Equal parts suburban dad and Dobie Gillis, our newest acquaintance shows up alternately smug, demur, sleepy, and shy. His hair swings between close-cropped gestural bangs and full-on mop-top beatnik. Occasionally he’ll let the grass grow into an anachronistic goatee or legit full chin beard. There is always a preposterous bushy mustache.

The ridiculous names Mike Bone, Carl Gigimo, and Bobby Kaczar appear attached to some of the bemustasched mugs. We don’t know where these come from [don’t bother Googling them], but, you know, at this point, why bother steering?

Who is this dude? Where did he come from? What did he do last night to end up so dog tired today? and–you may be asking at this point–Why do we care?

Never you mind about that; unlike Melania, we do care. The more important question is, What makes a person take paint, crayon, or grease pencil to stray public surfaces? There are primal explanations, for sure–the need to express, to emote, to communicate the human experience. There’s probably a vanity angle, too. Why, do it enough times and you might find your after-hours etchings immortalized in some obscure corner of the blogosphere. [Ahem.]

More perplexing than the compulsion to create is the need for some minority of graffiti writers to do (versions of) the same thing over and over and over again. Why come up with a new face when this dude’s closed eyes and walrus top lip come so naturally? Perhaps it’s a self-portrait in caricature? If you’ve got an angle, work it! Who knows?

Whatever the motivation, these repeat offenders are all over the place. We’re no experts, but they seem to have too much line and not enough letter to be “tags,” but are really just barely getting by as full-on “street art.”

Whatever you think, there are a lot of them out there. There’s the psychedelic TV-VCR combo and the lightening bolt cloud, Mr. K.I.D.S. and that rock-and-roll sheep, the stylized row house and the dangling bat–the list goes on and on. Clarence the Bird almost counts, but having the original works on paper seems to put Mr. The Bird in different company.

We’re calling these folks Serial Scrawlers and they’re interesting enough to maybe get back to as time allows and the series unfolds.

So, “Mike Bone,” “Carl Gigimo,” or whoever you are, you got The Orbit’s attention. That’s what a spray paint spree in a Strip District side street will do for you. That, and making us work the S key like a rented mule.

We don’t know why you find this particular middle-aged male likeness so intriguing–enough to reproduce those forewhiskers and loose locks on every alley wall from 16th Street to high Penn Avenue. But we’ve had a fine little time tracking your progress through the East End. Live long, Mike Bone, and keep that brow furrowed and mustache humming.