When gangsters shot at Eddie Spagetti's van about a year ago, the trash he collects saved him. He said he was surrounded by so much junk that it absorbed the bullets.

Usually, though, the trash helps him in smaller ways, like buying dinner off the McDonald's Dollar Menu.

On a drizzly Saturday afternoon, Eddie balanced on his stomach atop the edge of a dumpster in Silver Lake. His feet swung in the air. "If I could actually climb in there, I'd make more money," he said. "But I'm in my good clothes." He was dressed unusually modest, in a Zoot Suit. He complemented his dressy pants and blazer with a pink shirt and pink bandana.

In his short search through the dumpster, Eddie found half a bottle of cologne, Christmas lights, a tote bag and an umbrella. He managed to retrieve these items without getting his outfit dirty. Since the cologne bottle was only half full, Eddie kept it. He sprayed some on his wrist and sniffed.

"I bet you a dime to a dollar that this works," he said about the Christmas lights. He was wrong. He tested them on an outdoor plug on Sunset, and they didn't light up. So they weren't for sale, either. And he proclaimed the tote bag to be boring. "I don't think anybody would buy this for $5," he said.

But the umbrella looked stylish and clean. Eddie could have used one himself. When it rains, he puts his dirty clothes in a shopping cart and wheels them to a laundromat. "I'll sell it, even if it's raining, because money is king."

So Eddie brought the new umbrella to Pazzo Gelato. He offered it to a guy playing guitar outside. The price was $5. When the customer accepted, Eddie smiled and threw in a pair of pliers for free.

"He's in love with that umbrella," Eddie proudly said of his latest customer.

Silver Lake has a history of “street icons,” or people known for their weird neighborhood activities. There was El Circo Loco, a guy known for dancing to his boom box. He died in 2006.

The more famous icon is the Walking Man. He was a doctor named Marc Abrams who took a lot of walks, hence the name. He was found dead in his hot tub this summer.

Eddie is known as the Five Dollar Guy, because he makes a living by hustling random stuff for $5.  

"I'm an icon," Eddie said in an interview outside of Intelligentsia, next to a white chair he was trying to sell. "You know what an icon is? Yeah. I'm a street icon."

His sales pitches are intentionally risque. When the weather is warm, he walks around shirtless, with skimpy shorts and a cross necklace. In a Flickr picture from 2007, he smiles next to a message written on the sidewalk in chalk; “Five $ Guy Is High Butt his price is Always low!”

Eddie says he is in his fifties. He's short, stalky, clean-shaven and just a tad sunburnt. He always wears clean shoes.  His teeth aren't perfect, but other than that he doesn't look homeless. 

He wants to be viewed as an independent free spirit who chose his lifestyle, and not just another mentally ill, drug-addicted homeless person. He's confident, opinionated, and keeps much of his past secret by refusing to tell people his real last name.

When asked for his last name, he initially replied with a deadpan "Spagetti." But he claims to have worked as an insurance salesman in Chicago in the 1980s.  The routine, he said, made him so miserable that he just decided to "get off the grid."  He presents his homelessness as a fun, whimsical decision. "Never paid rent, gas, electric or phone for 14 years," he boasted. "All my money goes for me."

But as independent as he tries to come across, his lifestyle does involve some cooperation from local businesses.  

His relationship with business owners is mixed.  During any given time, Eddie and others say, about half the businesses in Silver Lake will like him, and the other half will hate him.   

A Resourceful Lifestyle

Eddie lives day to day. He's an expert on cheap food deals all over the area.  He also knows which restaurant bathrooms will offer the most privacy for shaving and washing himself. His efforts appear to work;  he's clean shaven and doesn’t give off any offensive odors. 

As of November, Eddie's latest home was a rooftop guarded by foliage.  He would not disclose the location, citing security concerns. “You gotta find a spot where you can climb up without being detected, and stay up there without being noticed." 

Eddie used to sleep on a different rooftop that belonged to an apartment building off Sunset. During a tour he gave me of the place, he held up a square plastic jug that happened to be lying around. He said that he uses these types of jugs as both stepping stools, and as a place to urinate into. When the jug is full, he dumps it into a public toilet.  Thus, he doesn't make a mess or leave behind a urine smell at his squat spots.  

He used to squat inside a closet in the apartment building, as well. No one knew he was sleeping there, so he had to be quiet all the time. And he had no keys to the building.   

"I had to be one part tiger, one part mole, one part weasel, and one part mouse to do this," he said.

Now, he hopes to save enough cash to buy a used van, just so he can have a safe place again to sleep and store his things.  

After the gangsters shot up his old van, he drove it at night, something he usually didn't do because it was missing headlights.

"I had no registration, no driver's license, no insurance, a warrant for my arrest, a big bad of weed and six bullet holes on the side of the van," Eddie said, laughing. "That's how far out on the edge I was."

He joked that the arrest warrant was for "driving without pants" but later said it was actually for driving without a license. 

But the van eventually got towed for being illegally parked.

Eddie has also lived on a sidewalk hidden by a construction site. He said he lost that spot for singing in the middle of the night, when he thought no one could hear him.

He's lived inside of a two story fort he built out of debris, on a dirt patch next to a billboard. Then, when the city took the fort down, he moved inside of the billboard. "I put shelves in there, and I put my mattress in there.”  

Eddie lived in the Mi Alma garden about five years ago.  He glued an old pair of his shorts to the wall, painted himself wearing them, and wrote “Silver Lake’s Own World Famous Five Dollar Guy,” around the image.

“It was like an advertisement," Eddie said.

This was one of many murals Eddie did that helped him gain popularity, or at least notoriety, among locals. Yem, a local graphic designer, was particularly impressed with a mural Eddie made, fittingly, from free promotional stickers.

"It was brilliant," Yem said. "It was beautiful." The two are now close friends.  

Eddie hasn’t painted new murals in awhile. Yem said this is because drugs were the primary inspiration for Eddie’s work.

"I'm missing his stuff,” Yem said, “but I'm kind of glad he's not high."

But Eddie denied that he ever needed drugs to make art, saying instead that the paint just didn't seem worth the money anymore.    

A poem he wrote still remains inside the staircase by Intelligentsia, another old home of Eddie's: "Under stairs, the safe haven, safe from sorrow, safe until," a line reads.

He stayed inside the staircase for nine months, peeking through the holes in the door to check for a clear coast.

Finally, the owner of Cafe Stella discovered him. Eddie lost his home.

The owner and Eddie have patched things up since.

"Now, he loves me," Eddie said, adding that he even gets free meals from Cafe Stella.

Getting Help From Businesses

Cafe Stella isn't the only business that offers Eddie help.

Julian Davies, a wine salesman who works at The Cheese Store, will sometimes pour Eddie a free glass of wine if he happens to be around. “He seems perfectly educated, courteous, well-mannered,” Davies said.   

Franky's, a barber shop that sells clothes, donates shorts and capri pants to Eddie. 

Mornings Nights cafe stores Eddie's chess set behind their counter.

Eddie can often be seen sitting outside the shop, playing chess against the employees and other locals. 

David Browne, the owner of the clothing boutique Driftwood, helped Eddie get his picture in the Swedish Vice Magazine, after a photographer for the publication shopped in his store. The photo spread depicts Los Angeles creative-types.

Eddie has a feisty, obnoxious streak. It's partly the reason why some business owners respect him, while others find him annoying.  

For example, he considers Pazzo Gelato owner Mike Buch to be a hater. This didn’t stop Eddie from writing “We Love The $5 Guy” in chalk on an electrical box in front of the store.

Buch denied being a hater, adding that he once even bought a garden bustier of Julius Caesar from Eddie. “He’s a pretty smart guy, pretty funny guy," Buch said. "But, like anything, you’ve gotta take it in small doses.”

On one rainy day, Eddie passed the time watching television in a laundromat that is now out of business. Then, the laundromat owner turned off the television, her reason being, “because I don’t like you.” She called him a fag and a bum. So then, Eddie’s story goes, he poured coffee and soda on her floor. “I don’t like you,” he claims to have told her.

In a 2007 interview with LAist, Eddie denied an apparent rumor that he ejaculated on a store front as revenge for being banned.

The comments underneath the article are also divided between fans and haters;

“This dude is awesome. He's a tonic to all the entitled douchebags who stand in line at Intelligentsia Twittering.”

“He's not cool and quirky. He's just plain annoying.”

About five years ago, Eddie was yelling “Five dollars!” right outside Dean, an upscale leather boutique. Owner Danny Dean told Eddie to shut up. In response, Eddie yelled “Five dollars shuts me up!” for twenty minutes.

But Dean now welcomes Eddie to his store.  

Two employees from Dean even bought Eddie a gift in the Fall, a $44.95 straw hat. Eddie wears it with the price sticker still inside.

Eddie has been banned for years from Rough Trade, an adult leather store. “He used to come here with some other dude...and then we would find the kid out there selling our stuff,” said a Rough Trade employee. 

Eddie admitted that his friend stole while they shopped together, but he said he had nothing to do with it. He's lived in the neighborhood for over 15 years. He argues he couldn't have stayed for so long if he shoplifted.   

Friends and Customers

In addition to his polarizing qualities, Eddie is also unique for his ability to make friends of all ages and social statuses.  In between snacking on free samples at the farmer's market one Saturday, he got a hug from a clean-cut-looking, middle-aged woman.  

On a walk past an apartment complex, an elderly man stopped to chat. He was on the way to buy cat food, he told Eddie.

In front of El Pollo Loco, a homeless crystal meth addict saw Eddie and excitedly tried to make plans with him.

Later in the day, the owner of the Surplus Value Center asked Eddie about some neighborhood gossip. When the owner learned I was there to do an article, he pointed to Eddie and said, “He is a good man.”

It pays Eddie to be so friendly; many of his friends are also customers.   

Christian, a 16-year-old who said he'd like to start a business with Eddie, needed a capo for his guitar. By coincidence, Christian said, Eddie found a brand new capo somewhere mysterious a few months later. It cost Christian $5.

Yem’s best purchase from Eddie was a $20 canvas.  "I know my canvas prices," Yem said, "and it was a beautiful canvas. No one used it. It was like a $300 canvas."

Oscar Morales, one of the Dean employees who pitched in for Eddie's hat, once bought a toy fire truck from Eddie. "My son still plays with it. He loves it." For his girlfriend's daughter, Morales bought a fancy mirror.  

Julian Davies, the wine salesman, bought an ice bucket in the shape of a top hat for $5. "Hideous thing," Davies said. More recently, Eddie tried to sell Davies a sculpture of a pair of dancers for $20.

"It's like the 99 Cents store,” Davies said. “Not everything's 99 cents. You've got to watch out for that."

Holding Gripes

Despite Eddie's claim of being "world famous" in the self portrait he painted, The Five Dollar Guy still hasn't reached the level of fame that The Walking Man once had. Unlike Eddie, The Walking Man is depicted in murals throughout Silver Lake.  

Eddie lost his temper in front of one of those murals, a work by Annie Sperling about popular characters in the neighborhood. The painting is racist, Eddie said, because there are too many white people in it. He yelled as if the artist could hear him.  

El Circo Loco, the street icon known for dancing, is also in the mural, much to Eddie’s disgust. "He was a homosexual crystal meth addict who masturbated in front of kids," Eddie yelled.  

Despite their seemingly similar life situation -- they both once squatted under the same bridge at the same time -- Eddie looks down on El Circo Loco. But El Circo Loco had his own fans, too. Unlike Eddie, El Circo Loco was even allowed to shop in Rough Trade, when he was still alive.  

Eddie wouldn't have minded the mural as much if his own image was included, but it's not. He confronted the artist, Annie Sperling, about this. She hates him, Eddie alleges. 

"I bear him no ill will,” Sperling said in a phone interview. “The choices of the mural were people that I've known in the neighborhood for years...it wasn't political."

Though Eddie's haters, or at least the people who aren't huge fans, seem to be a major sore point for him, the fans that he does have genuinely admire and respect him. Oscar Morales, the Dean employee, dismisses the people who get annoyed by Eddie's antics as rich snobs.  

"You never see him beg for money, you never see him ask for anything," Morales said. If customers reject a sale item by Eddie, "he always has a comeback for why you should buy it."

Yem considers Eddie to be a performance artist -- "He's on stage all the time" -- whose clientele is as much due to his outrageous salesmanship style as it is to the actual products he's selling.

"He's untamed. You know, he says whatever he wants to say, and if you have a business, you might have some clients who might not appreciate what he's saying," Yem said. "You'll have to kind of be like, 'Hey this is g-rated in here,' because he just doesn't have any rules. He's just a wild guy."  

Reach reporter Amy Silverstein here.