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.

“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.

The nervous excitement was a bright spot in my otherwise dreary day.

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.

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).

“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

The police arrived, but left. They were obviously acquainted with him.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.