A rant by: nekochan

Out of all the panhandlers in Winnipeg, the one that bothers me the most is Bernard. Also known as the old guy in the grey jacket who can been seen hanging around downtown or Osborn Village. He's popped up as a reference in a recent review from Uptown, and on the front page of one of the university newspapers holding a wrinkled black and white photo of Johnny Cash.

My friend works in a print shop in downtown Winnipeg and Bernard had come into my store asking about making business cards. He wanted them to include his life story: he was the talent co-ordinator for ABC's The Johnny Cash Talent Show, conceived K-Tel's Hockey Blooper Videos, introduced Trizac to Hahn, introduced Sammy Davis Jr to his first wife, his uncle ran some sort of fancy restaurant and he had something to do with JaJa Gabor. It's sad that I remember all of this, but when a man talks your ear off for a good hour and a half, you tend to remember him. Now, these "business cards" were to be 4.5x6 in size and he was going to hand them out to people because the good people of winnipeg want to help him out and they really care about him and they are so impressed with his stories. Right. He had also asked the store's graphic artist to create for him a logo. But not just any logo, a logo of the planet with a,... umm... woman's body part that sounds like delores, (it's not that i can't say it, I just don't want this article removed for using such language) in the middle of it. But not one that could be easily seen, one that was sort of hidden. Because, the earth is our mother after all. Now, I don't care how mature you are, when you have a 70+ year old man asking you to create that for him, you can't help but laugh. But this isn't even that bad part.

After hanging out in my friends store for a while, Bernard turned to a woman who was using the photocopier and started to yell at her. And not just yell, he was using pretty some colorful language that would make a writer for HBO blush. At this point, my friend called security and Bernard was removed and is, of course, banned from the area.

But, he is not banned from the downtown area, where my friend and I attend school, shop, and share an apartment. We have been chased down three city blocks by this old man who is quite pissed at me friend and I. Though, I probably shouldn't have told him that I really don't give a flying f**k about his life's story and that only reason I was nice to him is because we were in a public place and I was being curtious. No, not my smartest of moves.

So, if anyone sees this man, do not humor him. Unless you're unbelievable caring, or naive, chances are, you care about his story as much as I do. And there is more than one print shop in the city, so he is bound to get his "business cards" printed somewhere. And once he does, he will be handing them out for as much loose change as he can get, so he can continue to get them printed. Please people, only you can stop the madness!

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