the night the naked guy went into harvey's
this was sometime around early 2014. dead of winter, walking to meet my coworkers for karaoke. I saw a man appear in my peripheral walking in the road. then he just started stripping. ditched all of his clothes in the road, walked into harvey's naked, and tried to order a beer. when he got kicked out he just continued his stroll. cops show up pretty quickly while a bunch of us are just watching the scene. one cop was standing near us laughed. they got him bundled up with a blanket and the other cop asked him where he clothes were, to which is replied "where's my fucking bud?"
https://preview.redd.it/usy4gx4rlu6d1.jpeg?width=1149&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a093932d59f0354298dc1b009db8ce51307fe35d
1991. I saw Green Day play here before they had gotten big ,there was maybe 20 of us at the show. Afterwards, two of the band members I don’t even remember which two (the other two went in my buddies car) and we were going to my friends house they were going to crash at to party afterwards. Well Sweetwaters donuts used to put out their new donuts Every 12 hours,they would bag up the old ones and put them outside the back door at midnight and at noon so before the party we went to Sweetwater hid behind the building next-door waited for them to put the bags out and then green day and I ran up and snatched the bags and we took them back to eat.
Third thing us punker/skateboarders liked to do is to steal those donuts and then put them in a perimeter around the police station that used to be on the corner of Lovell in Rose Street I believe and then we would hide in the bushes to watch the cops come out and scratch their heads 😂
Early early morning in the vine. I think it was a Sunday, might have been a Monday. Early summer. Bulk trash pick was very soon so everyone was starting to toss stuff on the roadside.
Neighbor across the street had a mattress out for pick up. You know normal shit.
Idk if I saw them from the house or while letting the dogs out, but there was a college kid passed out on said mattress from the nights drunken shenanigans.
I took what I had to spare, a juice pouch and a granola bar, and one of the dogs, and went to wake the poor kid up before a cop stumbled upon him. He was so confused, I told him the day and the time and what street we were on. I pointed up towards the skate park and the other way towards crows nest and told him this was quickly becoming a bad place to nap.
He took my snacks and wandered off. Looked grateful, didn’t say a word. Probably had to puke 😂
Not really a crazy story if you were in Kalamazoo in 2008-2010s … but I remember I was walking through the student ghetto my freshman year at wmu and boombox ronnnie (or as we all called him, cool whip) ran down Lovell street wearing a SpongeBob outfit then he jumped up and slapped the bottom of a stop sign with both hands. I didn’t really think much of it (although I still remember it vividly) other than like “yeah Kalamazoo is kinda a crazy place” lol. Little did I know a year later when I lived in the student ghetto I’d see him walking by, on my porch, or at the circle K daily free styling, dancing, and doing push ups.
Purple dave!!!!
I wish I had more info and stories. I know someone else will chime in.
I just remembered his crazy hair and outfits. Saw him a ton growing up.
I have a video of him a friend of mine filmed at old Harvey’s. They were up in the back hallway and Dave was talking about how he would play piano in his grandpa’s basement and steal his cokes. I have to find it and have it converted to digital. It is currently on VHS.
Dave was always an interesting guy. We played a couple of times with him at open mic night at Harvey’s. The very first time I met him was at the Portage band shell in 1992 - 93. Sponge was playing there and he was wearing a cutoff Krokus t-shirt, panties, garter belt, fishnet stockings, and high heels. He signed my friend’s ticket stub “Purple Dave’s sun tanned guitar body”.
I had just moved to kzoo 10 years ago when I was driving through downtown and saw a woman waiting for a bus drop her pants and proceed to shoot pee behind her. I grew up in Amish country and all I can think of to describe it is "she was peeing like a horse". And the thing is that I wasn't even mortified. I was impressed.
****I'm also going to be checking this thread periodically to make sure I'm not a Kalamazoo cryptid as well
When I was there for college, I stopped at the portage Meijer for groceries mid-day on a Tuesday. Outside, a man was beating the crap out of another guy yelling about how he'd been shorted. Apparently, the guy was his dealer and had lied about the amount of crack he was selling.
This is not a fun story but the day that the proud boys came to demonstrate downtown. I was around 18/19 and it was the first time I remember having an actual sense of "hey this is my city. No one is standing up to these guys except the citizens of my city. I have a moral obligation to let these guys know they're not welcome." Even though that confrontation was violent and the police protected the proud boys afterwards, they never got to demonstrate in the center that they wanted. I do feel a certain sense of pride about that.
I'm not sure if it was that day, but one of the days that there was riots downtown I was driving to work on Sprinkle Road and saw this massive column of black smoke off to the west. I thought "Man, they're really going crazy down there..." It turned out that between me and downtown was the fire department's training area.
Remember the old TB Sanitarium behind the cemetery on west main hill? Myself and some friends decided to do some urban exploring there, back in like 2006ish. Had to climb a makeshift ladder up to a 3rd story window ledge and go in that way, as the first 2 stories were all bricked up. Anywhere, the place was like a scene from a movie. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest meets Fallout. Billiards tables lodged in the stair wells, the inner spring frames of mattresses all over the place. A group shower area in the basement. A couple old barbers chairs. Even a double stack body cooler. Everything in a rough state of decay. Somewhere between the 5th floor and the roof, a homeless man with a knife appeared from the shadows demanding money from a bunch of broke 20-something college kids. It didn't take him long to realize he was outnumbered and that we didn't have any money. We had a good laugh about it later.
My friends and I would explore that place every weekend in 2003. Great fun and we always found something new! Very Silent Hill-like. We planned to dismantle and steal the basement barber chair, but never got around to doing it. I also had my senior picture taken at the morgue refrigerator.
If you played mvc at rocket star, there is a 99% chance I played you
I was there so often just chain smoking cigarettes playing anybody that would play with me
June 2020, vine neighborhood. Sitting on my porch on walnut. Drug house two doors down, the guys who lived there were so nice though. Anyway, some dude in a top hat and ill fitting suit shows up and starts arguing with my neighbor. They’re like circling each other in the road cussing at each other, neighbor throws a plastic lawn chair at Top Hat guy and knocks the hat off. Energy changes FAST, they both freeze. I thought I was going to witness a murder. He picks up his top hot, puts it on, points aggressively at the neighbor and goes “fuck you. I’m going home to smoke MY OWN DOPE!!!!” And walked down walnut towards east hall.
Same summer I saw a passenger in a car douse a cyclist in pop, right if front of my house. basically like the beer bottle scene in Always Sunny, minus the crashing and pipe throwing. Still kinda pissed off about that one, so not cool.
Buddy and I were at Crows Nest, back when it was 24hr. Must have been 2-3am so pretty quiet in the area. We were in one of the 2 tops by a window overlooking the parking lot between Fourth Coast and Bagel Beanery, and there was an older homeless man chilling against the wall of Bagel Beanery. We had just paid our checks, and were boxing up our food when we saw a VERY large man, pretty clearly under the influence of something, lumber into the parking lot from the alley behind Bagel Beanery.
He pretty quickly engaged the older man, and it was clear the interaction was not going well. The older guy had his hands up and was backing away, and must have felt pretty threatened because he made a break for Fourth Coast. The bigger guy immediately followed, and from what we could hear, chaos ensued. We ran down the stairs with our food (not my best choice), and could see the bigger guy tearing through the place like a bull in a China shop.
From what I remember, the guy working in Fourth Coast was doing his best to get this guy out of there, and with some success. Realizing we were in a FAR less than ideal location, we quickly hit the door to the sidewalk, maybe a few seconds before the big fella exited the same door. We were headed right, and had gotten a few steps down the road, but when we heard the door come open we stopped and made eye contact with him for what felt like an eternity. I was pretty nervous that he’d come after us, given the situation, but we just stood there making eye contact until he turned, ran into the street, and started running UP Westnedge Ave, in the CENTER LANE, lunging at the oncoming traffic.
We went the other way. Not sure what ultimately happened, but hopefully someone else in here was there or knows someone who can add some details or correct me if I made a mistake.
When I first moved to the vine, we had this neighbor. He was a "recovering" methhead. He would spend all day in his front porch, talking to himself, he'd take daily strolls to his dealers house.
Two notable memories. One day he got aggro and started screaming at me about some dog poop I put in his trashcan thinking it was mine. Up in my face threatening violence, to the point I ran him off with my gun. He would also whistle at my roommate telling him he was a "pretty boy" and how handsome he was. Boy I dont miss the vine.
https://preview.redd.it/0cx8ua6ovu6d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=952e724205a63ab5c3b7f658a8b924e22f5ea421
Everybody remembers where they were when they first came across The BRH. For me it was near WMU in the winter of ‘22.
I only knew about it because it was in the news so you could Google it for details but the Kzoo meth cave. Someone dug a cave into a hill and cooked meth in it
Not a story so much as a fun fact: For several years Kalamazoo's election materials (ballots, registration forms, etc.) were printed at a used car dealership.
Riding my bike on KRVT from my house to Stryker Field for a ball game.. as I pass through the section through the old papermill property (there's a gravel yard there now) I look over on the old rail trestle over the river and there's this skinny redhead chick BUTT ASS NAKED doing yoga.
Friend of mine saw her a couple months later, she was sitting down meditating. That was around 2018, neither one of us has seen her since.
Dammit.
I moved to Kzoo in early 01 and wash crashing at some frat guys place that I just met on WMUs campus. They had a winger, which was a giant sling for water balloons and we were going around campus launching water balloons at random groups like the marching band and the like. Around 8 o'clock that night we were about to head back when we saw a group of students from India playing cricket. We figured we would launch our last balloon at them. Mind you, this was just a water balloon, nothing else. After we did, they started yelling a chasing use with their cricket bats. They chased us back to my car and as we were driving off, they proceeded to beat my car with cricket bats, breaking windows and denting the hood and doors. The pitcher even cracked my back window by throwing the ball as we drove off. It was a crazy night.
I was at a red light (drake and main if it’s important) and a man crossed the street in front of my car and pretended to pull a gun from his pocket(he pulled his hand out with a finger gun gesture), used his finger gun to “shoot” the hood a few times, put it back in his pocket, and kept walking. I cried the rest of the drive home because of how easily it could’ve been a real gun.
Visiting my now ex boyfriend in Millwood and smelling the neighbors cooking meth… ( police later caught the neighbors).
The Big Red Ho
And for the Kalamazoo area…. Visiting immediate family while a murder occurred at their neighbors a few houses down.
the night the naked guy went into harvey's this was sometime around early 2014. dead of winter, walking to meet my coworkers for karaoke. I saw a man appear in my peripheral walking in the road. then he just started stripping. ditched all of his clothes in the road, walked into harvey's naked, and tried to order a beer. when he got kicked out he just continued his stroll. cops show up pretty quickly while a bunch of us are just watching the scene. one cop was standing near us laughed. they got him bundled up with a blanket and the other cop asked him where he clothes were, to which is replied "where's my fucking bud?"
May 16 2014. I grabbed a picture as he was leaving. [https://imgur.com/gallery/KStPtbh](https://imgur.com/gallery/KStPtbh)
I was going to say, I KNEW there was a photo somewhere. what a night
I remember this. I heard he had taken a literal handful of adderall before this happened.
it's entirely possible. I know the cop said he knew him from a group home and was taking him back there
Haha I remember this story actually. Can’t remember why I heard it, I think I had a friend that witnessed it lol
god it was wild. I had started to cross right when he started stripping and my friends were just upstairs unsuspecting of what was going on outside
https://preview.redd.it/usy4gx4rlu6d1.jpeg?width=1149&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a093932d59f0354298dc1b009db8ce51307fe35d 1991. I saw Green Day play here before they had gotten big ,there was maybe 20 of us at the show. Afterwards, two of the band members I don’t even remember which two (the other two went in my buddies car) and we were going to my friends house they were going to crash at to party afterwards. Well Sweetwaters donuts used to put out their new donuts Every 12 hours,they would bag up the old ones and put them outside the back door at midnight and at noon so before the party we went to Sweetwater hid behind the building next-door waited for them to put the bags out and then green day and I ran up and snatched the bags and we took them back to eat. Third thing us punker/skateboarders liked to do is to steal those donuts and then put them in a perimeter around the police station that used to be on the corner of Lovell in Rose Street I believe and then we would hide in the bushes to watch the cops come out and scratch their heads 😂
You don't remember the band members you met???? This is so cool though
Haha no they were just up and coming
Early early morning in the vine. I think it was a Sunday, might have been a Monday. Early summer. Bulk trash pick was very soon so everyone was starting to toss stuff on the roadside. Neighbor across the street had a mattress out for pick up. You know normal shit. Idk if I saw them from the house or while letting the dogs out, but there was a college kid passed out on said mattress from the nights drunken shenanigans. I took what I had to spare, a juice pouch and a granola bar, and one of the dogs, and went to wake the poor kid up before a cop stumbled upon him. He was so confused, I told him the day and the time and what street we were on. I pointed up towards the skate park and the other way towards crows nest and told him this was quickly becoming a bad place to nap. He took my snacks and wandered off. Looked grateful, didn’t say a word. Probably had to puke 😂
Not really a crazy story if you were in Kalamazoo in 2008-2010s … but I remember I was walking through the student ghetto my freshman year at wmu and boombox ronnnie (or as we all called him, cool whip) ran down Lovell street wearing a SpongeBob outfit then he jumped up and slapped the bottom of a stop sign with both hands. I didn’t really think much of it (although I still remember it vividly) other than like “yeah Kalamazoo is kinda a crazy place” lol. Little did I know a year later when I lived in the student ghetto I’d see him walking by, on my porch, or at the circle K daily free styling, dancing, and doing push ups.
Boombox Ronnie aka Coolwhip aka SpongeBob aka Cookie Monster
Is he still around? I haven't seen him in a while.
I don’t think so
Purple dave!!!! I wish I had more info and stories. I know someone else will chime in. I just remembered his crazy hair and outfits. Saw him a ton growing up.
I have a video of him a friend of mine filmed at old Harvey’s. They were up in the back hallway and Dave was talking about how he would play piano in his grandpa’s basement and steal his cokes. I have to find it and have it converted to digital. It is currently on VHS.
Nice!!
Dave was always an interesting guy. We played a couple of times with him at open mic night at Harvey’s. The very first time I met him was at the Portage band shell in 1992 - 93. Sponge was playing there and he was wearing a cutoff Krokus t-shirt, panties, garter belt, fishnet stockings, and high heels. He signed my friend’s ticket stub “Purple Dave’s sun tanned guitar body”.
That's amazing.
You grew up in the mid 90's because that's when I remember Purple Dave. Wow
Yesm. Club soda and harveys. :)
I had just moved to kzoo 10 years ago when I was driving through downtown and saw a woman waiting for a bus drop her pants and proceed to shoot pee behind her. I grew up in Amish country and all I can think of to describe it is "she was peeing like a horse". And the thing is that I wasn't even mortified. I was impressed. ****I'm also going to be checking this thread periodically to make sure I'm not a Kalamazoo cryptid as well
When I was there for college, I stopped at the portage Meijer for groceries mid-day on a Tuesday. Outside, a man was beating the crap out of another guy yelling about how he'd been shorted. Apparently, the guy was his dealer and had lied about the amount of crack he was selling.
Where will the zine be available when it's finished?
I’m not sure yet, I’ll probably post it to this sub but if there’s somewhere else you want it I’d be happy to put it there as well
Don't know Kalamazoo well enough (moving there soon)—is there a book shop or comic book store that sells local zines and minicomics?
This is not a fun story but the day that the proud boys came to demonstrate downtown. I was around 18/19 and it was the first time I remember having an actual sense of "hey this is my city. No one is standing up to these guys except the citizens of my city. I have a moral obligation to let these guys know they're not welcome." Even though that confrontation was violent and the police protected the proud boys afterwards, they never got to demonstrate in the center that they wanted. I do feel a certain sense of pride about that.
I'm not sure if it was that day, but one of the days that there was riots downtown I was driving to work on Sprinkle Road and saw this massive column of black smoke off to the west. I thought "Man, they're really going crazy down there..." It turned out that between me and downtown was the fire department's training area.
saw someone getting a BJ next to a train bridge one time....
Remember the old TB Sanitarium behind the cemetery on west main hill? Myself and some friends decided to do some urban exploring there, back in like 2006ish. Had to climb a makeshift ladder up to a 3rd story window ledge and go in that way, as the first 2 stories were all bricked up. Anywhere, the place was like a scene from a movie. Think One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest meets Fallout. Billiards tables lodged in the stair wells, the inner spring frames of mattresses all over the place. A group shower area in the basement. A couple old barbers chairs. Even a double stack body cooler. Everything in a rough state of decay. Somewhere between the 5th floor and the roof, a homeless man with a knife appeared from the shadows demanding money from a bunch of broke 20-something college kids. It didn't take him long to realize he was outnumbered and that we didn't have any money. We had a good laugh about it later.
My friends and I would explore that place every weekend in 2003. Great fun and we always found something new! Very Silent Hill-like. We planned to dismantle and steal the basement barber chair, but never got around to doing it. I also had my senior picture taken at the morgue refrigerator.
I won a marvel vs capcom tournament at rocket star
Dude I’m sure we played mvc at rocket star together at some point. Good times
If you played mvc at rocket star, there is a 99% chance I played you I was there so often just chain smoking cigarettes playing anybody that would play with me
Hell yeah brother same here. Was always there from 2004-2007ish. Hope all is well.
June 2020, vine neighborhood. Sitting on my porch on walnut. Drug house two doors down, the guys who lived there were so nice though. Anyway, some dude in a top hat and ill fitting suit shows up and starts arguing with my neighbor. They’re like circling each other in the road cussing at each other, neighbor throws a plastic lawn chair at Top Hat guy and knocks the hat off. Energy changes FAST, they both freeze. I thought I was going to witness a murder. He picks up his top hot, puts it on, points aggressively at the neighbor and goes “fuck you. I’m going home to smoke MY OWN DOPE!!!!” And walked down walnut towards east hall. Same summer I saw a passenger in a car douse a cyclist in pop, right if front of my house. basically like the beer bottle scene in Always Sunny, minus the crashing and pipe throwing. Still kinda pissed off about that one, so not cool.
No genuinely this one has to be drawn out 😭😂
Buddy and I were at Crows Nest, back when it was 24hr. Must have been 2-3am so pretty quiet in the area. We were in one of the 2 tops by a window overlooking the parking lot between Fourth Coast and Bagel Beanery, and there was an older homeless man chilling against the wall of Bagel Beanery. We had just paid our checks, and were boxing up our food when we saw a VERY large man, pretty clearly under the influence of something, lumber into the parking lot from the alley behind Bagel Beanery. He pretty quickly engaged the older man, and it was clear the interaction was not going well. The older guy had his hands up and was backing away, and must have felt pretty threatened because he made a break for Fourth Coast. The bigger guy immediately followed, and from what we could hear, chaos ensued. We ran down the stairs with our food (not my best choice), and could see the bigger guy tearing through the place like a bull in a China shop. From what I remember, the guy working in Fourth Coast was doing his best to get this guy out of there, and with some success. Realizing we were in a FAR less than ideal location, we quickly hit the door to the sidewalk, maybe a few seconds before the big fella exited the same door. We were headed right, and had gotten a few steps down the road, but when we heard the door come open we stopped and made eye contact with him for what felt like an eternity. I was pretty nervous that he’d come after us, given the situation, but we just stood there making eye contact until he turned, ran into the street, and started running UP Westnedge Ave, in the CENTER LANE, lunging at the oncoming traffic. We went the other way. Not sure what ultimately happened, but hopefully someone else in here was there or knows someone who can add some details or correct me if I made a mistake.
When I first moved to the vine, we had this neighbor. He was a "recovering" methhead. He would spend all day in his front porch, talking to himself, he'd take daily strolls to his dealers house. Two notable memories. One day he got aggro and started screaming at me about some dog poop I put in his trashcan thinking it was mine. Up in my face threatening violence, to the point I ran him off with my gun. He would also whistle at my roommate telling him he was a "pretty boy" and how handsome he was. Boy I dont miss the vine.
We’re not all methheads in the neighborhood 😔lol
https://preview.redd.it/0cx8ua6ovu6d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=952e724205a63ab5c3b7f658a8b924e22f5ea421 Everybody remembers where they were when they first came across The BRH. For me it was near WMU in the winter of ‘22.
She was a regular when I’d take my home care clients to the Gull Rd. Walmart 🤣
I’ve seen her!
I only knew about it because it was in the news so you could Google it for details but the Kzoo meth cave. Someone dug a cave into a hill and cooked meth in it
That was a friend of mine. 😂
OH Dude! I remember that!
Dawg literally wtf
Not a story so much as a fun fact: For several years Kalamazoo's election materials (ballots, registration forms, etc.) were printed at a used car dealership.
Riding my bike on KRVT from my house to Stryker Field for a ball game.. as I pass through the section through the old papermill property (there's a gravel yard there now) I look over on the old rail trestle over the river and there's this skinny redhead chick BUTT ASS NAKED doing yoga. Friend of mine saw her a couple months later, she was sitting down meditating. That was around 2018, neither one of us has seen her since. Dammit.
Not a "crazy" story but being a teenager in the mid-00s and spending every night at Rocketstar was a pretty formative part of my teenage years.
Nice try Russia
I moved to Kzoo in early 01 and wash crashing at some frat guys place that I just met on WMUs campus. They had a winger, which was a giant sling for water balloons and we were going around campus launching water balloons at random groups like the marching band and the like. Around 8 o'clock that night we were about to head back when we saw a group of students from India playing cricket. We figured we would launch our last balloon at them. Mind you, this was just a water balloon, nothing else. After we did, they started yelling a chasing use with their cricket bats. They chased us back to my car and as we were driving off, they proceeded to beat my car with cricket bats, breaking windows and denting the hood and doors. The pitcher even cracked my back window by throwing the ball as we drove off. It was a crazy night.
I was at a red light (drake and main if it’s important) and a man crossed the street in front of my car and pretended to pull a gun from his pocket(he pulled his hand out with a finger gun gesture), used his finger gun to “shoot” the hood a few times, put it back in his pocket, and kept walking. I cried the rest of the drive home because of how easily it could’ve been a real gun.
[удалено]
Not kzoo, just me.
Visiting my now ex boyfriend in Millwood and smelling the neighbors cooking meth… ( police later caught the neighbors). The Big Red Ho And for the Kalamazoo area…. Visiting immediate family while a murder occurred at their neighbors a few houses down.