Save Igor Kenk

Photo by Eric Parker

It's so easy to believe that Igor Kenk's an asshole. On Sunday, the accused bike thief was re-arrested after he visited one of the garages he once kept full of bikes. Confronted by the owners, Kenk became upset, picked up a pipe, swung it and then left. None of the reports suggest any blows were exchanged, but all the same police charged Kenk with three counts of assault and returned him to jail. Kenk appeared yesterday in court to hear whether a judge would grant him bail on the new charges. The judge declined. My friend, Rich Poplak, who was in the courtroom, said Kenk looked as though he'd been beaten up. Word was, Kenk got on the wrong end of somebody's fist in the Don Jail. Which also happens to be where Kenk will stay over the holidays. 

Great. Right? Dude deserves it. But what if he doesn't? What if he isn't the horrible person everyone seems so certain he must be? I had the chance to evaluate this for myself back in early September, when Kenk and I conducted a series of meetings. 

Kenk's side initiated, through my literary agent. He and his circle of friends had a notion that selling a book might generate enough cash to pay some legal fees, maybe even get Kenk on his feet again once this thing blew over. I was intrigued. Kenk has a bizarre, disjointed way of speaking that represented an enticing literary challenge. It would have been fascinating to attempt to recreate his voice on the page, in a manner that would have pulled a reader into his narrative. 

Ultimately, both sides agreed it wouldn't work out. I'm not sure what soured Kenk on me. What soured me on Kenk was his coterie. I didn't dislike any of them, individually. In fact, each one of them seemed pretty nice. In particular, Jeanie Chung, Kenk's romantic partner, comes off as a charming person and straight shooter. It's just, when you take all these Kenk associates together, they manifest this paralytic groupthink where the Prime Directive is Igor's well-being, and they so badly want to do no harm that they never actually do anything. The whole lot of them would have wanted to participate in the writing of any book about Igor. It wouldn't have worked.  

Regardless, the experience convinced me Igor isn't as bad as he's being depicted. In fact, his story is a lot more complex than most people assume. In no particular order:

1. His motivation was laudable. Well, not all of his motivation. Some of his motivation was greed. But another part of what motivated him was affection for bicycles. He spent more than a decade accumulating thousands of bikes because he genuinely loved everything about the mechanical devices: Pedals, brakes, handlebars, you name it. Like most of the people denigrating him, Kenk is a bike lover. He's an ace mechanic. And he's one of this city's most enthusiastic and vociferous advocates for bicycles as a form of transportation. The dude genuinely loves bikes. And no one who loves bikes can be completely bad. 

2. Kenk isn't actually a bike thief. He bought bikes from bike thieves, yes. Knowingly. Wittingly. But even police acknowledge that he didn't steal the vast majority of the bikes he accumulated over the years. (We'll get to the two bikes Kenk supposedly arranged to steal on the day of his bust in a second.) You might retort that I'm engaging in hair-splitting here. But I think the distinction is important. Kenk felt that people didn't deserve their bikes if they were stupid enough to leave them in places where idiot crackheads could steal them. Kenk was picky about his customers. When he could afford it, he limited his sales to people he felt deserved his bikes. Think of Kenk as the bicyclist's version of John Eibner, the controversial missionary who purchases child slaves in Africa so that he can set them free. Eibner is accused of doing more harm than good; in other words, some accuse his child slave redemption strategies of perpetuating child slavery. A similar phenomenon happened with Kenk. The fact that bike thieves knew Kenk would buy the bikes meant more bikes were stolen. Sure. But that doesn't mean Kenk was guilty of those thefts. 

3. What he's accused of doing doesn't make much sense. Police have a low-life witness who claims that Kenk ordered him to steal two bikes that had been locked up near Kenk's store in Trinity Bellwoods Park. But wait a second. Does a guy who owns nearly 2,400 bikes go around ordering people to steal more bikes? The bikes that Kenk owned were a pain in his ass. He had to pay rent to store them. They were a source of friction in his relationship with Jeanie. He didn't want any more bikes. Consider something else for a second: If you're a police officer who has received umpteen complaints over the years about this Kenk character, and you have the good fortune to happen upon an idiot who steals a couple of bikes near Kenk's store before your eyes—do you subtly suggest that Kenk is the mastermind behind these thefts? In other words: Could it be possible that Igor Kenk is being framed?

4. The bikes belong to Igor. There's been a lot of discussion over what to do with Igor's loot. But shouldn't we at least consider that the remaining bikes are Kenk's rightful property? Kenk was burned in the early '90s by police and consequently was diligent about recording information about the people who sold him the bicycles. As I understand it, the law requires anyone who purchases a used bike to display it for a certain time period. Which Kenk also did. And Kenk returned any bikes that people could prove had been stolen. So far as the law was concerned, Kenk did his duty. Let's return the bikes to Igor. 

5. (Lastly) Igor is getting a bad rap. Those bail terms he had before he was arrested, for example. They are ridiculous. Bernard Madoff, who stole $50 billion from dozens of charities, has bail terms that are less stringent than Kenk's were. We allow murderers and rapists to get out on bail and yet Kenk now is such a danger to society that he must be kept in jail over Christmas? Give me a break. Let the poor guy out.

Finally, there's the issue that is at the centre of this whole business. Is this guy the scumbag that people say he is? My fellow Queen's alum, Joey deVilla, recently referred to Kenk as a human colostomy bag. Is that true? Who knows? I only interviewed him for something like six hours. He may have been a complete asshole before he was arrested. But last time I checked, being an asshole isn't against the law. During my interviews with Kenk, he was guilty of taking himself too seriously. He was certainly guilty of rambling on endlessly, mostly about his belief that we're approaching apocalyptic end times. So: Boring, yes, insane, possibly. But I actually think Toronto would be a richer place if we had more characters like Kenk walking the streets. Let's give the guy a break. At least let him out over the holidays.

Comments

[Corina]

What a ridiculous blog post...

"He bought bikes from bike thieves, yes. Knowingly. Wittingly. But even police acknowledge that he didn't steal the vast majority of the bikes he accumulated over the years."

That makes you a bike thief. Defending Igor is like defending someone who gave orders to have someone killed, but didn't commit the murder.

The fact that he knowingly purchased bikes from theives is enough for me to completely admonish him.

If he's going to cry over his recent charges, his should consider the impact of his previous actions on his current credibility and character. NO ONE TRUSTS HIM, THEREFORE HE HAS LOST THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT.

[Myles]

Assholes tend to get beaten up in jail. Some learn to keep their mouths shut, others walk with their ego's stride. Sounds like Igor went with option 2. And while I am no legal expert, heck I can hardly spell, I am pretty sure that even though he did not pull the trigger on so many thefts so to speak, being the fence for so many of those who knew he would buy without questions paints a pretty grim picture of him.

And the drugs found? Were they just being held for a friend? ; )

[George]

Hi Mr. Shulgan,
I don't know who you work for, but you act like an alien from Mars. I personally know Igor and I have enough integrity to admit that he's a thief and nothing more. Please stop with this bullshit because bad karma will find you and punish you for this non-sense. Don't be stupid. Don't look for trouble when she is not looking for you.

[tony]

igor is not a bad guy , are system is evil
i knew him, he bought hot bikes, bad for him , but he also did alot of nice things too. cant judge him

[Jeff]

Igor did many nice things, nobody seams to care.
He helped poor people by fixing their bikes for free or letting people use tools who are polite enough to ask.
If people are too lazy to register their bikes with police, which is free by the way then may be they do not deserve to own them.
I am against bike theft and had a few bikes stolen. One of them was returned by Igor. All I had to do was provide him a description of the bike, and he kindly returned it to me at no charge. Prior to that he asked me if I would be willing to testify against the thief who sold him the bike.. I was confused by the question. I paused...
Then he said if nobody files charges against those who sell stolen bikes to him or to other pawn brokers, the problem will never go away...
Makes sense, doesn't it?

[local res]

the crack head hookers miss Igor to.... is it not known that he was theirs and many others link to late night Rock????.he had a place closer to ossington years ago.. same thing.. its been so quite since hes been shackled.... the bikes were just the tip of Igor Kenks iceberg......

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