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.
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.
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
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.
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"
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.
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..
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).
Dude jams out around Boston on a keytar wearing a bear costume. The music is actually pretty great.
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.
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.
My town has a disabled guy that trained his dogs to pull his wheelchair
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
The Milverine, and his Wikipedia page:
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.
Nervously looks for my city’s “guy” to see if anyone I know or could run into is on Lemmy
Ours was a woman, an older prostitute and meth head everyone called "Teddy Bear." You'd see her walking everywhere in town.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
RIP Sailor Dan of Saskatoon
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.
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.
Sockhead, independently wealthy homeless by choice attempted murderer with 1 giant blonde dreadlock in a sock on top of his head.
My city has The Walker, a very gentle man who walks everywhere, has long chopped hair and at one point (maybe still) wore a Power Puff Girl keychain as a necklace. Some say his family was killed in a car accident, hence the walking. We also had "The Silver Fox" legendary "Mullet Man" who creeped around all the local bars but died relatively recently.
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. 😮💨
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.
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. :/
Philly has Vent Guy.
Richmond had Dirtwoman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Corker) until he passed away in 2017.
Here we call him "Mr AllNaked", an old guy that go on walk all naked in the nearby woods.
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.
The ragman! Dancing Dan! Loco Ray!
Different parts of the city also have their own person too. One of them was interviewed by the local paper a few years back and he just does his thing to make people happy. I'd say what he does but its a bit doxxy for my liking.
