A VAGRANT with a matted ankle-length dreadlock as wide as a nautical mooring rope has become street famous in New York’s Greenwich Village due to his long locks.

    It is estimated that the homeless man, who goes by the name Delfine Vizearra, has not cut his hair since Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s first term, which began in 2002 before he was re-elected in 2005, according to the New York Post.

    One of the neighbors said that if Vizearra, who settled in the neighborhood in 2009, sold his hair he could make a “million dollars.”

    “I could’ve sworn he had pieces added onto it,” neighbor Glen De Filippi, 66, told the New York Post. “If he sells it, he could make a million dollars.”

    According to a Brooklyn hairstylist, untangling the nearly floor-length dreadlock would be impossible so he would have to buzz it off.

    Rebecca Sarraga, who is a hairstylist at Salon Gio, also told the New York Post that hair grows half an inch (1.27 cm) every month on average, which means every two years a person grows one foot (30 cm) of hair.

    Vizearra currently resides in a self-built, personal hut made out of boxes and tarps on one of the neighborhood’s sidewalks outside of 505 La Guardia Place, a co-op residential building.

    There he cooks out of his “small kitchen with gas,” makes his own coffee and relieves himself.

    “My normal day is, I come out at 4 a.m. get all the newspapers,” he told the New York Post.

    He panhandles in front of a nearby Morton Williams supermarket where he collects around US$35 to US$40 a day, according to residents.

    (SD-Agencies)