If you haven’t seen Keytar Bear out performing in the streets over the past day or two, there’s a reason — the man under the costume has been attacked twice, allegedly by the same person.
Sources have told Vanyaland that Keytar Bear has suffered a broken nose and is out of commission for a few weeks after being sucker-punched by a guy trying to take his photo.
UPDATE: 2:07 p.m. EST: A fund raiser has already been announced, and an Indie GoGo campaign established for those who can’t attend the fund raiser. At post-time, the campaign is approaching $1,000 in donations after about an hour.
“He has been attacked twice very recently, evidently by the same person (evidently a white guy), both times,” our sources tells us. “Keytar Bear’s nose has been broken (once if not twice) and his keytar has suffered a fatality… He’d like to take matters into his own hands to get back at this guy, who appears to be stalking him at this point… but knows it will look like a black kid beating on a white kid, and we know what the cops will probably think about that.”
Word is the incidents involve the suspect posing for a selfie with the Bear, and then suddenly punching him. The first punch was square on the Bear’s mask, while the second was more of an uppercut that landed under the mask’s brim and onto Keytar Bear’s nose.
UPDATE 1:48 p.m. EST: Boston Magazine has some additional information on the attacks:
In a message sent to Boston, during the first altercation the alleged suspect threw a Snapple bottle at the bear, breaking his instrument, before running off and taunting him from afar. The second time, however, it got “personal.” He told us that the suspect involved in the second assault put his arm around Keytar Bear and went to take a selfie, before smashing the man in the costume in the nose and running away. “[I] gushed [through] the mouth of the bear suit and right in front of Faneuil Hall with cameras both facing the incident and the direction he ran off [to],” the message to Boston said.
The most recent attack came either yesterday or the day before, and one of the attacks was in the Faneuil Hall area.
Keytar Bear routinely performs around MBTA stops and subway stations, and has recently began setting up shop around Harvard Square.
If anyone knows anything, go to the police, or alert the operators of the We Love Keytar Bear Facebook page. And while we don’t want to accuse the innocent, be on the lookout for any suspicious Keytar Bear photos on Twitter and Instagram.
Fucking hell, Boston.
