Met Junior in Guelph today for a lunch, because we haven't seen one another for months, and I miss him. Had burgers and fries at a new place called the "Bread Bar." Two guys have burgers and fries and one beer each, leave a half-decent tip, and that's seventy bucks?
Get the f@ck outta here!
Anyway, we're at a table on the patio, and out in the park just outside the plexiglass barrier, there's a dude sleeping under a tree.
So we get to talking about homeless folks in Guelph, and Junior brings up Julian.
Junior says "that guy on his iPad outside the restaurant is homeless too. He just hangs around and tries to talk to young kids every chance he gets. His name is Julian."
The guy outside the restaurant?
We'd sat on the concrete terrorist-barrier outside the restaurant for a few minutes, having a smoke before we went in, and I'd vaguely registered a barefoot woman (I assumed) nearby, tapping on a tablet. Long dress, long hair...
That was Julian.
Long story short, in short order I figured out that I'd first met Julian at the University of Guelph thirty-five years ago. We had mutual friends at the time. I remember him from then...
Yo, Julian, what up?
I'm thinking.
What you thinking about, Julian?
I'm thinking my feet stink.
That conversation took place in a stairwell at the UC at U of G. Julian was in the habit of going barefoot everywhere all the time.
Maybe that's why his feet stank.
Julian was a graduate of the University of Cairo, and when he realized that didn't cut the mustard in the real world, took to hanging around university campuses world-wide, which is how I came to meet him in Guelph 35 years ago.
So Junior tells me this homeless dude who I thought was a woman actually had a documentary film made about him. I couldn't believe it, but here you go.
Yup, apparently Julian spent ten years of his life building harpsichords while squatting in a train station in Zurich.
Homeless Julian is famous now.
But here's what I'd like to know; were his harpsichords any good?
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