Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Bar-room brawls

23:05 / 14.12.04

Drunken fights. They're entertaining, aren't they? Especially when you're not involved.

I've witnessed many, many inebriated quarrels in public. Perhaps the most dramatic - and thoroughly scary - took place in our flat in Edinburgh, when we invited a couple of lesbian nursing colleagues over for dinner. We're no slouches in the wine-guzzling stakes, but even we were impressed when they turned up with eight bottles of wine in a succession of carrier bags.

Three, four bottles in, our drinking companions loosened up. Five, six bottles in (and we were doing our best to stay coherent), I struck up a gossip-exchange with one of the two about a mutual work colleage.

"We're over," her partner interjected, suddenly, glaring pointedly at my gossip-mate. "You know why? Because you know too many people. You know too. many. people."

Scary moment. These were frighteningly physical people. Anxiously, we pleaded with them not to fight in our flat. They squared off against each other. We put on Patsy Cline. They gradually relaxed. We relaxed. We called a taxi. They left. We relaxed even more.

Not a bar-room brawl, then. My most memorable pub brawls, however, do involve lesbians. I remember an evening in Route 66, an Edinburgh gay bar, when a suited-and-tied bloke decided to mouth off about "fucking poofs" to the poof standing next to him. All of a sudden, a grim of (four, five-foot) bar-dykes swarmed him, picked him up bodily and slung him out the door. The gay men were hanging back, gingerly, looking hands-off and a bit pathetic. (In a crisis, one needs lesbians).

What are your best fights? Home and away.

10:29 / 15.12.04

My most memorable pub brawls, however, do involve lesbians.

Funnily enough, some friends of mine who were my next-door neighbours when I lived in Vauxhall told me that the only time there was ever violence in the Vauxhall Tavern was on a Friday night when it was Vixens, the women only night. Their impression was that there was violence almost every Friday night, and they mentioned something about one local minicab firm refusing to pick up from the Tavern on Fridays.

That's second hand of course; my first hand experience has been that each and every protagonist in bar-room violence has been a) male, and b) drunk. Most violence has been rather inept scuffling and flailing, though I have once seen someone floored by a punch and then kicked repeatedly in the head as he lay on the floor. It was genuinely sickening.

Hattie's Kitchen

10:47 / 15.12.04

Have seen many, many lesbo fights in my time, although have never hit another woman. You almost expect it when you go to a lesbo place. In my experience, anyway. It usually starts off as a ruck over who's next on the pool table, and quickly escalates into glass-chucking, chair-throwing chaos.

The best one I ever saw was at G-Bar in Liverpool, when two babybutchdykes squared up over a hotly contested object of desire, and they proceeded to start throwing punches at each other, both of them holding full pint glasses in their free hand. Neither one of them spilled a drop of their ale, but they made damn sure their punches landed.

10:57 / 15.12.04

Yeah, pool tables seem to be at the root of much pub aggro. I saw one fight between 2 regulars at a pub I used to go to. One chap took his shot and the other said "Foul, 2 shots to me," "I didn't foul, I hit the red," "Bollocks," "I swear on my son's life I hit the red," "Bollocks," "I JUST SWORE ON MY CHILD'S LIFE, YOU CUNT" and it all kicked off.

11:15 / 15.12.04

Ganesh, did you start this thread just so you could use your collective noun for dykes? Own up!

11:17 / 15.12.04

I feel like I'm missing out on lesbian bar fights. I think I may have mentioned the greatest bar brawl ever on here but it still sticks in my mind due to how over the top it was. Large crowded bar around Christmas time and everything kicks off, more of less every person in the bar started fighting each other, stools were flying over head someone got back flipped onto a table a guy runs past me with a 5' girl on his back holding him in a sleeper hold, someone gets a glass ashtray over the head - all we needed was the Salon doors and it would have been perfect.

I was just standing in the middle off all this a little stoned and loving it, best thing about it was the speed it stopped and the fact there were no real injuries. One person was chucked out and then everyone that was fighting started talking/laughing with each other and buying drinks.

Seen really evil stuff too but there's no fun in that.

I am of course Still Bear from the Block.

11:30 / 15.12.04

Ganesh, did you start this thread just so you could use your collective noun for dykes? Own up!

No!!

Well, maybe just a li-i-ittle.

11:45 / 15.12.04

The worst (albeit, to be fair, only) bar fight I saw was in Glasgow -no idea why it started, but it ended up with four bouncers carrying the guys involved downstairs, meaning that for the rest of the night there was a trail of blood all the way down the stairs from the top floor. This was in Benet's, so if anyone here has been there they'll understand that this was unpleasantness upon unpleasantness...

11:50 / 15.12.04

Our old local used to prevent fights by the simple expedient of keeping the scum out. Anyone who was known to be a troublemaker would be bodily lifted and carried out of the place by a six foot white haired tranny in kilt (the manager) the moment they walked in. Then the place got sold and it's now one of the quietest and most threatening places around.

11:52 / 15.12.04

I only ever seem to see pub fights when I'm sober and walking past said pub and they always seem nasty and squalid - say, two blokes kicking the shit out of someone on the ground, glassy-eyed drunk with only the viciousness left, and the guy on the ground is drunk too except the only thing left on his mind is pain.

12:22 / 15.12.04

Ha! Bennet's - I used to go there... can't think of any funny stories about it right now (although I recently met a bouncer who used to work there, who claimed Charlie Nicholas and Murdo MAcleod were hiding some secret relationship from the world and were often spotted together in there, in a weird bit of 1980s Scottish football slash (which is a genre that I'm sure hasn't been developed very far).

17:30 / 15.12.04

Anyone been in a big bar fight?

It's like being in a western but with a buch of dick heads who think you've spilt thier bird on thier drink.

17:51 / 15.12.04

Some drunken blokes tried to grab a female friend of mine and pull her into a cab they were in. When me and my friend intervened, I got the shit kicked out of me by the four of them and THE BASTARD CAB DRIVER! I hope they tipped well! Funny thing is I don't really remember that much of it, just that one minute I was standing up, the next I was getting up and someone was asking me if I was okay, when I said fine why, they told me that I had just had my head stamped on a few times by a group of blokes.

The funniest bar-room brawl I was involved in happened when a friend who's birthday it was and who was very drunk was talking to a girl, when I turned to see him some guy was facing up to him, when I went over and told the guy that if it was his girlfriend that my friend was drunk and wasn't trying anything, the guy told me it wasn't his girlfriend and then turned on me. I told him to piss off, he said 'do you want a fight' and puffed his chest out like something on a wildlife programme, I laughed and said 'yeah, okay' he swung a punch at me and I lent back and fell on the ground unhurt, but saw him pull his leg back to kick me while I was down, so I reached up and grabbed his balls and wouldn't let go. At this point my drunk friend shouted 'leave my friend alone' and jumped ontop of me and just sort of lay there. It stayed like that for a while, really surreal, and then the guy's mates came over and sort of lead him away while he wimpered a bit.

It was really odd.

I am not a violent person in the least, not a fighter at all, just used to get into scraps because I was tall I think, and have had a few people just go for me in bars for nothing (I have a scar across my nose from a glassing incident after I told a boy to take his friend home as he was drunk and kicking out at people in the toilet, and somebody might turn on him - the friend duely appeared and through a glass in my face).