In Memphis for the last 50 or so years it was Prince Mongo. He died today.
He ran for mayor in every election in the 80s and 90s. I remember that my boyfriend’s mother actually voted for him once in protest, which I thought was great. He owned two nightclubs over the years. There was one in an old castle-like mansion that was cool and one that was Zambodian-themed which I wasn’t impressed with. He owned a house in Central Gardens, one of the oldest high-end parts of the city. The art in his yard was sort of a city attraction. RIP Prince. You were definitely a character.
Toronto has (or had) “Zanta”, the shirtless guy in a Santa hat who does pushups all over the city. He got in trouble for harassing people, unfortunately.
San Francisco had Emperor Norton in the late 19th Century.
Norton proclaimed himself “Emperor of these United States” in September 1859, a role he played for the rest of his life. Norton had no formal political power but was treated deferentially in San Francisco and elsewhere in California, and currency issued in his name was honored in some of the establishments he frequented. Some considered Norton to be insane or eccentric, but residents of San Francisco and the city’s larger Northern California orbit enjoyed his imperial presence and took note of his frequent newspaper proclamations. Norton received free ferry and train passage and a variety of favors, such as help with rent and free meals, from well-placed friends and sympathizers. Some of the city’s merchants capitalized on his notoriety by selling souvenirs bearing his image. He died January 8, 1880.
Chicago (at least downtown Chicago) had the Walking Man (a.k.a. Walking Dude, Walking Guy, Walking Yanni), a man with a distinctive hairstyle, mustache, and attire who was a downtown fixture, and who could be seen walked around the city every day.
I worked at ad agencies in the Loop at the time, and everyone at the agencies knew about Walking Man, to the point that a few of my colleagues created a Walking Man fan page on Facebook. He kept very much to himself, and little was known about him for many years. He was apparently very surprised when he learned he was so well-known.
He was apparently a street peddler at one point, and became homeless. He was attacked on the street twice (once in 2016, a second time in 2022). After the first attack, which left him badly injured, he was the beneficiary of a big crowdfunding effort to help pay his medical bills.
In the second attack, he was lit on fire and badly burned while he slept by a person who claimed he did it because he (the arsonist) was “angry;” the Walking Man died from his injuries a few months later.
My old town, in rural Illinois, had a 70-ish man who would “jog” all over town, wearing a very distinctive shirt, and you never knew when or where he would show up. We all knew he was completely harmless, and I never to my knowledge saw him doing anything else. I left that town in 2011, and have no idea if he’s even still alive. Someone I knew, knew his name and where he lived, and said he was actually related to some of the movers and shakers in town, and was fairly successful in business in his younger years.
The city where I worked before that, unfortunately, had a self-appointed “character” who used our pharmacy, and people just wanted to get away from him as fast as possible. I don’t know how he found a woman to marry him, but he somehow did.
For a short time, my local newspaper had a writer who did stories about assorted “characters”, and I have a feeling that he got a lot of negative feedback, because none of them were people who had any kind of life that should be emulated.
I lived in Costa Mesa for a few years, where we laid claim to Sid Soffer. There used to be a Wikipedia page on him, but now he’s just a mention on the page for Cafe Frankenstein, where he was once the manager.
Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Toronto also had the “Blessing Lady.” Dressed in flowing white robes, she would stand on the Don Mills Road bridge over the 401, with arms outstretched, “blessing” the westbound traffic.
As I recall, she made the local TV news once or twice. I don’t know what happened to her.
I just remembered another one, from the late 1990s.
He was a man who lived as a woman, and wanted to be called Jennifer. The issue was that he was constantly suing businesses because he insisted on using the women’s restroom. I first heard of him because he attended my old Episcopal church a few times, at the 8am service, with his chihuahua. My pastor had heard that he was intersex; I have no idea if any of that is true.
He dressed as a woman, which included wearing a bra with nothing in it, but he certainly didn’t look like a woman.
Another Chicago character, Ronnie “Woo Woo” Wickers. He’s mostly known for being a Cubs fan, and, in particular, his…unique…style of cheering for the Cubs, interspersing each word of the cheer with “woo!” (e.g., “Cubs, woo! Win, woo! Cubs, woo!”)
He became well-known in the '80s, and still gets regularly featured on television and radio; Wickers attends most home games, and whenever there’s an important game, reporters seek him out for a sound bite, for whatever reason (probably for “local color”). He does personal appearances, and served as a spokesperson on some TV ads.
Cubs fans seem to see him as a beloved mascot, but to me, he’s a guy whose 10 minutes of fame should have been up decades ago.
And more recently San Francisco had the “Bucket Man”, Larry Hunt, a fixture on Market Street for decades playing his homemade drum set. Hunt passed away a few years ago.
In Milwaukee, we have the Milveraine (Milwaukee + Wolverine). He walks, he’s always walking. According to him, he walks about 40 miles a day. After a few years of being spotted walking all over town, to the point that there were regular “I saw him” type posts on facebook, a few journalists managed to talk to him. Turns out, he’s more or less a normal guy, he just walks, a lot. Plus he’s almost always shirtless and walks fast with a very distinctive gait that makes him easy to spot.
Although St. Andrews, Scotland is not my town (my grandson is a student there), Hamish McHamish was so well known that after he died they erected a statue to him. He spent his days wandering around town, getting fed and generally loved and cared for by the townspeople. Hamish McHamish was a cat: town cat of st andrews
