This is a Lemmy post of a screenshot of a Reddit post of a screenshot of a Reddit post of a screenshot of a Twitter tweet.
Truly an instance of xkcd's Digital Data comic. https://xkcd.com/1683/
This one is sad because she was obviously mentally ill and not getting the help she needed, but it's the best example I have of the city I grew up in.
We had "Toonie Lady." She would roam around downtown begging for a Toonie and would get very upset if you gave her anything else, even if it was more.
For the non-Canadians, a Toonie is a $2 coin.
We had one woman like this everyone called "dime bag Debbie" because she always asked for "ten dollars for chicken"
Not happy (but still accepting) if you gave her anything other than $10, and a few people I knew apparently tried to buy her raw and cooked chicken, as well as chicken sandwiches from various restaurants and that was also unhappily accepted.
I think the $10 thing is a coincidence, and people call her "dimebag" because they assume she does drugs. No idea if she does or not though.
This is amusing to me because we have the "20ct guy" in my city who always claims he only needs 20ct and as soon as he sees any more money he'll steal it from you.
There is a man that wears chainmail armor made out of soda can pop tabs that is famous in both Tucson and Phoenix areas of Arizona. His name is Chicago, and you can catch him on the bus or at random punk and metal shows around AZ, if you are lucky.
F-ing A! Props to him, it's a very unique look and most people can't seem to work up the courage to do more than follow trends.
My hometown's got the yellow man. Some random dude who's wearing nothing but yellow clothes, riding a yellow bicycle around the place. I wonder what his favourite colour might be...
Brooklyn has artist Elizabeth Sweetheart, the Green Lady. I met her in the subway once and told her I'd seen her interview on Youtube, and it brought me joy to know of someone just loving a color so much and expressing it so fantastically. She gave me a hug :) Genuinely lovely human!
That's very wholesome. Thank you for sharing.
Is it red?
We have a yellow lady in Montréal.
Nymphia Wind was just practicing.
Kitten Guy.
Dude was a little strange, but otherwise a good person. He just kept taking in strays, and if he had kittens in need, they went everywhere with him. Most of them ended up at new homes, but he had a few who stuck around. Wasn't unusual for him to be feeding two or three kittens and have two more sitting on his shoulders.
It was an extremely small town, so he stuck out like a sore thumb. They went everywhere with him. Never caused any trouble.
That's awesome, sounds like a cool dude!
A bit strange... but yeah, if he isn't doing any harm 🤷.
Aww... I'm glad there are people like him, those kittens were probably doomed otherwise unless there was a local animal shelter and even then finding homes for animals tends to be difficult.
I lived in a small town and there was a guy who'd ride his bike everywhere, with big metal panniers usually filled with soda cans. He'd be out in all weather, with high-visibility gear on, and would travel all miles outside of town with hundreds of cans piled on his bike.
When I asked people about him, they said he had a learning disability and lived with his mom, and would sell the soda cans for a little spending cash. Everybody loved him, especially the town government who paid him a stipend to clean up the town and let him keep anything he found. Since I helped at the local farmer's market I met him quite a few times and he was always cheerful and friendly.
And people in high places would say he's "useless" far too often. Oh well.
Glad the municipality at least recognized his efforts, I just mean that in general that doesn't happen. Really shows that town had better priorities than most.
I hope the guy is still doing okay?
AFAIK he's still doing okay. And the town definitely had its priorities straight. They kept out a Walmart and two chain restaurants because they didn't want to change the character of the town.
Ass-man of Szeged, in Hungarian 'Szegedi Picsaember'. He wears very-very tight jean shorts. Even during winter.
Here is an article about him: https://444.hu/2013/05/03/holgyeink-es-uraink-a-szegedi-picsaember
He is pulling it off.
He gives dean from community energy
Those are the tightest shorts I’ve ever seen. He does have amazing legs though.
Crackhead Dan.
He started out as "dancing Dan" because of how often you could see him jamming out to something walking down the road, but he didn't like the name. Somehow it changed to crackhead, and I haven't heard his opinion on it.
He looks rather disheveled, leading many to wonder if he's homeless or not. Nobody seems to know. I've never seen him panhandling, dumpster diving, or with anything other than a backpack.
He likes to support the city's high school band though, goes to the football games and always goes to the band concession stand and leaves tips.
You could tell anyone any story about him and they'd just go "yeah that sounds about right"
You could tell anyone any story about him and they'd just go "yeah that sounds about right"
Should be added to the meke cause its a quintessential part of this trope lmao.
Poop-man here in Gothenburg, Sweden.
A dude that has been banned from all music festivals in Sweden and many others in neighbouring countries because he covers himself with shit and bathes in urinals. He has also smeared shit all over the walls in multiple places, including one of the ferries here. I worked at an underground club for a few years around 2005 and he "painted" the walls of one of our toilets one time. He never drinks or does drugs apparently, he's just fucked up. Been well-known since the 90s..
Scatman... yeah, like it better.
Manchester has Boom Box Barry.
You'll see him riding around and people smile and wave at him. He is, as we say up here, a sound lad (no pun intended).
There are a load. There's the guy with a flashing massive speaker in his wheelchair; there's Jesus tax guy; there's Johnny Cash; there's purple Ackie; and there are deffo a frw more that I can't quite remember at the mo. Barry is the OG though.
Edit: I can't believe I forgot that guy who dances like Jake the Dog on Piccadilly gardens.
Sounds like a fun town in various ways, lol
St Louis has "keytar guy". He sets up at random intersections in the city and jams out on his keyboard. He's usually sporting a mullet and is shirtless with cutoff jean shorts. He's pretty good and is entertaining as hell.
We also have/had the Bridge guy. Haven't been around there in awhile, hope he's doing fine
Dude jams out around Boston on a keytar wearing a bear costume. The music is actually pretty great.
Neat!
Austin used to have Leslie. He was frequently seen riding around Town Lake on his bike, sporting naught but his hot pants or brightly colored thong. RIP
What happened to Leslie?
We had the phone guy. He used to walk around town with a red plastic rotary phone, and occasionally tell passersby they had a call.
Then cellphones happened, and he just sort of... vanished.
It's been a long time now, of course, but sometimes I still think of him and worry what it must have been like, being sort of outcompeted off his little self assigned ecological niche of sorts what must have felt like overnight. One day you're the phone guy, next day everyone's walking around with a phone on their ear, and you're stuck with your old unplugged red rotary phone. Tragic.
Wow, that... that really makes you think. No wonder UFO nuts refuse to admit Roswell was revealed as Project Mogul in the 90s, their belief might be all they have left and if that's somehow obsolete...
Albuquerque had little shorts guy. Walked around Central Ave near the university wearing naught but a tiny, tiny pair of shorts or thong and usually carrying an anti-war/pro-gay sign. Pretty fun fellow to talk to, but was too into drinking urine imho.
The city where I studied, had the Raven Man. He was an older guy with unkempt long hair and a long black coat that was always covered in bird shit and two live ravens tied to his coat with a long string.
Woah. Spooky. I hope the birds weren't in pain, Ravens are corvids and basically some of the smartest and emotionally relatable birds.
My town has a disabled guy that trained his dogs to pull his wheelchair
We have Superman. Overweight guy that stands on the corner dressed as superman. Was not a problem until he started bothering ladies at Dairy Queen. The dairy queen was on the corner where he stood. He got banned from that lot. But he's still around.
Well that doesn't sound very super...
My hometown had the "Old Runner Guy", some dude who was at least in his 70's would run the same route every. single. day. Rain, shine, snow, hail he'd be runnin. Hell, it'd be -20F out and he'll still be on his route.
I have some friends in a city with a guy that
dressesdressed as Superman and ran around town praying for folks. I saw him once while visiting. He had great energy. He even got a mural!
I either live in the right part of the world, or the wrong part, because I've never seen this stuff.
IDK, we have a few legends like that around here, I presumed every place has at least one.
Probably related to a prohibitively expensive health system in some way.
Not quite, some just refuse to get treatment... or were diagnosed later in life, when you can't really force anyone to go to a psychiatrist, esepcially if he/she does no harm.
That and humans in general are all crazy in some way. "Normal" is a standard we can try to achieve, but it's neither realistic nor ideal. At some point a person is sane enough that you have to say "why criticize someone for being themselves?" instead of questioning or distrusting it.
Her knees appear to have been installed backwards.
Sadly, this is literally the case; it's a genetic deformity she and other people have had from birth.
I have questions.
Wait, how??
Yeah, this was close to my reaction when I saw her for the first time, my friends with me were just: "What !? You never saw the spider woman ?"
Wonder how many dogs the poor woman has to pepper spray in a week
We had Summer Santa. He looked like santa, but wore a Hawaiian button up shirt(open, with nothing underneath it) and short shorts. He always bought a ton of mountain dew from walmart.
Toronto had Zanta, a guy who wore red boxers, black boots and a Santa hat and did pushups on top of mailboxes and flexing while shoutting at passersby. If you knew him it was a fun spectacle but for most people he was aggressive and basically a creep.
He was mentally ill for sure, and had a pretty long sad story.
Any Zanta experts please speak up if you'd like to add more context. Pretty sure someone wrote a book or comic about the guy.
What about the singing guy?
We had Human Lego Man—a guy had a Lego Man costume and would just walk around waving at people.
We also have a roller blader with fairy wings who cruises up and down the Main Street, apparently flying. It was great when she had a baby, because she’d do the whole thing while pushing a pram.
I live in Augsburg, Germany. We have „the king“. He just declared himself king of Augsburg about 30 years ago and everyone just went with it. He spends his days walking through the city looking after the wellbeing of his people. Here’s a video-portrait by the local newspaper for his 70th birthday (in German)
Certainly a better king than most!
Helsinki has the laserskater.
Considered a local superhero.
carrot man in melbourne, australia
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/12/melbourne-fitzroy-carrot-man
And Baba Desi the Belgrave wizard.
We have a couple of them. Bonsai Lady is my favorite. She just randomly shows in different parking lots and sets up a stand to sell her bonsai trees.
We also have the Denton Spider-Man who is a good dude who just wants to entertain kids.
We don't talk about the conspiracy theory asshole who just takes up good parking spots to spread lies he wrote all over his car.
Ours was a woman, an older prostitute and meth head everyone called "Teddy Bear." You'd see her walking everywhere in town.
My town had Waving Save. He lived across the street from me when I was in high school.
He would walk the 5 miles to town every day most of the year. He would wave enthusiastically at every passing vehicle.
He was very pleasant but odd.
The Milverine, and his Wikipedia page:
We call ours "the artist". Older gentleman who walks around downtown always dressed completely in white linen. Sometimes he goes in somewhere for a nonalcoholic drink. Mostly he just people watches.
Is he an Ancient Greek time traveller or something? I swear, that would make for a kickass movie. "You all know the guy. Or girl. That one person in your town, or one of those people if it's a city, in the impossible urban legend. They're weird, possibly nice, possibly just creepy, probably mentally damaged." montage of the other examples "This is ours. We called him the artist. Pretty mild, he just sat in coffee shops and watched people walk by. One day, though, our perception of him would change. Not just in this town, but in this timeline. This... is what happens When Worlds Divide."
My city has a bunch: The spoon lady, miniature horse guy, topless fat lady, the guy that rides his Harley around pulling a trailer with a pig in it, Johnny sax, blunt man, and guitar hero are all the ones I can think of off the top of my head. I live in a weird city.
You sure no one's dropped some uranium in the vascinity or something?
Nervously looks for my city’s “guy” to see if anyone I know or could run into is on Lemmy
Some years ago, we had Thong Cape Scooter Man. The name tells you exactly what you need to know.
lol, so Exactly What It Says On The Tin is common where you live then, I'm guessing?
Further back we had Scanner Dan and Cosmo di Madison.
My favorite in my city is shirtless rollerblading guitar guy. Exactly as advertised.
@TheMightyCanuck , is this the same guy?! It has to be.
Edmonton Alberta Canada, I doubt there are more than one Canadian shirtless rollerblading guitar guys out there. Though it would be kinda amazing if there were
shrogu... can't think of anything else ATM.
We have a guy who rides really slowly around on a bike in bizarre, seasonally inappropriate outfits. Like, a leopard print loincloth, crop top, and something resembling a turban in February.
We had a dude *that daily would go walk with a pet duck. *that looked like Jezus *that was known for shooting in his living room *that never bathed *that was coocoo and always walked zround smoking a big cigar.
5 dudes one village.
Most definitely an interesting place to live.
Ohio apparently has 2-3 separate "crazy bike ladies." The one in dayton would generally roam around and yell obscenities at traffic. Apparently there's one in the canton/Akron area as well as Columbus.
Horseback Jesus was a sub on reddit that never saw much traffic. I think there's more activity in this post than there ever was there. Fuck You Bob was the well known character in Kent Ohio. He would flip off school buses and mutter "fuck you" when you passed him on the sidewalk. Legend has it he ate an entire sheet of acid to avoid getting busted
Schreeuw Jezus (screaming/shouting Jesus) in Eindhoven, The Nederlands. Some guy shouting about Bible stuff and Jesus.
Sounds like my man "Sneesus" at Dundas Square. "BbBEEEEELEEIVE IN THE LORD" everyday, same corner. Scaring the crap out of anyone who doesn't know the intersection but otherwise never approaches or even gives a glance.
I was once sat at a pub by a canal on a pretty perfect summer afternoon. It was glorious weather, so all the outside tables were packed. Someone appeared opposite the pub, on the other side of the canal with an amplifier on wheels and a microphone. They set up and started speaking... But there was just a touch of wind, and they were on the other side of the canal... So other than the fact that they were probably talking about Jesus we couldn't make out what they were saying at all. An awkward sermon for all involved.
My town has the Q-Anon Shaman...
Sauce?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Chansley
About another 1.6 million people can also claim to live in the same town as the Q-Anon Shaman since he's from Phoenix and you'd see him fairly frequently if you drive by the government buildings downtown before he was thrown in jail for his participation in Jan 6.
My town had Cedric aka "Ceddars" who was just a typical slightly crazy homeless man, but allegedly he was actually rich and people claimed that sometimes when he was done begging a Bentley would pull up to take him home.
Lol, we had this guy in my hometown, except he didn't wear a robe, he wore cowboy clothes with LEDs sewn into them. He was lit up like a Christmas tree.
The town I grew up in has lots of things named after the that guy of yesteryear, I think, but I can't think of any from when I was growing up there.
But San Francisco used to be almost entirely made up of that guys.
We have the world famous Bushman (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Famous_Bushman) who dresses up like a bush and jumps out at tourists.
We had the Brown Twins (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_and_Vivian_Brown) who were just fabulous older women you'd see out and about.
We have 12 Galaxies sign man (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Chu)
The Castro naked men which became the Castro men who wear cock socks sometimes.
And all sorts of others that aren't popping in mind right this moment.
Not sure if he's still around, but the laughing man of muirhouse in north Edinburgh, organic Jim in central Edinburgh, and the Swede in Bergen (Norway).
Red letter media has mentioned Milwaukee Wolverine during one of their Neil Breen videos.
Sockhead, independently wealthy homeless by choice attempted murderer with 1 giant blonde dreadlock in a sock on top of his head.
RIP Sailor Dan of Saskatoon
Clapham Common, South London, a person in their 60s who would wear only a tiny thong, a grass skirt, and ride their bicycle around in all weathers.
If you remove the oligarchs, bankers, and tech bros, London is about 50% these people.
My town had "the cat guy" when I was growing up. A guy who would ride around town with his cat in a carrier strapped to the back of his bike. Everyone knew who he was.
Frankie! He'd stand on the street and clap at cars. He'd draw money and try to use it, too. Some places accepted the smaller bills because he was actually pretty good at it.
Did they accept them out of respect for his artistic skill, or were they genuinely fooled?
The former. They weren't that good.
Slo-mo in San Diego.
We had also had Bush guy down at the pier, in San Francisco, but he died a few years back.
Come to think of it, I haven't seen Slo-Mo in a while either. :/
Town I grew up in just had the alcoholic lady that hung around the liquor store trying to get free booze that everyone knew not to take money from, give money to, or give booze to because she would get drunk and start fucking up shit. She seemed nice, but that's probably just because she was trying to score a drink.
We had a local street person who was nicknamed Aqualung who was a fixture here from the mid 70s to the mid 00s. Fan of the local minor league team, very private person. Was a rumor that Nick Nolte studied him to prep for a part once.
Which came first, the song or the man?
The song. He got the nickname because he resembled the guy on the album cover.
Tricycle Santa!
I had a dude who would dress up like Britney Spears, and he went by "Britney Girl-Dale". I never interacted with him, but I had friends who did who said he was HELLA nice, but always high. Which lead me to defending him anytime my judgemental parents had anything nasty to say.
Unfortunately, last I heard he had "found Jesus" and went massively fundie/evangelical. 😮💨
Yeah we had one like that , some kind of weird creepy drugged out "thing" , crazy looking person , sometimes half naked , sometimes looking like a bum , sometimes like a drag queen.
then i stopped seing him and after a while all of a sudden i see him on television all the time , transformed , it's David jeanmotte.
He's now well known in the country .
Guess he sucked off Elio Di Rupo , our gay prime minister at the time, who was living in the same neighborhood as us and who was easily approachable.
Here we call him "Mr AllNaked", an old guy that go on walk all naked in the nearby woods.
Philly has Vent Guy.
The Williamson Wizard
Wait, is this worth elaboration or am I better off not asking?
Richmond had Dirtwoman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Corker) until he passed away in 2017.
The ragman! Dancing Dan! Loco Ray!
