If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes in Silver Lake, you’ve seen him. It just won’t be the same.
Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more.... More by Lindy West
Are you going all LA/NY like Dan too, then? Hmph.
this reminds me of a guy in Allentown, PA who walks around with a cat on his shoulders. The cat’s constantly going back and forth from shoulder to shoulder. I felt like whenever I saw him it was going to be a good day, and when ever I was telling friends about him he’d show up like he knew we were talking about him.
thanks for sharing this
The Asian lady in this video is totally trumping Walking Man, sorry.
Sorry for bitching @1, that’s a beautiful video.
So what happened to him, did he get run over or something?
@ 6, he was found dead in his hot tub.
I have dozens of friends who live in Silverlake, and my facebook page was spammed with tributes about this guy. He was a doctor, 58 years old who walked something like 20 miles a day, usually reading like the video showed. He apparently ate nothing but junk food and got about 3 hours of sleep at night, so he probably was not the healthiest individual despite his appearance.
I’ve seen him with a shirt on before. Out in front of Tropical across the street from Silversun Liquor.
It was a Skrewdriver shirt.
There’s a guy like this in Ithaca, NY, too… you see him ALL WINTER, and he’s buff as fuck.
there was a guy like this in the town i grew up in westchester county, ny. we called him ‘the walker’ and the different myths about his reasons for walking were remarkably similar to the ones posited in this video.
@10, @2: Pittsburgh has “The Running Lady” although she has since retired from Downtown and The North Shore and is now in Baldwin/Whitehall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IniKEuGqd…
@4, she totally did, “He’s not handsome but he’s passable”. I LOVE that line!!! I gonna use it at the Cuff tonight.
@8
Isn’t Skrewdriver a (Nazi) skinhead band?
That lady who said she didn’t want to know anything about him was right.
@8 “I’ve seen him with a shirt on before. Out in front of Tropical across the street from Silversun Liquor.
It was a Skrewdriver shirt.”
Oh bullshit. You saw someone sun-baked in a Skrewdriver shirt, but there’s no way a public figure wears a neo-nazi shirt in public without there being more stories than this.
Thank you for posting this. It is nice to see my old neighborhood. Rest in peace, Walking Man.
Thank you, Lindy – I knew nothing about the Silver Lake Walking Man until I read your post, watched the video and then followed the various links. He was obviously one of those people that make the world more interesting for the rest of us. May there always be more like him to remind us to be amused, bemused, and not take life too seriously.
Funny, I often walked past him without a second thought.
Local coroner ruled his death a suicide today.