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Kenk crashes the party

The people behind Kenk: Graphic Portrait must have been pleased to have attracted roughly 500 people to the Cadillac Lounge last night. Well, maybe not too pleased about one guest – Igor Kenk himself.

“It was surreal. I can’t imagine feeling at all comfortable at a launch like that,” says Kenk creator Alex Jansen.

When I first spotted him sitting at the bar, clean-shaven, wearing a red backpack and chatting with friends, it was surreal and infuriating. Here was the man who spent years preying on Toronto cyclists having a beer in the midst of his victims.

Well, no doubt many were just curious, but as Kenk went from quietly chatting with friends to signing copies of the book to busting a move on the dancefloor, you couldn’t help but wonder what kind of insatiable ego waltzes into a book launch about his past criminal activity.

“It was weird. It was wrong. Was he being valorized? I felt unsettled that he was there,” said Eric Kamphof, who runs Curbside Cycle.

After Kenk removed his jacket to reveal the I’m Tired shirt he wears in the graphic novel, it got even weirder. “He’s clearly a megalomaniac. He’s branding himself. It’s sociopathic,” says Kamphof.

It’s the kind of megalomania that marks people convinced of their own bullshit explanations (delusions/excuses) for being petty criminals.

When I first approached him for a photo – this was after all a public event, and he’s a newsworthy item – Kenk lost it on me. Classic Kenk. Like he didn’t expect to attract attention.

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“Igor has an ego,” says Cyclists’ Union executive director Yvonne Bambrick, who was also at the event. We watched him from afar, discussing his earlier outburst at people documenting his presence.

Bambrick does acknowledge that “whether he’s loved or hated, he has a right to be there. He’s technically served his time, whether we agree or not that it was enough time. He did get off fairly easily given the number of bikes and lives affected.”

She goes on to say that people who’ve been negatively touched by the guy shouldn’t brood over him.

“For us to dwell on it hurts us, not him. It’s just you that’s suffering – because he doesn’t care,” she says.

Jansen admits that he mentioned the idea of a launch when Kenk was still in prison, and Kenk told Jansen, “I’d show up at it in my prison jumpsuit.”

That said, asking Kenk to leave didn’t cross Jansen’s mind. “It was an open event. Had there been an altercation, I had security there.”

“I was irritated,” echoes Kenk writer Richard Poplak. Kenk had apparently questioned the not-so-cheery NOW coverage. “We almost came to blows.”

“I told him, ‘You make the wrong choices all the time. You do 15 months and here you are hamming it up. You’re your own worst enemy’,” says Poplak.

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The weirder part is that Kenk got more comfortable through the night, moving from the bar to near the entrance while people crowded around to chat, get autographs and snap pics.

That had Kamphof irked most.

“That last scene [with Kenk signing books] was disturbing. He was just relaxed. It was all wrong.” [rssbreak]

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