Thursday, February 18, 2010

Epic Beard Man: New details on the Oakland Bus Beatdown

If you haven't already seen the golden video of a trash talking thug getting a royal beatdown courtesy of an old white man resembling Santa Claus on steroids, I highly urge you to watch. The original video upload on Youtube can be seen here.

The video, uploaded just 2 days ago already boasts over a million views and the number is continuing to skyrocket. Yes, the web is all abuzz over "Epic Beard Man". I think it's safe to say we have a new bona fide Internet phenomenon in the making!





Do a Google search of "epic beard man" and you'll find a flurry of activity spawned via the video in just the last 24 hours.

Deadspin: Bus Fightin' Man Already An Oakland Legend Old Man Gives Whippersnapper What For
Know Your Meme: Epic Beard Man
Mahalo: Thomas Bruso Epic Beard Man
Buzzfeed: Thomas Bruso (Epic Beard Man)
CBS News: Oakland Bus Fight Racially Tinged  (towards the black man of course. CBS News is worthless.)
InsideBayArea.com: You Tube video of AC Transit bus fight in Oakland creating buzz
ThomasBruso.com
Daily Mail: 'Racially-charged' fight on U.S. bus becomes YouTube hit
etc...

Duplicates of the video are all over Youtube, as well as a growing number of parodies and remixes like this one, which happens to be my personal favorite...


Bloggers and random curiosity seekers have dug a bit deeper to find out the real identity of this old man everyone is talking about. His real name is supposedly Thomas Bruso. Apparently he was arrested for disorderly conduct a while back at an Oakland A's game. That, oddly enough, is also available for viewing on Youtube! Also known as Tom Slick and Vietnam Tom in the bay area, Bruso is known for his flamboyant antics and borderline psychotic personality. Here is one bay area blogger describing an incident with Bruso in 1996. Same guy? Who knows.

One thing's for sure. This story is snowballing. Expect something related to it on Google Trends tomorrow.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A few more old men like that and we'd see a sharp decline in thuggishness.

Hack said...

You got that right Silverfiddle!