There’s a really fascinating article at Wired about blogs and websites tracking down urban eccentrics. You know who I mean. In Brisbane, I can think of “Rock & Roll George”, the Marilyn Monroe woman (always impeccably groomed), the evil homeless guy who hits people with his umbrella, the plastic bag man who used to sleep outside the Anglican church in Toowong, the fake nun in the white tuxedo who pushed an empty wheelchair down the middle of New Farm streets for many years, and the cowboy whom I once overheard refusing at Rics to explain to the barwoman why he was what he was or who he was, all the while conscious of his minor celebrity.
The article doesn’t cover stalking or the right to privacy, which raises some questions. It also doesn’t really adequately get to grips with the sociological phenomenon of why we talk about such folks and what they feel about it all. Any thoughts?
Used to see the the “Marilyn” family at the Brookside Shopping Centre years and years and years ago. It was a mum and two daughters. Last time I saw one of them in Fortitude Valley (during my last visit to Brisbane), she looked older and quite a bit less impeccable.
I think the “Marilyn” women obviously dressed that way due to devotion for the late great star and because they enjoyed being noticed and being different. We enjoy talking about such people (which is good and bad) because they’re different. I’m not sure it’s much more than that. Never studied sociology, though.
What happened to the homeless “bagman” bloke at Toowong?
There was the growling man in Perth who rode around in shorts and thongs growling and rooaring at people for many years.
Melbourne had a “Marilyn” too years ago, haven’t seen her for ages. Wonder if she moved to Brisbane or it’s a different one?
We still have the Dancing man of Kew, he even has a Facebook group.
And a fabulous woman who would swan around inner sydney in an evening dress, pearls, and a fur stole that even my animal-rights heart secretly thought was magnificent… I always wondered what her story was… I guess we always like the unusual and want to know what makes those who dare to be different tick.
oh…. she’d swan around like that in the middle of the day lol…
Anyone know if “rock and roll George” is still around? If so, is he still driving a beige FJ?
Hi Darlene,
Apparently the ‘bagman’ is in the park next to the BBC sports ovals so he hasn’t moved very far from the church. My daughter walks past him on the way to school each morning.
There’s a guy who drives around and around the same block in Carlton, alone, with the window wound down, singing along hoarsely to whatever’s on the stereo – usually Gold FM. He used to drive a old Commodore(?) with a lousy paint job, but has recently upgraded to something a little more roadworthy.
In the late 60s to mid 70s I knew and was friends with a whole collection of so-called eccentrics around King’s Cross in inner Sydney. Like we would hang out together, visit each others’ flats, run into each other at parties, share houses etc. I don’t think we thought we were eccentric, though other people did. Sometimes we had connections with the various Sydney unis. A small number of us were high a lot, but most of us weren’t. We were just being ourselves, but the normal world thought we were decidedly odd. I think we were just young.
And, as one gets older, eccentricity tends to become notoreity.
Rock and Roll George? Never heard of him! I don’t suppose the faux nun is the same person who used to feed the birds in King George Sq? She wore grey.
There were some comments recently on Jabberwocky’s blog about a local eccentric – we live in the same suburb. She’s a pudgy woman in, I think, her thirties with long stringy hair and what appears to be bipolar disorder coupled with an addiction to binge eating and some developmental delay or ABI. She wears colourful “hippie chick” clothes, tending to the reds and purples and the crushed velvet end of the spectrum.
Besides sitting on benches eating and crying heartbrokenly, which makes me feel bad for her, she engages in what you might call challenging behaviours:
Once, someone refused her money or something, and she lay down in the middle of the main street and chucked a leg-waving tanty there while the traffic backed up for miles. (Our main street is one of those little skinny village ones, so there was nowhere for cars to get past.)
Son told me last night she’d looked at him recently and said “Who do you think you are, just walking around like that? You need to get a LIFE!!!”
When I was growing up in Townsville there was a guy who used to ride down the Strand on a bicycle with a cats secured in various on-board baskets with occy straps. The cats were always different. In a city not noted for encouraging any extravagance of lyrical description, he was called “The Cat Man”. As kids we convinced each other that he was catching feral cats from the rocks near the beach and taking them home to eat them. I can’t now vouch for this reading of events.
There was also an old indigenous guy called Cedric Lightning who hung out in the mall wearing a big black ten-gallon hat with bright feathers stuck in the band, and satiny press-stud, rodeo-style cowboy shirts. He was really chatty, and would always offer you a drink (and ask for a smoke) if you stopped to shoot the breeze. He always told the same stories about when he was a horse-breaker out west.
The father of a friend of mine was a psychiatrist up there, and he said Townsville was a bit of a magnet for the eccentrically inclined. That’s because if they ever went through periods of homelessness, the climate was mild enough for people to sleep out at night without any real discomfort, even in mid-winter. Until recently, living up there was also really cheap.
It’s hard to know how anyone feels about embodying this form of celebrity unless you talk to them, and even then it can be difficult. Cedric seemed happy telling his cowboy stories, but he didn’t ever really talk about where he lived at the time, what he did to pay for the basics, or how he was living out what I now presume were the last years of his life.
I feel ambivalent about having a database of “eccentrics” online. They didn’t ask for it, they’re not frikkin tourist attractions, and it sounds like unwarranted surveillance. But on the other hand making the lives and histories of such folk legible and visible might be a good thing, not least for their own safety. And that’s the most important thing – some of them are vulnerable to violence and other perils. We need to look after them, especially as life becomes more expensive, and inner city areas become less hospitable to eccentricity.
Thanks for that, Susan. He’d be just down the road from his former home. Good to hear he’s still kicking.
“Son told me last night she’d looked at him recently and said “Who do you think you are, just walking around like that? You need to get a LIFE!!!””
Tee hee, not sure what your son should have been doing instead.
Poor woman….quite a lot she has to contend with there in terms of her mental health.
I wonder if she’s ever in the CBD. There was a woman fitting that description in town a few weeks ago. This woman caught my eye because she was walking around drinking from a large bottle of Coke (and I mean the large size). I thought, “wow”, most of us stuff our faces in private, so at least she’s open about her disorder.
When did the Brisbane Marilyn appear? The Melbourne Marilyn disappeared from sight about eight, ten years ago now, maybe less. I’d hoped she’d snapped out of it, got a life, was worried that she’d topped herself. Maybe she just moved to Brisbane which is sort of like doing both I guess.
We’re always so literal with the tags we put on such people: “The Cat Man”, “The Bag Man”, “The Marilyns”.
This raises the issue of who decides what is “eccentric”, I guess.
Jack, the Marilyns have been around Brisbane for decades. I remember seeing Mum Marilyn when I was a teenager (and it’s been many years since I’ve been a teenager).
Harsh but fair about Brisbane.
Anyone who grew up in west end/ highgate hill in the late 70s and early 80s would remember lawnmower man.
Striding the streets (and I means streets, not footpaths) with his Victa, in a pirate outfit, mumbling under his breath, and cursing unknown assailants.
And I haven’t seen Rock n Roll George since about 90 or 91.
Cairns has a well built and quite fit older chap (about 80?) who spend most of each day walking into the CBD from the hinterland wearing a pair of ragged shorts and carrying a hessian bag over his shoulder.
Then he walks home again, been doing it for many years apparently.
I produced a documentary a few years ago about a Melbourne ‘eccentric’ which did well on the festival circuit. The star of the show enjoyed the experience, especially attending screennings, which seemed to increase his feelings of agency and legitimacy in life.
But the interesting thing is that his status changed for me from ‘eccentric’ to just another person I knew, because I’d spent a fair bit of time with him. Because of that I feel self-conscious talking about him in public, like this, which is why I haven’t identified him at all. When does a person change status to ‘eccentric’? Is it about living out your oddness in public, whereas most people do it in private? What are the ethics of even talking about ‘eccentrics’ as we are now?
In the 1980s and 1990s Sydney had the Phantom Anti-Communist Graffitist who would write anti-Soviet and anti-communist comments on any poster or sign advertising any kind of cause associated with TEH LEFT. Classics included the following:
* Posters advertising the 1990 Sydney May Day rally and march had the words “Lenin, Stalin and 5000 naked lesbians” scrawled on them.
* Peace movement posters featuring a cartoon of Santa Claus snapping a nuclear missile in half over the caption “Santa Doesn’t Slay” were defaced with the drawing of a black moustache on Santa and the writing of the words “Stalinist pig!” across him.
In the same period, Sydney also boasted Nadar Ponnuswamy and his one-person Uninflated Party which contested several Federal and State elections.
SATP,
That sounds like Roy.Does he have a long beard and wear a beret? He was very well known arond King’s Cross in the 60’s and 70s.
On Jason’s point about violence, the Toowong bagman has been assaulted and had people throwing things at him from car windows, which may be why he’s moved from such an exposed position. One Liberal Councillor also ran a campaign to expel him from Toowong. He’s had a lot of media attention over the years, which tends to focus on the fact that he has a large amount of money in the bank which he never accesses. This is felt to be crucial somehow.
I’m pretty sure Rock & Roll George passed away.
Darryl, the New Farm faux nun always dressed in a white skirt and top with a white veil and a white tuxedo jacket. I haven’t seen her for maybe about five years. A friend of mine asked her why she pushed an empty wheelchair around and apparently her explanation had a certain logic, but unfortunately I’ve forgotten what it was.
Perth has the woman on a bike (used to be a Vespa, apparently the cops took it off her) who rides around the city waving an Aussie flag and singing the national anthem.
Ernie the Fridge Man.
I’ve thought of another Western Subs eccentric – there’s a young man who strides around in a charcoal/black “uniform” of quasi-military type, a bit like a confederate soldier in the American civil war, but it’s an invented look so not completely the same. He wears a leather strap or bag diagonally bandolier-style and boots or puttees or something that make him look very military. He is always dressed in this exact same style and walks about very fast, I have never seen him inside a building e.g. supermarket, fruit shop etc.
I give him a wide berth – he scares me.
Here in the St George area of Sydney we had the Hurstville ‘Bag Lady’ for many years pushing a shopping trolley full of her things and wearing dozens of layers of clothing, a wide hat and dark glasses. She could be found in or around the dilapidated ‘Super Centre’ above Hurstville Railway Station, recently renovated. I think she may have passed away: she seemed to already be quite old when I was still a small child, though it was hard to be sure. She used to rant loudly at nobody in particular, occasionally terrifying the unaccustomed with an outburst. I can only assume she preferred to be left alone.
Helen, that’s not the bloke who gives out the flyers for the Rose Street markets who wears the big hat?
I thought I lived in the northern suburbs?
The Toowong Bag Man was long used as a political football by the toffs on the posh side of town? Disgusting some of their responses were.
“I’m pretty sure Rock & Roll George passed away.”
I think you’re right. But he was still alive in 2006. He outlived the Trams and Souths Rugby League which was his favourite topic of conversation. His FJ had interchangeable boot lids. The deluxe version had the spare tyre on the boot lid, white-walled of course.
There used to be a bloke who’d wander up and down Rundle Mall wearing bike shorts and white rubber boots. He was huge and rather intimidating, although (apparently) actually quite friendly. I haven’t seen him for a while, but I don’t work in town anymore and I think he was usually only out and about in the daytime. Anyone seen him lately?
There was also another bloke, mentally ill, who my sons called the Human Hairbrush. He’d get around in an old greatcoat, very unkempt. I have seen him fairly recently.
North Fitzroy has the leather dude. Anyone who frequents the Costington’s (Piedimonte’s) part of St George’s Rd knows who I mean. Always pleasant, always drunk, wearing LOADS of clothes, all leather – I’d say right down to the undies – in any weather.
Then there’s the late-middle-aged aboriginal dude in Fitzroy proper and the city who can’t control how loud he talks and always has his arms twisting around above his head.
I was very far from being a Jim Soorley fan, but his defence of the Toowong bagman and his attempt to educate people about the underlying issues is one of the reasonably large number of things I’m happy to give him credit for.
David, lots of people I know call the gentleman you’re referring to (in Rundle Mall) Johnny, though I wouldn’t know for sure if that’s actually his name. While you don’t see him in town much now he is still around, I last saw him at WOMAD earlier this year I think. Also he’s usually at the Adelaide Oval cricket test.
The Aboriginal guy you are referring to is regularly seen in the CBD as well. I saw him lying on the pavement one day. All these suits walked by him but a bloke in workingman’s attire went to his assistance. Turns out he just wanted a drink and something to eat, and that’s what he got.
The police arrived, but left. They were obviously acquainted with him.
Interesting notion Mark.
“the fake nun in the white tuxedo who pushed an empty wheelchair down the middle of New Farm streets for many years”
Any relation to the Milton Rd nun?
members.optusnet.com.au/the_nun
A slight family resemblance?
I last saw Rock ‘n’ Roll George driving down Ipswich Road at Annerley about 12 months ago. His 48/215 Holden (the rear doors, I recall, revealed it to be a 1948-vintage, too) was looking old and tired and George looked as old as Methusaleh’s grandfather.
What put the kybosh on him was when Queen Street was malled back in the early ’80s. I recall being told a couple of years ago that George spent his working life at the Tristrams soft-drink factory in West End (now a Coles supermarket & shopping centre).
Mackay used to have a “Mr Walker” — an old bloke who walked and walked and walked — about 30 years ago, and I’ve noticed a similar, slightly scary looking bloke in Brisbane in recent years who can be seen walking the length of Old Cleveland Road at all hours of the day (he generally wears a set of blue sleeveless overalls and (apparently) little else).
Rock and Roll George is most definitely still kicking on, or at least was last week, when I saw him down at the village fruit and veg shop, just like a mere mortal.
He hasn’t let his standards drop: I’ve never seen him in anything but his regulation stove pipe slacks ( I suppose that’s what you’d call them, but I’m no sage of the sartorial), and his regulation sharp haircut ( again, whether its a crew-cut, a flat-top, or a razorcut of some specific and significant number is beyond my Urban Tribe Taxonomics ken). Regulation for him that is, not per some tribe to which he allieges, I doubt that has ever been the case.
I think you’ll find the Holden’s an FX, not an FJ, and as for outliving Souths Rugby League Club: the Magpies will be playing Redcliffe Dolphins this Sunday arvo at Davies Park, the home ground.
We see a Marilyn, quite probably The Marilyn, doing the occasional lap of Barista Boulevard, à pied, in her white 7 year itch pleated halter neck.
Fine: “… the interesting thing is that his status changed for me from ‘eccentric’ to just another person I knew, because I’d spent a fair bit of time with him. Because of that I feel self-conscious talking about him in public, like this,… What are the ethics of even talking about ‘eccentrics’ as we are now?”…”
I know what you mean, it makes it all the more galling that some folk feel free to put about absolute rubbish like “I am pretty sure old George fell ill and finally secumbed to something like cancer, died in his sleep in RBH” …. WTF!!??
Mark: (& wpd) Pls see above mild chastisement regarding giving currency to reports of persons’ demises being untimely and exaggerated and …
“the fake nun in the white tuxedo who pushed an empty wheelchair down the middle of New Farm streets for many years” … (Shudders, remembering, sort of, the Hacienda’s Sunday 5-7 sessions, after the RE’s 4-6 one had shut…. Now that was a freek show) … You might ask around New Farm, probably any gallery, about your village’s Pope Alice, … that description sounds like it may very well have been one of her incarnations. In his/her case, I doubt you’d have to give the ethics of public discussion a second thought, Alice is/was overtly a work of art, any publicity, as they say … I fully expect him/her to be working on a plan to upstage the Benedict one when he gets here.
Glad to R&R George lives!
Helen I think I know your “military” guy from around Footscary. My last contact would be a few years ago now. He says he is Baron Von Richtofen and dresses as such. He is clean and neatly dressed. He perhaps may dance to a different reality to most but he is articulate and intelligent within that reality.
Re the Rose St flyer/Nth Fitzroy leather dude: a couple of young female Japanese tourists want a photo of him – he happily consents, but only after dragging one of them in real close to share in the portrait.
The nervous excitement was a bright spot in my otherwise dreary day.
But speaking of outer urban eccentrics. What more apposite thread to find FXH? The first bagman to get a blog.
Umm, I don’t know how eccentric you have to be to count as eccentric in New York, but I have caught my local subway line at three completely random times of the week, only to be accompanied by “My Girl” guy.
“My Girl” guy sits on the train all day singing “My Girl”. He has a not-terribly-good voice and a not-terribly-good sense of rhythm. At least his pitch is passable, mostly. He makes many people, including myself, leave the train a stop or two before their actual destination.
Maybe he just likes having the carriage to himself.
Then there are the gospel panhandlers. Four guys who dress a bit like Flava Flav who run up and down the carriages singing a syncopated four-part harmony version of “Let It Shine”, interspersed with contrapuntal thanks and blessings to everyone who gives them a quarter for Jesus.
Finally, there is doomed guy. Doomed guy preaches in an impressive basso profundo about how we’re all doomed, and that we shouldn’t be worried about the election because there’s troops dying in Iraq. He makes people leave the train early too.
wbb – I shall be shuffling outside your house yelling and waving soonish.
FXH, your comment #39 let me on a fascinating jaunt through Google images. While the Baron Von Richthofen was quite an uncanny and wonderful looking dude, and as scary as, he never seemed to wear the diagonal bandolier look. Neither did the Confederate recruit whose picture I found, but I also found a group picture with people of varying ranks and I did see the diagonal strap there.
Whatsisname may identify with the Bloody Red Baron but his costume is a wonderful conflation of several kinds of things, I think, with a dose of his own fashion sense. I’ll still give him a wide berth, though.
David: the gentleman’s name is Johnny Haysman, and he has a Facebook group.