Eccentric figures in City Lore.

[Wildchild]

This is a bit different then other community watch threads, and may not belong here so just move it to the right space if not.

Do you have any famous eccentric figures that are part of the city folklore? If so, then share them. In bigger cities they often take the form of street people, in small towns then recluse.

Madison has quite a few famous eccentrics that are a staple of Madison lore, the first is scanner Dan.

http://www.citydictionary.com/WI/Madison/Scanner-Dan/5/

Scanner is a fixture at the Memorial Union and State Street. While eccentrically amiable, Dan may rub the unacquainted the wrong way with his poor hygiene and often nonsensical mumbo jumbo. He's convinced every UW Madison girl is Jewish and in a sorority and claims to have a relationship with some teenager named "Jordan." Dan has a long standing feud and tumultuous relationship with another Union icon — Tunnel Bob.

Scanner Dan was given his name because he always has a police scanner at his hip. He appears to be homeless, but I never see him during the winter so I think he has a payee or a home, I just walked past him today.

Next is Tunnel Bob, perhaps the most famous figure in Madison Lore. The gist of his story is that he's a homeless man who lives in the Steam Tunnels under the UW campus, maintence workers would often leave lightbulbs outside or in the tunnels for him to change.

https://badgerherald.com/news/2015/...-our-feet-exploring-uws-underground-labrynth/

Some quotes.

The legend is Tunnel Bob used to hold “tunnel games” under the city, inviting students to come play hide and seek or flashlight tag with him. Others claim that his fear of women drove him underground.

Rumors question Tunnel Bob’s harmlessness. One Madison resident claimed, “I’ve seen him lose his temper and damage things.” Another questions if he’s dangerous saying, “I was at UW from 1993 to 1998, and he would follow me around a lot. I do think he has the intent to harass women and he is definitely mentally disturbed.”

Tunnel Bob has been a staple of Madison lore since at least the 90's, the last time I saw him around was in High School, so I have a feeling that he probably got forced out of the steam tunnels, because he hasn't made an appearance in Recent years.

Last is Piccolo Guy, he just wears a orange jumpsuit and plays a Piccolo, I think he's just an eccentric street performer and not really homeless, but like Tunnel Bob and Scanner Dan, he is a famous eccentric of city lore. I've seen him once or twice.

Does your town or city have famous eccentrics/people of urban legends? If so then share it here.

 

[Pinball Lizard]

I volunteer at a zoo, and we have our own localized urban legend there in the form of Mannequin Man. He's just what his name implies: a strange man who brings a life-size, fully-dressed female mannequin with him wherever he goes, including the zoo, where he pushes her in a wheelchair. He believes he's married to her, has named her "Jackie," and bought a membership for her as if she were a real person. From what I understand she was given to him as some sort of therapy; I question the validity of this treatment.

Unless he's making a scene we're ordered to treat both him and "her" as ordinary guests. I've only seen him twice, and I'll give him this: "she" is extremely lifelike. Both times I saw them, I thought "she" was just a very sickly young woman at first, and thought it was cute that her boyfriend would take her to the zoo. Then I looked closer.

 

[Flowers For Sonichu]

my hometown has a couple people

first is purple dave

He's in a rock and roll band called the ugly decibel ride which you can listen to here:

http://www.myspace.com/uglydecibelride

He was famous for wearing purple spandex during his performances and heavy abuse of crack.

Here is a blog post about him:

Did I ever tell you about Purple Dave?
Purple Dave was a longtime fixture in Kamalazoo's music scene. Over-tanned with long, fried hair, Purple Dave showed up at all the shows. He was famous for being Purple Dave and he had permanent guest list everywhere in town. After your show Purple Dave would come up to you and make a comment about your guitar tone. "You've got good tone," he'd say. Purple Dave had a lisp damaging enough to inflect not only his esses, but his eths and (improbably) his evs, and he was obsessed with good tone. Dave engaging you in conversation involved sitting through repetitious diatribes about good tone sparked occasionally by non sequitur sexual confessions. "You ever suck a man's dick? Don't do it. It's awful."
Purple Dave was famous for wearing purple, often purple spandex, and for a personality that reflected spending the 80s mixing mild schizophrenia with serious, omniverous drug abuse. His combination of mental illness and narcopsychedelic damage made him a walking metaphor for Kalamazoo, the former home of a state mental hospital (and current home to hundreds of wandering former patients phasing between halfway homes and the streets) and the halfway point on the 1-94 drug corridor between Chicago and Detroit and on into Canada. Kalamazoo is a small town, but you can find every kind of dementia, organic or chemical, you can imagine.
The 1980s were apparently a magical time for Dave. He wore spandex and a crazed head of frizzy hair for years after the rock stars he emulated moved on. He made music, and a couple of guys from the bar he hung out at the most started a Wesley Willis-like showcase/freakshow band with him. The Purple Dave Experience, obviously. Dave played guitar and sang and wrote the songs. The music that Dave made (best song: "I Need A Woman, Not A Wife") sounded more like Captain Beefheart than Ratt, but you knew that in Dave's mind his shit was straight off the Sunset Strip, right after Crue got big but before GNR happened. His number one idol of all time was Lita Ford. He wanted to be her. Sometimes during one of his schizo episodes he'd start dressing like her. If you saw Purple Dave around often enough as he entered one, you could see the Lita Fordization happen stop-motion style as you saw him night after night at the bar over the course of days or a week. He'd go from regular Dave costume into outfits that involved a little more spandex into makeup, and every once in a while it would go all the way into Dave wandering around in a way-too-big dress, looking like Lita Ford only to himself, but I never saw that happen.
Usually by the time he'd get that far into the schiz someone, and I never knew exactly who, would get Dave some help and make him take his meds. Usually it would work out fine. Not too long before I moved out of town he went too far out. The dress-up/breakdown peaked out with Dave having the cops called on him after being spotted wandering naked around someone's yard at nine in the morning. He got put in a hospital for a little bit to get some work done on his psyche. A couple of days into lockup he called the bar where the Purple Dave Experience played and they guys working there offered to come down and visit. They asked him if he wanted them to bring anything.
"A couple of soft tacos from Taco Bell. And a Diet Mountain Dew."

http://tiny.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003068.html
Diet Mountain Dew is slang for weed.

Even more famous is Boombox Ronnie

He originally became notorious for carrying a giant boombox around with him 12 years ago but he kept getting noise violations from the police and went to jail a couple times for causing a public disturbance. Since then, he's moved on to rapping loudly (you can hear him from a block away) while wearing halloween costumes he got from goodwill. One of my roommates made the mistake of inviting him over once and he used to come over to my house every single goddamn day when I lived downtown 10 years ago. Last time I saw him was at a party and I gave him a fifth of vodka and he chugged it like a minute. He's legitimately retarded, kind of like the time Dee dated the retarded rapper in It's Always Sunny.

 

[SpessCaptain]

I've had personal run-ins with these two people, very well known in my neck in the woods.

https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts...ny-l/4abdc53d-0581-466e-abd7-e3190f62260b.htm

Danny Lim, he holds up signs about love and peace and a lot about masturbation, I fucking love him and I've seen him at the station more than enough times. He's a great guy and loves to chat, very eccentric but loveable and harmless.

I think there is another sign holder as well.

---

http://www.holykitsch.com.au/ - Her Site. Over the years its degenerated into a blog.

There is an eccentric art store and sister-store that's ran by a group of insane tumblr-eqsue retards called "Holy Kitsch!" in the middle of the city. The owner there is something to talk about. She's fucking insane. She's abused buyers and especially those who don't buy anything or complain about the prices. If you go into her store, look at the prices and start to leave she'll yell at you for being a scumbag and not appreciating art.

She's asking for triple-quad digits of cash for artwork you can actually buy online/overseas for a fraction of the price. I've been to the store and let me say that there was nothing but arrogance and ineptitude, there was little interesting stock beyond the pottery and most seemed to have been there for countless years - the most asked price is the Elvis bust that is asking for $950 (or more) and if you barter with her she will flatout abuse you and because it's in the middle of a fucking trendy place with people with only one neuron she actually sells that shit.

---
In the middle of the square at Queen Victoria Building there are two groups which have been having microphone wars with eachother an Islamic Group and a Christian Church, sometimes they argue politely but once in a while there is a moments of [incoherent screaming]

 

[Andrew Noel Schaefer]

I cant find a link or picture of him but I have had the unfortune to meet Real Philly Phil.

He's a hipster-begger type. I shit you not, he's a black man begging with a cardboard sign while tweeting with his smartphone.

I'd link his twitter but its all postmodern hipster nonsense. I havent seen him recently though, come to think of it. He usually positions himself near street artists (such as this guy making wonderful music with his sax)

 

[Randall Fragg]

I'm moving this thread to Off-Topic because it's not really a lolcow thread.

 

[AnimuGinger]

We have a homeless dude that scammed a freshman into making a gofundme page for him, that raised several thousand dollars, before it came out he was a heavy drug addict, not the struggling musician he said he was, and scammed his family. He has since stopped playing Counting Crows covers in front of Walgreens.

We also have a guy who plays a violin in wearing a werewolf mask.

That's about the weirdest this city has.

 

[RP 520]

There was "chicken guy" at the old Hardee's I worked at. Every Tuesday around 8-9 p.m. He would come in and order a chicken sandwich. He wouldn't interact with you, he'd just order a sandwich, eat it and leave. Also we found out that if you didn't hold the door open for him when he entered he would get grumpy and sit down and wait for about 10-15 minutes instead of ordering immediately.

Then there was a guy nick-named "Flop" who lived on the outskirts of town. He was a chain smoker who would alwayd be working on his riding lawnmower which he referred to as his Corvette. He would usually tell corny jokes to people passing by his house when he was out. He also had a habit of taking a long drag of his cigarette in the middle of talking, which would cause awkward pauses. He died years back though.

There's also a reclusive family that lives up a dirt road on the side of the mountain who is rumored to practice inbreeding. I went to school with the kids from that family, they did have a lot of health issues, the skin on the oldest daughter's hands was perpetually peeling off for instance, and the brothers and youngest sister all had mental issues. The mother was obese and the father was a Nam vet who was ancient. All of the kids got banned from the public pool due to their skin disorders which caused them to throw a fit. The parents were abusive and negligent as well.

The relatives of the family and other people in the town want nothing to do with them and the oldest daughter (with the peeling hands) managed to get into a good college and got as far away as possible afterwards. The rest of the family all live together on the mountain-side still. For a while the brothers held some low paying jobs but either quit or were fired. The oldest brother had a facebook for a while and had no problems liking pages such as "I love anime porn" and sharing pictures of scantly clad women he found googling. I defriended him ages ago because it was a bit creepy.

There's also two or three locally infamous Fundie churches here, known for having congregations of angry, bitter people who like to cause issues with people in town by telling girls and women they're whores going to hell because they're wearing pants, have short hair or tattoos or facial piercings. The fundie congregations are also infamous for getting pissed at their own churches when something is changed, flocking en-masse to other (usually non-fundie churches) Which usually ends with drama, church communities splitting and the fundies leaving and forming another fundie church.

 

[Rabbit Bones]

Skirtman, aka Dale Miller.

He used to be a professor at UALR, where he taught computer stuff. I can't find any other pictures of him (why I'll explain in a second) but he usually dressed as a man from the waist up, and a woman from the waist down at work. He used to have this amazing website where he had his own Love Quest going on. He had letters asking for resumes to be his girlfriend taped on all the windows of his car (with his SKTMAN licence plate). He also had a weird thing for Hooters waitresses. Unfortunately for him, he's probably not going to get a girlfriend anytime soon. He's in jail for 10 years for possession of child porn.

 

[Wildchild]

It seems that the Midwestern cities seem to have the largest percentage of eccentric lore figures, we have Chicago, Madison, two cities from Michigan.