Every city has them, your various weirdoes and freaks that make the urban experience what it is. Tucson has more than its fair share, probably due to the extreme summer heat – it makes you crazy.
There are times of the year when it seems that every corner is populated by your everyday corner Merlins with their long robes, hair and beards and their wizard staffs. This look has been become so common that I have a hard time keeping them all straight. But Tree (with his enormous height approaching 7 feet) and GrandPa Woodstock with his knack for publicity do stand out.
Then there’s the whole series of men, wearing as little as possible, that roam the streets making us cringe at the site of their leathery skin. Speedo Man, famous for obsessively riding his bicycle wearing just a Speedo in the height of summer in the noontime sun, died of skin cancer. And Jain Man, wearing his dhoti, and sweeping the street in front of him while wearing a surgical mask lest he harm or inhale any bugs, has disappeared.
There are the more ominous characters, such as Yeshua 666 Israel, leading his family of three children and wife, chained together at the ankles, throughout the parks and open spaces. He is famous for his rambling and incoherent sermons and also for the spectacle of his bound family flipping him off behind his back while he babbled on. The “666” tattooed on his forehead was a nice touch too.
Pennyman, in his penny suit, was always a local favorite. Rumor has it that he believed that the suit helped convey the cosmic energy to his body. There was also a story that he had buried a spare suit on the university campus, which inspired more than one treasure hunt. He was smart enough to not wear his suit during our fierce electrical storms. I could never quite tell with Pennyman if it was shtick or psychosis. My theory is that it started as an act and ended as an obsession.
Except for GrandPa Woodstock all of these characters are gone – to where I don’t know. Tree is felled and Speedo Man is dead. The rest have disappeared. Is it wrong to celebrate their strangeness and mourn their disappearance? To be sure a new crop is growing but they still need a few more years in the sun.
DC had the burned man, a guy who was burned on a lot of his chest and face and used to walk up to people in the summer with no shirt on and hold his arms out to the side. Just stand and be quiet and people would give him money. He never asked or got in my face, but I haven’t seen him for a while.
In Madison, WI, there was this guy who lived in the steam tunnels under the city. He was called Tunnel Bob and would climb out in the basement of the Union to watch the pins roll around the backs of the pinsetter wmachines in the bowling alley. He was a wierd cat.
I have the feeling this is ridiculously common, but Portland has Silver Man. We used to have another “living statue” guy, who was basically an older guy, long hair, beard, quite possibly homeless, who used to put out a milk crate at the Saturday Market, climb onto it, then stand perfectly still. His charm was his lack of production values; he was just a guy who liked to stand still. I don’t know if he’s still down there.
You ain’t seen nothin’ until you’ve seen Ronnie “Woo-Woo” Wickers. When I lived closer to the Weiner’s Circle, I used to see him there often, always decked out in full Cubs uniform.
When I lived in Mendocino CA there was a homeless guy who was a dog whisperer. seriously. He could teach any dog any simple task, e.g. ‘roll over’, in two minutes.
If you gave him an hour he’d train your pup to jump through a flaming hoop.
Memphis has Prince Mongo.
Though the wikipedia article doesn’t really do the whole thing justice. The guy apparantly has more money than God. And has, since the eighties, run various campaigns for mayor of Memphis and state congressional seats claiming to be the ambassador from the planet Zambodia. Usually appearing in public dressed as bizarrely as the article claimed.
During the late 80′s and 90′s he ran a couple of places called Mongo’s Planet, one by the University of Memphis and one Downtown. Noted mainly for the fact that they would serve minors alcohol and the clientelle that this atracted, the latter one was affectionately known as “Squids and Kids” (there was a Navy Base in operation at the time in nearby Millington).
For some reason this led to problems with his liqour lisence, and the places eventually got shut down.
(cont. b/c haloscan won’t let publish all the links I want to)
He later bought this place (he’s responsible for the sand you see in the picture and the general lack of upkeep). For some reason, his neighbors (you can see this is a rather upscale part of town) didn’t appreciate his antics and he was forced to move into a more suburban part of town leading to the antics described in the wikipedia article.
The wikipedia article details most of the latest.
We also had this guy who, while not a visual eccentric, littered the Memphis land-scape with signs that read “Dirty Tricks Were Used” and “Tobacco Kills” during the Nineties.
woo woo is awesome.
There is the guy at fisherman’s wharf that hides behind his fake bush and scares people for money. that guy has a good schtick. I jokingly told Smoke Dog to pee on his bush when he was hiding behind it.
Anybody remember Sheila, older black lady, short ‘fro, few teeth, skinny, ski jacket, used to panhandle for dope money along 16th near Albion in S.F.? She always made my mornings outside Mission Grounds ever so bright — she was one of the few people I ever regularly gave smokes to.
No, but I remember Shirley who used to bring Raj and the gang orange sodas and cheeseburgers.
Man, I remember Y’shua 666 Israel – didn’t get to see him getting the bird from his family (search the web for “Russ Cork” and “666 Israel” and you’ll find he posted the same reminiscence a while back – funny how Y666 is still “remembered”…) but I remember Erik Andresen making fun of him in the “No Exit” cartoons all the time!
Yea, Good ole Yeshua. And what about Brother Jed (with his own wikipedia entry?) And who was the bald guy who ran the “Someplace Else” bar in the early 80′s ‘Satanic’ dude – drove a Mercedes with the personalized AZ plate GOD?
GOD is still around Tucson. I think that he runs the Meet Rack now. He scares the be-jeebus out of me!
Meet Rack = a shady bar on Drachman.