These are the people in your neighborhood....

Shout out to anybody who recognizes the song title in the heading, first of all.  No guesses?
It's this shit:

Yeah dude. This song is my jam.  Anyway. I think one of the things that makes work so "special" for lack of  a better word, is the fact that UWSiders are just all kinds of crazy.  Also, we're located directly across the street from an old people's/ people with various other weird shit problems home, and they come in a lot. Honestly, I feel like I have a unique perspective on this, since I did spend some time in a ward back in the day, and the guests we get at work could give those patients a run for their money.

Like that one time that guy came in at 9AM, demanded pork chops, was sad when he couldn't get them, and then  sat talking to his invisible friend "Ivan" for an entire hour, sipping grapefruit juice out of a soup bowl. He was fun.

Guys like that always stand out because they're so far gone into weird territory, but if we're lucky they're one time visitors.  Sometimes they're not. Leg Juice Debbie came in for God only knows how many years before we could ban her.  But often the crazies tend to come and go.  The severe ones anyway.

Then there's the lesser category of crazy, the "not quite dangerous but definitely weird and annoying as fuck" people that you're forced to see every day.  Specifically, the booksellers.

There's a group of crazy old booksellers that set up camp directly outside the restaurant, and damn are they weird.  They don't seem to sell more than a book or two a day, but they're constantly coming in to use the toilet or ask for change.  There's a few of them, but the most notable are the guy with the horrible troll laugh, and the guy who looks like Exeter from This Island Earth.

And actually, he doesn't even look like this anymore because over the winter he grew a giant fucking Santa beard and also grew his hair out. So now he just looks like a crazy bum with a yellow beard. But when he's clean shaven he looks like Exeter which reminds me of MST3K, and because of that I end up hating him a little less.

The troll guy is a fat little fucker who wears a squashed pork pie hat, a t-shirt that says "Feh", and headphones ninety percent of the time.  Sometimes he'll come in and eat yogurt or something, but mostly he sits out on the street laughing like a hyena in a blender. I've actually been waiting on outside tables and heard some sort of hair raising other worldly sound, only to discover our friend the cackler laughing about God knows what.

The other day they were all out there measuring the sidewalk. Maybe they're planning a hostile takeover.  Books V Baguettes the EPIC SHOWDOWN.   One day the crazy book men will storm the premises, and I'll lackadaisically barricade myself behind the chairs, while deciding whether or not I actually care.