Igor Kenk, owner of a shady bike shop in Toronto has been charged with stealing more than 3200 bikes. That puts him in the running for biggest bike thief EVAH! Also, he would "buy" stolen bikes with crack.
For the decade or so that I lived in Toronto, everyone knew that if your bike was stolen, chances were pretty good that you could buy it back from Igor.
Oh man I have so many good Igor stories.
The thing about him is that he's a neighbourhood legend in good ways and bad ways - of course, everyone hates him because he would steal your bike and if you caught him out on it, he'd threaten you with physical violence or chase you out of his creepy cave of a store, but there are some people who still swear he's a good guy. I've had friends who have had him fix their bikes for free, just because he noticed there was something wrong when they rode past him on the street.
Of course, then they would lock up their newly fixed bikes a week later and have them stolen, but all of those people still think he's great.
My stepmom lived right across from Trinity Bellwoods park before Queen West was hipster central, and when Igor first moved into the neighbourhood and was just known as a relentlessly charming eccentric (as opposed to a crazed, hoarding, crack-addict criminal bike-thief mastermind) he kept his bike "collection" in the basement of her house. Eventually it took up so much space that she got suspicious and asked him to move it out, but for like twenty years after that she enjoyed the rare privilege of locking her bike up all over Queen and never ever having it stolen.
Also, I had a garage sale a week before I left for New York, and he gave me $35 for a stack of 10 CDs without looking at the titles or artists.
