaction. Of a man who’s evil plan is working.

He has an evil/sinister look on his face. All he seems to do is hang around in town (obviously not there for shoping or passing through) listen to music, and look evil/horny.
I am fascinated because I would love to know what his daily life entails, who is he, how is he employed, and what could he possibly be thinking to have that expression on his face.

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There’s one we call the Weatherman. I don’t think he’s all there mentally, but he’s very friendly and loves to talk about the weather. How it was yesterday, what it’s like today, how it’s going to be tomorrow. He lives down the street a block over and walks to the 7-11 on my corner a lot; if he sees anyone walking by he’ll yell at them and talk about the weather. At least he’s friendly about it, though.
The other one is Walking Lady. I think she sprouted up when I was in Japan. You see her all over the city just walking very robot-like. We always see her and say “There goes Walking Lady!” According to an older neighbor she used to be pretty heavy until she started walking around so she must have done it for the exercise (because it sure ain’t for the scenery!) but I swear I’ve never seen her around until this year and now it’s like we can’t go a day without seeing her walking. She’s very fit now, my sister and I joke that my dad should ask her out on a date :D. I do wonder if she has a job since I’ve seen her walking at all times of the day. I’d like to know more about her, but the robot-ness kind of scares me. I don’t think she’s a threat or anything, though. Just…interesting, intriguing.

3

I don’t know if they are weird but different. There is an older guy I think about 60ish in Pacific Beach/ Mission Beach that rollerblades a long the boardwalk all day long. Back and forth every single day. How do I know this? Becuase I used to live off the boardwalk and everyday around 10 or so he’d go by rinse repeat till the evening. You can hear him because along with the headphones he is wearing speakers as well. He blades to classical music. He doesn’t stop either (well maybe to pee) and is really good and he points at you to acknowledge the locals I guess. My husband saw him in the store down by the other side of MB one day and he didn’t talk then to make his purchase either or take off his head phones. We often wonder how he affords to rollerblade every single day all day long.

Also this man, the catman apparently lived on Whidbey Island when I did. He was spotted about town. He apparently lives in Freeland and visits the grocery store there where I used to go grocery shopping. I haven’t seen him though but I have friends who have when I lived there.

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ETA : It’s this guy I’m referring to in the blue. He wears that shirt every day too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et0NjQ38xK8&feature=related

5

We have the can-man. Since my teens (I’m 27), he has been the homeless man that collects cans. Everybody around knows of this guy.

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Vancouver has Scotty.

Scotty is known to just about anyone who uses public transit or drinks coffee in East Vancouver.

Scotty will begin earnest conversations with anyone about the Vancouver Canucks. He is a True Fan and is undeterred by subtle verbal cues like “I don’t follow or understand the game of hockey, and I try to avoid conversations about it wherever possible.” He will still sit down beside you and solicit your opinion on the minutae of whatever happens to be happening with the franchise.

He is skinny as a rail and has a manic “off” energy about him.

I’ve seen Scotty all over public transit, and I have never frequented a coffee shop with any regularity without having Scotty turn up there at least once.

Scotty is a mooch, but he does not ask for money or suggest that you buy him anything. Scotty will just blithely ask, “Can I have a sip of your beer?” “Can I finish your coffee?” “Are those fries good? Can I have one?”

At first I thought that all the sports talk was just his way of finding an opening to mooch, and that his familiar requests were just a passive way of looking for a more substantial handout. After a while, though, I realized that’s just the way he is. His patter is exactly the same on public transit, except there’s nothing to share there, so he never asks for anything.

I find Scotty to be a pretty sympathetic character and don’t mind to buy him the occasional beer or cup of coffee - and he doesn’t seem offended when I tell him that I just want a quiet place to read the paper. I do wonder how he gets by and if he has any family.

There is also crazy car-lot lady. She is obsessed with cars and hangs out at various car dealerships. (And public transit.) She is often carrying promotional material for automobiles. (I have no idea how she gets the salesmen to part with them, as it’s pretty clear that she is in no position to purchase or operate a motor vehicle.) She is a tiny, greasy-haired woman that usually wears a puffy overcoat, even in the summer time.

Like Scotty, she is not shy about approaching strangers to talk about her obsession. She also pre-warns fellow transit users about things she will not tolerate. If you’re listening to an .mp3 player, she will tap your shoulder and ask you not to listen to it at a volume that she can hear. To be clear, I don’t mean that if she can hear your earbuds she will ask you to turn it down - if she see’s that you’ve got them, she’ll ask you not to turn it up so loud that she can hear them. She’ll also ask the people behind her not to touch the back of her seat - just in case they were maybe thinking about touching her seat.

In car lots, she often stands between the cars and shouts gleefully about their features. Hands in the air, screaming to heaven: “Factory-installed satellite radio!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

To me, she is not so sympathetic as Scotty. Pitiful, but annoying as hell. I try to avoid the crazy car-lot lady wherever possible.

There used to be the “Repent, sinner!” guy.

He used to hang out in East Van libraries, and was recognizable by his crude facial tattoos of cryptic symbols, and a fluorescent orange safety jacket with white paint which spelled out “REPENT SINNER.” He was responsible for a lot of graffiti that the same thing: “Repent, sinner!”

Eventually, he stopped with the graffiti and switched to distributing fluorescent cards marked with a jiffy-marker. They were all obsessively identical: Block printing on one side said “REPENT,” while the other side said (in cursive script,) “Sinner!” Literally thousands of these were strewn around Vancouver. If you walked for any length of time, you’d find a couple on each block - especially in East Van’s industrial areas. He kept this up for years.

The “Repent, sinner!” guy immolated himself just outside the Mount Pleasant public library. His graffiti and proslytizing litter lasted for years afterwards. I get a bit verklempt when I think of what happened to him. He was a damned nuisance and frankly quite scary, but it’s a bit of a downer when one of your fellow citizens immolates themselves. Feck.

7

When I was in college in Chicago, I was personally headbutted by Wesley Willis. RIP.

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I have the honor of coming from the hometown (Charleston, WV) of two once-famous weirdos.

One was Lightnin’. He was a familiar downtown sight for all of us – an old black guy who was often seen standing in the middle of busy intersections directing traffic. I, like many kids my age, was stunned when someone pointed out that he had been featured in “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” as a math savant who could accurately and instantly total huge strings of numbers in his head.

The other was Aqualung , who was by all accounts Nick Nolte’s model for the character he played in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” (Nolte was briefly married to a high school classmate of mine, Becky Linger, which supposedly explains why he would have known about a homeless Charlestonian.)

One of the weirdos where I live now is The Proud Gay Guy. In the heat of summer, I see him walking to the grocery store, shirtless, wearing very skimpy gym shorts, and carrying an umbrella as a parasol. He is slender, his walk is measured and stately, and his demeanor is imperious. (OK, I don’t know that he’s gay. But he triggers my gaydar.)

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Our most famous one was Mr Butch.

In my old neighborhood, we had Naked Laundry Man. He was a homeless (I presume) man who would come to the laundromat and strip down, covering himself with a newspaper while he washed all his clothes.

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Back home we had Anorexic Lady. She was super thin, thus the name, and could be seen jogging in town at any time of day, even in 100+ degree summers. She also tended to look like she fell out of 1980’s jazzercise video. No one knew anything else about her, but everyone knew of her. I don’t know if she’s still there since I moved a few years ago.

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I’m afraid I’m the local weirdo around here. The locals probably have an unflattering nickname for me, but I haven’t found it out yet.

Where I grew up, we had a character called “Birdman” whom I remember walking around town in a filthy trenchcoat, pockets sagging from the cans of malt liquor he had stashed in there. He had Unabomber-mugshot hair and walked around shouting and flapping his arms (hence the name). I worked in a night school, and he wandered in there to warm up one winter night and caused a big commotion because one of the students reported that he was in the bathroom stall with a Colt 45 (not bothering to explain that it was not a gun), and soon the poor guy was staring down the barrels of several police guns from his seat on the pot. From that point, we all called him Colt 45.

I worked at the United Way building in downtown Minneapolis for a while, and once in a while Jesus and Mary would be in the 2nd stall in the ladies room carrying on a conversation in two different voices–but there was only one woman in the stall. I think everybody was too creeped out by that to give her a nickname.

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Pippi Longstocking, the disturbing male version.

In the store I used to work in, we had an occasional patron, in the form of a cross-dressing man who had arguably questionable fashion sense.

Picture, if you will:

Big guy; not fat, just BIG. Bulky. Solid.

With flaming red hair. In ponytails. Sticking out sideways.

Wearing (I’m not kidding) a baby blue skirt, military boots, and a pastel top.

Hairy legs exposed. Acting inconspicuous.

Yep. Welcome to Burlington…

:smiley:

13

We got Ronnie Woo-Woo.

The guy pops up just about everywhere (and I mean everywhere) and is always wearing his complete Cubs Home pinstripes, with pants and stirrups even. Somehow he gets tickets to just about every major Chicago sporting event, we saw him in Pasadena for the Illini in the Rose Bowl and the when the Bears were in the Super Bowl in Miami. The guy is an institution.

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He’s interested in birds, spiders and other things that make people smile or frown upon.
He wades in muddy ponds, wearing plastic sandals, searching for gooey water plants.
He grows all kinds of bizarre plants that don’t even flower.
He doesn’t wears jeans. He never wears black. He is never in fashion except when fashion catches up with him.
He spends hours on Internet, Google Scholar, Scirus and SDMB.

Boy, is he ever weird. He even calls himself by this weird name “Gymnopithys”. :slight_smile:

15

Austin has Leslie. He tends to alarm tourists, but is really very sweet.

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Me.

I say it in all modesty. :o

:smiley:

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Well on this message board I visit there was once a guy who started a thread alerting the moderation staff that he would be unable to receive emails for a number of hours. Weirdo that one.

And SF, what the heck are you doing here? Go back to your real message board.

lorene, how can you leave out our contemporary version of crazy homeless celeb, Spare Change Guy ? I’ve seen him on a number of occasions. This video is not misleading, he literally walks around the entire city of Boston (though recently spotted in Framingham) repeating the phrase “Can you spaaaare some chaaaaaaaange?”.
If you’d like a local taste, well Somerville has Michael. I love Michael. He is a man who roams a certain neighborhood of Somerville confronting random strangers with his speech. He has a tremendous speech impediment and is probably somewhat mentally retarded. The first time I met him I was terrified. Sitting in a laundry mat, new to the area, he burst into the place, makes a B-line to me and starts shouting "I REFUSE TO DIE, I REFUSE TO GET COLD, I REFUSE TO PRAY, I REFUSE TO GO TO HELL…) etc… He has a whole speech which he will chase people down to say. I left my head down and hoped he wouldn’t kill me.

After repeated meetings I got used to him. He needed to say his 2 minute speech (spitting all over you) then would walk away peacefully after a hand shake and a “peace”. I rather like him now, and will have long conversations. I’ve bought him cigarettes and he once showed me a tremendous act of kindness when I was in a crisis. He still needs to scare strangers and recite his speech, but if you asked me I would tell you that Michael is my friend.

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We’ve got one of those. It’s actually quite sad, really- she’s so thin, she’s pretty much skin and bones. I think she exercises more than can possibly be healthy, and possibly is anorexic, too.

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I forgot one: The Never-Cross-Your-Legs! Zealot.

He’s another transit lulu.

If he sees anyone with their legs crossed, he runs up to them and begins shouting about how you should never cross your legs!" “Three hundred children die every year from crossing their legs! Deep Vein Thrombosis! When I was six years old the doctors said I would never walk again! Put your feet on the floor if you want to live!”

At first I thought he was a pervert because I’d seen him run his number on a couple of skirted women, but he will give men the same speech. Once, another fellow and I had to get between him and one of the women he was “saving,” because she was clearly terrified and he would. not. stop. He cannot be convinced that the risk from crossed legs is not high enough to warrant brow-beating strangers on the topic at the top of your voice.

He is a regular nuisance downtown and on the west side, particlarly on the Denman and Robson buses and the cafés there.

Try telling him someone with his medical history really is at an increased risk of stroke and should therefore Calm the Fuck Down. Impenetrable.

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You’re all here. You know each other as well as I know you. :stuck_out_tongue: