Roll with it - "I know I'm controversial. It's a cultural problem I have."

In the last days before his gentle eviction, Danny Ray Pickrel roller-bladed down the Detroit Avenue sidewalk, picking up litter and stuffing it into a scavenged plastic bag. A sinewy man of 50 years who could pass for 35, he'd raise one foot in the air, pointing it out front, then deep-knee bend on the other to reach down and pick up a beer can or a fast-food bag, all the while rolling along. It was a beautiful day, and in tweedy woolen pants cuffed up like knickers, and a jacket that didn't quite match, he was smiling.

Without an appointment, and without an ID to his name, he was headed down to City Hall looking for someone to hear his case. For about 15 years Pickrel has lived by loose, no-rent arrangement in different buildings and storefronts around West 65th and Detroit, mostly associated with Cleveland Public Theater, where he's occasionally been the caretaker, doorman and night watchman in exchange for the roof over his head. Through the '90s and until recently, there was plenty of room for a guy like him in this urban ecosystem, a friendly eccentric able to carve a living out of empty buildings and aluminum cans.

But with $300 million worth of development pouring into the Gordon Square Arts District - including a $4 million streetscape featuring public art, new streetlights, trees and wider sidewalks to accommodate sidewalk cafes - empty buildings are running out. Danny Ray's place in the neighborhood has been precarious since June. For a couple of years he had been living in buildings adjacent to CPT, most recently in a dilapidated house on a former Romanian Orthodox Church property, which Danny Ray calls "the parsonage."

But in June, Cleveland Public Theater fulfilled founder James Levin's original plan for the church and social hall by moving programs into them - ironically including Y-Haven, a theater program for homeless men. As part of the deal, Danny Ray had to move out.

Meanwhile, he was doing odd jobs for Detroit Shoreway resident Nate Coffman, who owns a long-vacant funeral home across the street from the theater. The place is water-damaged and has no water service, gas or electricity. Coffman gave him a key to the building, but not permission to live there. Now Coffman has the painful obligation to evict someone he was trying to help. Just about everyone in the neighborhood likes Danny Ray, and several people have tried to help, but no one knows what to do. Coffman has given deadlines, which have passed. He had a dumpster delivered to the parking lot so Danny Ray would have a place to put his stuff. Danny Ray says he's moving on, but it's taking a long time.

When he and his roller blades and a full bag of litter finally arrived at City Hall, Danny Ray talked his way into a 10-minute audience with Council President Martin Sweeney, who referred him to his ward councilman, Matt Zone. Long aware of the situation, Zone called the PATH program - Projects for Assistance in Transitioning from Homelessness, an organization dedicated to "helping chronically homeless, resistant clients that may or may not have some mental illness."

Danny Ray met with the counselor and took his business card, but soon after gave it away, saying, "I don't have any reason to keep this."

"I KNOW I'm controversial," Danny Ray says. "It's a cultural problem I have. A lot of people are very suspicious of someone who doesn't need a job."

Daniel Ray arrived at West 65th and Detroit in 1991. Born in DeKalb, Illinois, he attended Antioch College for a couple of years. He had been living in Minnesota and working in the costume shop for a theater there when he decided it was time to try something different. So he joined another guy who was skating around the country. He skated to Washington, DC. He skated to New York.

On Labor Day in 1991 he rolled past the Gordon Square Theater, which was boarded up at the time, but emitting a cool breeze from the darkness inside. It didn't take long before he met James Levin and got involved at Cleveland Public Theater.

Since then, Levin has allowed him to live in vacant space in several different buildings in the CPT complex, and even arranged for him to have an apartment. Levin admits to having been called "an enabler" for letting Danny Ray live in his properties. He says the CPT board's reaction to Danny was mixed.

"I liked him as a security guard," Levin says. "He has a pleasant, welcoming quality. My perception at the time was, this is an alternative theater, this is an alternative neighborhood. And Danny Ray would kind of look after the cars in the parking lot."

Move along - Ray isn't sure where he'll ride to next.

Danny Ray earned his keep in other ways, too: He constantly picks up litter in the neighborhood. In winter, he made it his mission to shovel the sidewalk from Gypsy Beans coffee shop at West 65th down to the Happy Dog at West 58th. All this has made him plenty of friends, and several neighborhood businesses say they welcome him any time.

"He's always busy," says Rick Gilliam, owner of Stockyard Meats. "And if he sees anything out of the ordinary, he reports it. I would definitely say he's been an asset to the neighborhood."

In his years around town, Danny Ray has earned a measure of fame. Some of it is from his rolling contraptions. He sometimes rides a gigantic tricycle, cobbled together from curb-scored parts: A drive train and front wheel from an old recumbent bicycle are welded to what looks like an old boat trailer, with a makeshift roll bar wrapped in blue plastic tarps to make a cab, luxuriously equipped with a couple of padded vinyl seats, which might have been rec-room furniture back in the '70s. He's built a few pedal-powered vehicles, but this one is the granddaddy.

Cleveland Browns fans know Danny Ray as the guy who skates around the municipal parking lot picking up aluminum cans and, while looping and twirling, holding out a trash can for drinkers to shoot 12-ounce baskets. He collects as many cans as he's able to move on his wheels du jour, and he takes them to a scrapyard for recycling. He collects an astonishing amount of litter this way. After a recent game he says he cashed in $70 worth. With scrap aluminum fetching about 60 cents per pound, that's nearly 3,000 aluminum cans. He uses the money to buy food for three dogs and to pay a cell phone bill, which he does in person, in cash.

He's also familiar because the media has given him plenty of attention for his joyful weirdness. The Plain Dealer has frequently reveled in it, over the years featuring photos of him rollerblading at high speed with his dogs, or along the Shoreway with giant angel wings strapped on his back from the costume shop at Cleveland Public Theater, or profiling his short-lived secondhand curiosity shop, In My Garden, which he briefly ran out of a storefront that belonged to CPT.

THROUGH ALL THOSE YEARS, Danny Ray has become attached to the neighborhood for the same reasons other people have. He's gotten to know the people. He likes being close to the lake. His investment of labor gives him emotional equity that is difficult to give up. He feels like he's part of something. It'd be much easier for him to stay if he could pay for it. And indeed, so much of what Danny Ray does day after day could be considered a job - if only he felt like he needed one, if only he could do it according to someone else's schedule, and if only someone would pay.

Timothy Raymond, an outreach worker for PATH, observes that the Business Improvement District downtown is paying people to do the same kind of thing Daniel Ray does by habit - pick up litter, greet people, keep an eye on the street. Maybe Daniel Ray could wear one of those yellow shirts.

Councilman Zone says he'd love to have Danny Ray stay in Detroit Shoreway, but in secure housing with working pipes.

Zone and several others have tried to help find housing. But helping someone who doesn't want help isn't easy, especially when he comes with three dogs. Difficult cases are what the PATH program is all about, but Raymond knows that until Danny Ray is ready to accept help and find homes for his dogs, housing will be a challenge. For now, Raymond will help him get an identification card. He has a birth certificate and Social Security card. For $8.50, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles will issue him a state ID. That will make it easier to get into City Hall next time.

And in the meantime Danny Ray is trying to figure out where he'll go next.