James Urbaniak ([info]urbaniak) wrote,
@ 2007-08-01 21:54:00
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Brock Takes Manhattan?
It appears that some muscular, shirtless dude with a (flowing) mullet and a choker has been walking around Manhattan this summer. Find He-Man.com is a website dedicate to his peregrinations. Its combination of facts ("he was seen today at Union Square Park") and fantastical speculation ("His navel chasm is a maelstrom of rainwater and children’s tears") had me quite helpless with laughter. I can understand the desire to document sightings of a New York City street eccentric. I myself have fond memories of Duck Guy (a sailor-hatted older gentleman who pushed a cart of stuffed duck toys around the city after dark), Peter Tork Guy (a bowl-haircutted mod usually observed in the vicinity of the Around the Clock cafe on lower Third Avenue) and High-Button Shoes Guy (a young man who dressed in an all-black 19th-century ensemble replete with breeches, pince-nez type glasses and the aforementioned high-button shoes). Of course, those fellows were making the rounds in the pre-internet early '90s so they are immortalized only in my memory. Ah. I miss the pedestrian happenstance of New York City. web stats script

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[info]not_robolizard
2007-08-02 05:12 am UTC (link)
As usual Boston tends to be NYC jr. Our beloved wierdo is a drunk guy who rides around on a bike all night imitating a siren.

SIGH.

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[info]greycat
2007-08-02 05:43 am UTC (link)
Hey this is my city's most famous werido:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Cochran

He even ran for mayor and was in 3rd place. he's a really nice guy, but seeing his ass in a thong is an eye burner.

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[info]greycat
2007-08-02 05:45 am UTC (link)
Ohh! he was second in the mayoral race! My bad.

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[info]not_robolizard
2007-08-02 09:50 pm UTC (link)
Pfft. Your guy sounds like he has ambition... ours ran into a fat lady...

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i wrote this under the influence.. thats my defense!
[info]spooky_chan
2007-08-02 05:13 am UTC (link)
strangely enough i was just talking about you to my husband after watching your um, episode on Sex and the City. (i just got done saying you were on hiatus from the blog world due to the fact that you're all Hollywood now.)

See you're missing out of He-man-Brock-Samson (which i find more humorous that there are people actually stalking him.) Don't you miss the wild streets of NY?



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[info]oshidori
2007-08-02 05:19 am UTC (link)
High-Button Shoes Guy (a young man who dressed in an all-black 19th-century ensemble replete with breeches, pince-nez type glasses and the aforementioned high-button shoes).

Oh hey! I used to hang out with that guy every now and then! (I can't for the life of me remember his name though)

If it is in fact the same guy, I once saw him with his parents, who were dressed similarly. I remember him saying they were Orthodox Russian, so I thought (at the time) maybe that's why they were dressed like that. Till I met other Orthodox Russians and realized that wasn't the case.

I had such a crush on him too. ^^;

Did you ever see the woman around Greenwich Village that would dress like a Victorian doll and ride one of those old fashioned bicycles that was almost two stories tall? Last I saw her was in '97, I think.

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[info]hey_its_dave
2007-08-02 01:23 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I'd see him around the city too, sometimes with his parents (though I had no idea they were his parents). He'd also hang out at Yaffa occasionally. It's been a couple of years at least since I've sighted him.

I always thought he was quite dapper.

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[info]st_rev
2007-08-02 06:21 am UTC (link)
See also Chicago's famous "Walking Dude": http://www.spudart.org/chicagowalkingdude/

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[info]witchinghours
2007-08-02 06:38 am UTC (link)
Brock Takes Manhattan?

Doc Hammer now needs to get him one million dollars worth of insurance to film him in New York City.

I miss the pedestrian happenstance of New York City

There's been production happenstance in New York City. From a very recent e-mail I got, it said that starting this Friday the City of New York "plans to enact legislation that will require a group of two or more people who want to use a moving or still camera in a public location for more than half an hour (including setup and breakdown time) to get a permit and proof of a one million dollar liability insurance policy. There would also be a requirement for groups of five or more who use a tripod for more than ten minutes to provide the same." I went over to the website for the NYC Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting to determine how valid the e-mail was and read on their page for insurance requirements the million dollar insurance requirement that was mentioned in the e-mail.

A bunch of bohemian hooligans are signing a petition at http://www.pictureny.org/petition/index.php which is going to be printed and hand delivered to the Mayor's Office of Film, Theater & Broadcasting on Friday. It's not a requirement to live in New York City to sign the petition, which means that anybody can become a bohemian hooligan as long as they sign it before it's delivered on Friday.

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[info]dr_ninjapants
2007-08-02 07:33 am UTC (link)
While I don't know of any strange phenom like this in my present city of residence (Oakland, CA), back in Santa Cruz, CA where I went to college we had (and still have - I totally saw him last week when I was there), the Pink Guy.

He even has a group devoted to him on the MySpace.

He basically wears all these crazy pink clothes, usually carries an open pink umbrella whatever the weather, and walks EXCRUTIATINGLY SLOW up and down Pacific Ave. All day. Sometimes he will stop walking and stand there looking around. I'm pretty sure I saw him pushing a cart full of pink clothes around once.

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SC Resident Here
[info]dramatrauma
2007-08-02 07:17 pm UTC (link)
Oh pink guy is still at it...frustrating the hell outve anybody who needs to get past him...if youre trying to get to the local multiplex ya gotta make sure hes behind you or you miss the movie..they finally interviewed him on one of the public access channels where he explained that what hes doing is a form of zazen meditation...the walking part not the pink part

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[info]crudelydrawn
2007-08-02 08:07 am UTC (link)
Wow. I wonder if He-Man knows about his Internet fame. I kind of doubt he does, though... I can't imagine a hulking guy like him in front of his puny laptop, gasping as his image pops up on his Google Reader feed.

Um... In my hometown in Florida, there's a guy that walks around our neighborhood every morning, past the middle school, past the high school, carrying a massive cross, Jesus-style. And in Baltimore, where I go to school now, there's an old guy that walks around campus every night and sings this one song about Jesus at the top of his lungs.

I guess I'm drawn to areas with lots of Jesus-loving eccentrics?

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[info]mondragon
2007-08-02 09:03 am UTC (link)
I saw him a couple of weeks ago. He's creepy in a very (to me) LA sort of way like the guys I saw on Santa Monica in the afternoon a couple of weeks ago on my way to see _Socket_. Leftovers. Best appreciated from a distance. Sad.

Not like the guy who does shirtless pushups in the rain in the west village.

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[info]jaynagy
2007-08-02 11:31 am UTC (link)
As Brad Neely would say, he is a true champion.

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[info]bleak_existance
2007-08-02 01:05 pm UTC (link)
I think you may have your Brock if they ever do a live action. Then you just need that guy from Dragoncon last year to be Rusty. That guy was scary good.

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[info]teamwak
2007-08-02 01:13 pm UTC (link)
In the UK, we have the Naked Rambler.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3162380.stm

He's even picked up a supporters club along the way, lol.

http://nakedwalk.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

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[info]glamourcorpse
2007-08-02 01:27 pm UTC (link)
Heh. I wonder why they call him He-man though. He-man has a blong pageboy hair cut. *snerk*

Our city has a few people like him (I mean people look for them, not they have mullets) Most notably the white-ninja. This girl who wears a white snowsuit all year-round. Hood up and everything. It's a pristine white-snowsuit. I've only seen her once.

The closest we have to that guy is Faux-Dundee, the Gay Croc-hunter. Looks like Crocodile Dundee with too many gold chains and the loudest shirt you've ever seen.

High-Button Shoes Guy (a young man who dressed in an all-black 19th-century ensemble replete with breeches, pince-nez type glasses and the aforementioned high-button shoes

Totally awesome. That's what we need around my area.

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[info]glamourcorpse
2007-08-02 01:30 pm UTC (link)
PS: I remember when you had your first LJ-drama and I was like "It's official, you're a serious LJ user." Now you've cemented it for me. A day or two after posting a "I'm on hiatus" post you come back with a post like this. So typical of LJ users. It keeps pulling you back in.....

PPS: Saw the trailer for Fay Grim. Can't wait to see it!

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[info]ghostgecko
2007-08-02 01:37 pm UTC (link)
Did you ever see the guy who goes around in tighty whities and a cowboy hat, playing guitar? I saw him somewhere in the vicinity of Port Authority, and someone told me he's apparently a fixture.

Around here the most exciting eccentric we have is Dirt Woman, a 400 pound transvestite who begs for money (presumably for a sex change operation) on the median strip of a highway.

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[info]dougo
2007-08-02 02:18 pm UTC (link)
One time in Berkeley The Hate Man sat next to me on the bus.

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[info]darling_effect
2007-08-02 02:37 pm UTC (link)
My favorite NY nutjob was this guy who used to bicycle around Washington Sq. Park in wildly colored striped corduroys and fake rodent nose (with whiskers!), whooping like a police siren. Whoa, someone had their crazyflakes this morning! (Now that I think of it, he sorta looked like Crispin Glover during his infamous Letterman appearance, only aged forty years of VERY hard living.)

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[info]marsala1
2007-08-02 03:18 pm UTC (link)
Holy crapmonkies! I remember seeing high button shoe guy in Barnes & Noble off Union Square a couple of times! I hadn't thought of him in years....

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[info]paladin1701
2007-08-02 03:35 pm UTC (link)
That's hysterical

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[info]leborcham
2007-08-02 05:09 pm UTC (link)
HOLY SHIT! I saw this guy wandering around my neighborhood the weekend before I left for SD and thought I imagined it!!!!!!!! And he does indeed look exactly like Brock. I am so shocked that this is now a group phenomonon.

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[info]marley_station
2007-08-02 06:10 pm UTC (link)
Peter Tork Guy? He must have been a hottie.

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[info]abbster88
2007-08-03 03:19 pm UTC (link)
I only wish my pitiful hamlet had some interesting character to boast. Alas, we do not. The only eccentric I know we have in this area is Beatle Bob, a guy in Lawrence who dresses like a member of the Fab Four in their Ed Sullivan days. He makes appearances at the Wakarusa music festival and introduces bands. It floors me that even in 85 degree-plus temperatures, for three days straight, he walks around in that black suit and mop-top wig. It's gotta be sweltering.

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Aw, James...do you remember...?
[info]jacksonpublick
2007-08-03 03:21 pm UTC (link)
Do you remember The Stick Man? Basically just a homeless guy whose schtick was a bunch of branches tied to his head with a rag? He used to panhandle right around your apartment, though that could have been long before it was your apartment.

And whatever happened to the bald couple--married, I assumed--who dressed and looked identical? Kind of like Zippy the Pinhead crossed with the Satanists from Ghost World?

And of course Quentin Crisp, who could always be found at the Cooper Diner on 2nd.

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[info]monica_black
2007-08-03 06:06 pm UTC (link)
We don't have anything like that here. The closest thing was a homeless guy who tried to tell me that he was a prophet during the run of Angels in America.

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