Good call on newspaper guy, I used to see him all the time as well. Did he pass? Haven't seen him in a loooooong time, however, I don't hang in Adams Morgan/Dupont/U Street too often.
Edit: Also, I used to hear all kinds of crazy things about him, his life, etc... Any deets?
Hutch had found a city paper article a few years back
but have not see or heard from him in over a decade
oh well I saw him a few years back.. maybe 3..
well electric blue suit guy otherwise known as newspaper guy was fascinating.. he had this schedule he would do every day around Adams/Dupont/U Street where he would stop say at a bookstore , buy a paper, then shuffle down the hill to say the record store/. he would talk to the store clerk who would seem mildly irritated- sometimes- then move along and he just spent all day like that going from place to place to place..without exception no matter the weather.. no matter how hot in his electric blue suit..I think he also had a gray suit.. both were quiet OVERSIZED..
when I had a child on the autism spectrum three years back and realized a little about what it was -which took a while- I put 2 and 2 together and began to think maybe he was on the spectrum... probably high functioning maybe aspergers (which is a weird classification).... i think it explains a bit of his behavior which was so repetitive in many aspects: always the same clothes.. always the same stores/.. the same walk in the same order....even the shuffle walk (my child has OT/ST/PT issues)...there used to be a facebook page dedicated to him.. "where is mark" I forget his last name...but it sort of petered out.. I think one time I posted a picture of him on that page...people would be like posting "saw him on the bla bla bus at 3:42 pm Thursday".. the owner of Som records would know where he is that is for sure as he used to stop there all the time even though he never not once bought anything..
he sure walked a lot... one of the last times I saw him was all the way up in Columbia Heights in front of that mall with the Target (on the other side of the street).. probably six years ago
the rumour I always heard was that he was a trust fund guy which afforded him the ability to do pretty much nothing... I can't imagine he would have enjoyed sticking around as the neighborhood became so horribly gentrified and so much of what he was "used to" changed.. it would be horribly "uprooting" for someone on the spectrum who defined his life in terms of doing the same things and having the same limited social interactions with the same people to have that all change so drastically..on the other hand changing environments entirely could be even worse so he might still be around..
I have to say he always seemed like a nice guy.. just a little out of sorts..all the times I walked past him I don't know that I ever said "hi" because there was some really weird vibe.. of course I ran into him so much on those circuits of his- because I had my own circuits for years (2003-2010) so maybe he thought/thinks the same thing about me! And sometimes it does make me wonder...like maybe I'm the socially dysfunctional one..well I kinda am as you can tell.
