September 12 06:13 AM

Bum of the week #23

Published in Bum of The Week

Donald has tried the shelters but finds them counterproductive. Like the one on Taylor Street where he saw people smuggling in booze and weapons over the fence when they know they’re not supposed to.

August 19 05:11 PM

Bum of the Week (# 22)

Published in Bum of The Week

At 2 a.m. outside a wing joint on Harden Street, 50-year-old Sam, a homeless black man and Gulf War veteran with 38 confirmed kills knows he can’t go inside.

August 01 05:25 AM

AUG.1 Bum of The Week (#21)

Published in Bum of The Week

Dean became homeless after his father shot him with a .38-caliber pistol.

By Corey Hutchins

July 03 01:53 AM

Bum of the Week

Published in Bum of The Week

Howard, who grew up in Newberry and went to high school there, says he became homeless because he “got careless.”

“I forgot about myself, ” is how he puts it. “I did everything for everybody and forgot about myself. That’s all it is. That’s what got me homeless. When I got down I couldn’t get back up.”

June 20 05:07 AM

Richard, Five Points post office

Published in Bum of The Week

Richard, a black man with a scruffy beard, loose clothes and a blue baseball cap yanked down over his balding pate, used to drive tractor trailers in the ‘70s and was pulling in over $1,000 a week. He was also the first black ice cream salesman in Columbia and had his own shop near where he’s standing now, homeless, penniless, holding a box of not-yet-stale pizza. He was once the head cook at the Blue Cross Blue Shield. He was in the Army for eight years, too. Been to Europe five times. Now he sleeps on a piece of cardboard in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Five Points

June 07 04:47 AM

Wayne, corner of Hampton and Huger

Published in Bum of The Week

“The thing is,” he says in a jangly accent through a mouthful of teeth that looks like string of busted fence posts, “it’s illegal to do what I’m doin’…

May 09 05:00 AM

"Dreadlock," Park Street in the Vista

Published in Bum of The Week

“It looked like a monster. Like a monster movie but it wasn’t a movie,” he says. “I was just looking at his face, I was so shocked. It had eyes and a nose and ears [pointed] this way and a thing sticking up, you know. It looked like a gargoyle. I wasn’t on drugs.” When the spaceship touched down Dreadlock tried to run to catch it to see what it was. But “it didn’t pay [him] no mind.”

March 14 12:51 AM

Lisa, outside CJ's in Five Points

Published in Bum of The Week

Her nose leaks not like a faucet but more a ruptured water main and her right sleeve is stiff and crusty from hardened snot as she savagely rubs it back and forth against her face.

February 28 10:01 AM

Albert Witherspoon, the Congaree Vista

Published in Bum of The Week

Ed. Note: City Paper has been giving the Five Points Association a pretty tough time lately. After our publisher asked some tough questions at their latest meeting this week I thought we could at least cut them a break and broadcast our “Bum of the Week” column from the Vista. Little did we know what we were getting into.

February 13 12:16 PM

James, Gervais Street downtown

Published in Bum of The Week

He’s not lazy— that’s not what James is saying. He used to have a real job, a car, a place to call his own. But he there is something going on in his head that he doesn’t want to talk too much about.

“If you’re a telepath like I am then you don’t want nobody messing with you,” he said.

December 20 12:56 AM

Jeremiah, outside Gourmet Shop in Five Points

Published in Bum of The Week

For Jeremiah, being tossed in the back of a police cruiser and booked into to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center is just one more part of being homeless in Columbia— and, for him, a weekly occurrence.

“I’d rather be out of jail,” he said, “but what the hell? I’m homeless so who gives a fuck?”

November 08 12:53 AM

Johnny, Martin Luther King, Jr. Park

Published in Bum of The Week

Fact: In less time than it takes to order two cheeseburgers from the Five Points diner at 1:55 a.m., down a shot of whiskey at Jungle Jim’s, walk around the block through the park and back to the diner, City Paper can find the “Bum of the Week,” conduct the interview, receive a prostitution offer and have a knife waved in the face of their reporters.

October 10 12:49 AM

Eddie a.k.a "Rockbottom," Food Lion bus stop

Published in Bum of The Week

According to police documents, an officer field booked a man with the same first and last name as Eddie for urinating in public on Devine Street only a few days ago. The incident is published in our crime report this week. Eddie denied the charge.

September 24 12:35 AM

J.B., the fountain in Five Points

Published in Bum of The Week

In just his short time on the streets, J.B. said he’s already noticed Five Points is a hotbed for drugs. A lot of people in Five Points, he said, would ask homeless folks to buy drugs including crack and cocaine for them to minimize the risk of purchasing it themselves. They use the homeless as middlemen to run them narcotics.

August 07 11:35 PM

J.B., (extra) Five Points fountain

Published in Bum of The Week

And what exactly was it that drove the man who said he came from a good family and attended a well-respected university, to smoking the hell out of some of the crickety crackity? Wanting to be a part of the ‘in’ crowd, he said.