I live and work in a semi-major southern city. My office and apartment are literally around the corner from one another. This lifestyle is fantastic. My car is safely tucked away in a parking deck and on average I see it about once a week. In minutes, I can walk to the main bar district in the city and should I be unable to walk back afterwards, it’s five bucks to take a cab home. Metropolitan living really has its advantages and I am surprised more young professionals in my area have yet to embrace it. You see, the city is what they call transitional. This means that 40 years ago it was a thriving urban center but throughout the 70s and 80s businesses and residents fled to the suburbs leaving empty office space and abandoned warehouses and buildings. During the last ten years businesses have been returning and investors have dumped huge sums of money into converting the empty buildings into luxury apartments and condos to attract people not unlike myself. The thing the city is having difficulty shedding is the reputation it gained during its lesser years as a cesspool of gang violence and murder. The truth is, it is very safe now but the myth is perpetuated when sheltered suburbanites venture downtown and encounter the homeless. One such vagrant fills his days in the alley outside of my apartment building. We have come to refer to him as Crazy Man.

Crazy Man: The first Encounter

I first met crazy man before I moved downtown. There is a Mexican restaurant that my coworkers and I frequent and Crazy Man spends a good deal of his time in the alley outside of the restaurant. One day on the way to lunch at the restaurant, Crazy Man was standing on the corner and as I walked by him, he looked at me and said “I want to go to the crack house, that’s right, the crack house”. My coworkers and I continued into the restaurant barely able to contain our laughter.

Crazy Man: The next Encounter

About a week after we met crazy man, we were back at the same restaurant (they have a special I particularly like on Thursdays, so I go there just about every week). While sitting in the restaurant eating, I noticed Crazy Man was outside. He was holding a cup and looking in through the massive windows that make up the front of the restaurant. After about five minutes, he walked in repeating “It’s a crazy man, a crazy man”. (This was when he got his name). Crazy Man walked through the restaurant to the self service soda dispenser. Instead of filling his cup like a normal patron, he lifted the metal grate where the spilled ice and overflowed soda fall and filled his cup with the leftover ice and soda mixture that reside down there before melting and going down the drain. He then replaced the grate and left the restaurant.

Move-in day: Getting to know Crazy Man’s real Personality

In late August my roommate (who happens to also work in the same office as me) and I decided we wanted to move back downtown. We chose an apartment around the corner from our office in a newly converted former commercial building. This building is located next to the Mexican restaurant previously mentioned.

Putting it politely, my roommate’s mom is a worrier. She is one of the sheltered suburbanites mentioned previously and is definitely convinced that the two of us are going to get killed living downtown. On move-in day she was lending a hand with the process. Mostly she held the door while the two of us carted things to the elevator and then into our apartment. On one such trip while my roommate and I were upstairs, Crazy Man emerged from the alley. A car had just parked at the curb and its occupants had exited the vehicle and were standing next to it on the sidewalk. Crazy man walked into one of members of the group. This made Crazy Man very angry. He started shouting “you motherfucker, god damn motherfuckers, shit, god damn shit motherfuckers.” The trouble was, he was walking away from the person he had bumped. We’re not sure what was going on inside his head but we’re reasonably certain whatever it was, it was only loosely based on reality.

Some notes on Crazy Man

I have lived downtown for five months now. During that time, I have learned a great deal about Crazy Man. Turns out, his name isn’t Crazy Man, it is Rodney. Rodney spends his days in the alley between my apartment building and the Mexican place. Mostly he sits and stares at the wall. Sometimes he sweeps the alley with scraps of cardboard, other times he rearranges the contents of the alley. Frequently, Rodney likes to sing. He usually wears jeans with the legs rolled up just above his ankles and has a rotation of faded t-shirts. He has long scraggly hair that is washed out from years in the sun. He wears a bandana around his forehead most days to keep his hair out of his face. The odd thing about Rodney’s appearance is that somehow, he always has clean socks. His socks are bright white every day. They were doing some construction on the building that the Mexican place is in which provided a great deal of entertainment for me as Rodney interacted with the construction workers. Occasionally, when he is out there by himself, especially on weekends, Rodney gets mad. I’m not sure what sets him off, but he will throw things and yell and then eventually storm off to who knows where. There are some videos of this odd behavior. I suppose this is a good time to mention that Rodney does not live in the alley. We are not sure where he lives, though we did follow him one evening when he left. We lost him about eight blocks away in an area that contains a half way house for crazy people. It is possible he lives there. We will follow him again one day and try to confirm it. Rodney keeps a pretty regular schedule though, he shows up in the mornings around 6 AM (singing and yelling which generally wakes me up) and he leaves just before it gets dark in the evening. It’s almost like hanging out in that alley is his job. He is rarely there on the weekends but occasionally, I guess when he has extra work to catch up on, he’ll show up on a Saturday or Sunday.

One final note, if it was not evident from what I have written, it is clear that Rodney is a schizophrenic. He clearly sees things that the rest of us cannot. You will understand this when you watch the videos. The videos were taken from the window in my living room. Because we are many floors above, Rodney cannot hear us open the window and so is not yet aware that we watch (and video tape) him from above.

Check out the video and enjoy.

Ice Man