The Unspoken Agreement: Covington Residents and the Covington Homeless

The Covington homeless have an unspoken agreement with their Covington neighbors. They don’t see us and we don’t see them. We respect their right to eat and sleep where they must and to hang out at the Covington library during the day. In turn, they let us walk unmolested to the library entrance, to our cars and generally let us go on about our business.

Covington was granted almost $700,000 in federal money a couple of years ago to help shelters and homeless self-help services. Two years before that, camping along the river was outlawed. If you walk over the suspension bridge early enough in the morning, you can see the outlawed camps.

I have no problem with the Covington homeless. In fact, some of them are quite well-known in my neighborhood.

Some of the most well-known Covington homeless residents include:

• Bugman sits outside the Covington library in good weather with an assortment of huge insects that he apparently raises at home. I say this because they are roughly the size of a tennis ball and like nothing I have ever seen. Unique among the Covington homeless, he is completely harmless and actually quite nice.
• The Vet, or Hogan’s Hobo, is easily recognizable as one of the favorite Covington homeless by the camo pants and dogtags. The Vet lives down by the river and receives a monthly pension check. I don’t know if you can call him homeless. I think this is more like camping.
• Eccentric Professor lives in Newport but spends a great deal of his time riding his bicycle over here so we’ll still call him one of the Covington homeless. You’ll know him by the dramatic hat, long coat and friendly demeanor.
  

Covington Alien Hive expert Wayne has several web sites. Once a promising engineer, he now drifts back and forth between Covington homeless shelters, Cincinnati, Dayton and New York. The Alien Hive Web sites talk about going to jail during the weekend that effectively ended his career. The charges are murky but it seems clear that this is when he went off his meds. The Web sites have pages and pages of well-articulated arguments. The arguments explain in great detail how the Cincinnati and Covington Alien Hive residents operate. Supermodels are alien clone hotbeds and also to be avoided.

Avoid these Covington homeless residents: Eyepatch, The Screamer and the Skinny Youth. I don’t know them except by sight but the constant singing, yelling and the glittery eyes have convinced me that these three are crack-whacks.

Skinny Youth was harassing a Sunoco customer on 4th while Taylor the Brit still worked there. He tried to get on or in her car (Skinny Youth, not the Brit) and the customer wigged out. “Run over his foot!” yelled the Brit. She did. Skinny Youth, perhaps seeing the deck was stacked against him, just limped away. What kind of drugs do you have to be on to walk away when someone ran over your foot?

These are just a few of the spare-changers who hang at the Sunoco and the gas stations by the 75 on-ramp and they are among the Very Aggressive Covington homeless. Very Aggressive means if you don’t give them money, they will continue to wheedle, start getting insulting quickly and in the case of the Screamer, will follow you down Madison or Bakewell yelling “I just wanted to say hi! What’s wrong with saying hi!” I said hi. So I don’t know what’s wrong with it.
Things to do today in Northern Kentucky:

1. Shop at the Fairhaven thrift store in Covington. The proceeds benefit the Fairhaven Rescue Mission and they have excellent men’s vintage ties.
2. Go to the Kenton County Library. Say hi to the people lining the walkway. They won’t hurt you. They’re just friendly.