Funny

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.

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.

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...

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"

Pallet guy. Very few know his face, but we all know his tiny car and stack of 10 pallets on top speeding down the interstate.

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).

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.

Keytar Bear

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.

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

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.

Ahhh the naked roller blading cowboy that plays guitar....

No I'm not kidding. Bonus points if you can name the city

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.

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.

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.

My town has a disabled guy that trained his dogs to pull his wheelchair

I either live in the right part of the world, or the wrong part, because I've never seen this stuff.

Probably related to a prohibitively expensive health system in some way.

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.

carrot man in melbourne, australia

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/12/melbourne-fitzroy-carrot-man

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.

In Lyon France there was the spider woman.

Edit: video https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FNoRQQqWKVg

Helsinki has the laserskater.

Considered a local superhero.

The Milverine, and his Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milverine

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

My favorite in my city is shirtless rollerblading guitar guy. Exactly as advertised.

weed jesus, santa barbara, california

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.