Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
It's no fun getting out of jail, and even less fun finding out, as Igor Kenk did, that the police are giving 2,000 of your stolen bikes to inner-city kids. But a word of advice, Igor: Heading to the Cabbagetown Youth Centre, as you did on Monday, referring to those bikes as your "puppies" and then demanding them back is showing uncharacteristic poor form. You are a real-life in-the-flesh urban legend. Think big. I see your name in flashing lights.
Mayor of Toronto
From the stump speech: No other candidate has a plan that can balance this city's budget by generating an extra $500-million in new revenue. [Applause.]I won't hike user fees. [Applause.]I won't raise property taxes. [Applause.]What I will do is plan an epic weekend of epic bike theft in Lawrence Park. [Major applause.]I will "liberate" high-end road bikes collecting dust in the garages of so many overpaid management consultants and turn them into the fixed-gear bicycles beloved by Queen West faux-hemians [applause]who will pay top dollar for them. [Louder applause] Will our bike lanes become more congested? [Silence.]Yes, they will. [More silence.]That's why I vow to create North America's only network of bike lanes exclusively for stolen bikes. [Wild applause.]
Bestselling author
The Kirkus Review: Modelled on the O.J. Simpson masterpiece If I Did It, in this page-turning thriller Kenk hypothetically describes in riveting and all-too-believable detail how he would have hired crackheads and lowlifes to steal bicycles, paying them only a fraction of their actual worth, and then stored them in the basement of a Queen Street bike shop - if he had stolen them at all.
Motivational speaker to wealthy ex-cons
An excerpt:
KENK: Does David Radler wake up every morning and see a criminal when he looks in the mirror?
AUDIENCE [shouting] No!
KENK: Has Conrad Black ever thought, even for a second, that he deserves to be in jail?
AUDIENCE [screaming] No!
KENK: Did you ever ask a jury if you look good in black? Do you ask a judge for his opinion on your putting?
AUDIENCE [chanting] No! ... No! ... No! ... No! ... No! ... No!
KENK: So why do you care if a judge or jury says you're guilty? [The audience rises to its feet.]You're only guilty of something if you think you're guilty of something. What am I guilty of? Getting paid ten grand to talk to a bunch of guys who walked in here thinking they're guilty because some overpaid judge who couldn't make it as a lawyer told them to think that.
[An ecstatic audience breaks into spontaneous dude hugs.]
Reality TV star
TV Guide says: So You Think You Can Steal Bikes may sound like a cheap rip-off of an already lame American reality-show franchise - think again. In this surprising and controversial CBC hit, Kenk is part Simon Cowell - dishing out advice on how to steal bikes to social misfits with messiah complexes from across the country - and part countercultural Socrates, challenging traditional ideas about ownership and law and asking why Canada is importing American ideas about justice. At the end of the first episode, he turns to the camera and memorably asks, "If everyone just bought cheap stolen bikes, would anyone be angry when they got stolen again?" It's easy to answer no, but even easier to just steal someone's bike.