First post from the way back machine...
I spent some time this morning looking through old, nay ancient, blog posts and found an old blog I’d even forgotten I’d created. The following is an edited/redacted version of a post written in early February of 2005. Those were the days...
Fights in or outside of a bar are inherently odd, I think. They can at the same time be completely predictable, and spontaneous at the same time. I'm pretty sure that every bar as its usual crew or collection of 'bad apples', as the saying it goes. My town is no different, except that in some cases, we've been dealing with the same bushel of apples for years. You gets these guys who have to prove they're cool or bad asses by picking fights or just being ass holes in general. I should know, I've been throwing out some of the same guys for eight and a half years. Some fights are predictable, and you can see them coming from the very moment someone walks in to a bar. It's either because the guy is a dickhead, or his woman carries herself in a similar manner which will eventually lead to him getting pissed off at her, but taking out on whichever poor dumb schmuck she has pulled on to the dance floor with the sole intention of making her man jealous. Which brings me to my second point on bar fights. Now, this may sound like an entirely sexist statement, but roughly 90% of all fights in a bar are because of women. now, i'm not saying women are always going around starting fights or anything like that. But be it directly or indirectly, a woman is usually the basis for any kind of a fight. These are the different ways: A. "You slept with my girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband 2 years ago before I ever knew them!" B. "You slept with my girlfriend/wife/boyfriend/husband 2 weeks ago before I ever knew them!" C. "You used to date my sister/brother, you cocksucker/whore!" D. "You're fucking my baby's mother/father!" E. "Hey, that's my girlfriend/wife/husband/boyfriend you're trying to finger bang/dry fuck on the dance floor, ass hole/bitch." Of course there's the ever popular and sure to please: "If that bitch/ass hole doesn't stop staring at me/looks over here one more time I'm gonna kick their ass." It's that last statement that usually predicates a spontaneous fight. The spontaneous fights, obviously are the worst. With the ones that you can see coming, you can usually pick out the primary players and move in and stop it before it even starts. Spontaneous ones are exactly that: Spontaneous. Everyone is drinking, dancing, having a great time, and then BAM!! Two guys are throwing punches, shoving each other, knocking customers, chairs, tables and drinks over until they collapse to the ground in a flurry of tangled arms and legs with half the guys in the bar thinking they're doing the staff a favor by trying to break it up, when in most cases they're the dumb asses' friends and they really just want to get a lick in. Most of these start in some way near the dance floor, but inevitably end up in the seating area where the most collateral damage can be caused. The majority of injuries I've received from bar fights over the last few years haven't come from fists or heads or people at all. It's been from banging my shins on the legs of overturned chairs as I'm trying to haul ass to get to the actual fight. My knees suck, man, let me tell you. One of the best examples I can give for a spontaneous fight was this: On a hot summer night, with the bar hot and stuffy as hell and people dancing up a storm, a girl's body over heated while she was on the dance floor and shut down. She essentially went into something like a gran mal epileptic seizure in the middle of the dance floor. In the process of clearing people out of the way and trying to clear off the entire dance floor, a few guys got shoved as the crowd moved back. These guys didn't like getting shoved and hilarity ensued. There were a few fights inside of the bar, and a whole shit load outside the bar. By the way, when the fights started outside, I was the only employee outside and got to deal with them all myself. That was a situation when a 'painful' decision is made: you have to contain the one guy who started most of the bullshit and keep him restrained while also trying to keep him from getting his ass kicked. In trying to restrain this guy, I suddenly looked like a guy out of a rodeo trying to wrestle down a calf by the neck, while also trying to fend off the guys who were trying pummel him. I got so much blood on my face it looked like someone had beat the shit out of me, which fortunately was not the case. That situation sucks, because--wrong as it may be--it's kind of nice to see the one guy who caused all of the trouble getting his ass kicked. There's a poetic justice to it. Unfortunately, it's not entirely ethical. Then again, aren't ethics generally a pretty gray area when you're in a bar? Ending fights can go any number of different ways. The most well known end is where two guys finally get pulled apart after beating on each other (like this past weekend) or trying to beat on each other, and you finally get their respective groups to get them loaded into a vehicle and leave. Sometimes, it's not necessarily the end of the fight because the groups decide to go to an undisclosed location to, "Finish this once and for all" as the saying goes. Sometimes, you even have to call the cops or the cops just happen to pass through the parking lot at the right time and take care of it so you can take care of more important measures, like making sure there's nothing happening INSIDE of the bar that the cops can nail you for. One of my favorite ways of ending a conflict takes a certain kind of finesse and timing, it's something I've been trying to perfect over the years after watching my current boss, the infamous Dave Flanagan. It's a concept of diffusing a situation I had never thought of: using comedy in some size, shape, or form. The first example I ever saw of him using this method was a kid out in the parking lot, ready to kill some guy, took his shirt off to show that he was ripped or what not. Dave said something to the effect of, "Oh yeah, well take this on first buddy!" and took off his own shirt to reveal his pot belly and sagging pecs. The kid couldn't help but start laughing his ass off, and everyone else followed suit. That kind of abrupt changing of gears totally neutralized everything. We all had a good laugh, tempers simmered, and the night carried on peacefully. I have to admit that I'm kind of cocky about what I know about the business and often feel like I know the best or only ways to handle a situation, but Dave has a way of showing me I don't. This is a guy who was a former golden glove boxer, a rodeo clown, state arm wrestling champ, bull rider, what have you. Most times, he can whup any young or old upstart that comes calling, but he knows that the best way to handle a fight is to end it before it starts. It's the anti-climactic ending, the one that never made it to the final edit of Roadhouse, but it's always, ALWAYS, the best. but believe it or not, breaking up a fight is a blast sometimes, it really is.










