I’m talking about the kind you see in the movies where all hell breaks loose and everyone is throwing punches and swinging pool cues at one another.
Personally I’ve never seen anything more serious than someone literally getting thrown out by a group of bouncers, but then again maybe I don’t go out drinking enough.
The one that stands out was started by my ex husband before we were married. We were in a bar with a group of friends. It was the first time at this particular establishment. The bartender turned out to be a young man that had recently impregnated my soon to be sister in law and denied responsibility. My ex took one look at the guy, jumped behind the bar and started hitting him. The bouncers and other employees ran to help the bartender and our male friends got involved to block the bouncers. Punches were thrown by both parties. There were probably seven or eight men fighting by the time the police arrived.
There were a lot of broken glasses but no broken furniture from what I recall. The other bar patrons stood back and didn’t get involved.
Good times.
Many times - I tended bar in a semi-tough place.
I was usually quite calm, but every once in a blue moon it got really ugly.
Yeah, when I was young, stupid and a heavy drinker, I frequented q lot of bars all over the country, and also in Fairbanks (which then was still a Territory).
While perhaps not as all-inclusive as the movie fights, I witnessed a lot of them, many with knives drawn and blood shed.
I feel fortunate to have survived all the lunacy.
In the '70s, My husband and I owned a bar in rural Missouri. It had been a seedy motel, before it was a seedy bar. We did a ton of work to make it into a nice place. We were naive.
We opened on a Monday. We had a few guests, but the whole week was slow. So was the next week, so we decided to have a “Grand Opening.”
We advertized in the local weekly paper and put up a big banner. We hired a local band.
Wow, it really worked. On Saturday night we were packed.
I was serving while my husband tended bar.
At about 9:00pm I went into the kitchen for another dozen beers, when I heard “Take it outside!”
I walked around the corner and a guy bleeding from a head wound fell on my shoes. The room looked like a scene from an old west movie. There were glasses and chairs flying through the air.
My husband grabbed me and pushed me out the back door to go the the local store, about 2 miles away, to call the police.
When I walked into to little store, the woman behind the counter turned white. I didn’t realize I was covered with blood from head to toe.
When I got back, 20 minutes later, the police were there and we had some cleanup to do.
Several patrons stayed to help, and the rest of the night was very sucessful.
We found out later that one of the two guys that lived across the road had planned the whole thing, because it would be funny. We had hired them to help us throughout our renovation. We had them to dinner several times. The younger brother told us that his brother did it and was sorry.
He came over a few days later and told us he had no idea it would go as far as it did. He paid for all the damage, and we didn’t press charges.
Only once, sort of, barely.
I was by myself, standing at the bar when a couple of guys in the corner started wailing on each other. I don’t know what it was about and I didn’t care. I was also underage at the time and didn’t need to be around when any police showed up so I paid and got out as fast as I could.
In the late 70’s I joined up with a small time CW band. My first outing with the guys was a bar in Harrisonville, MO called Jim’s Western Tavern.
After our first set, our short, skinny lead guitarist went to take a pee break. While he was in the men’s room ( a small three urinal and one stall closet) these two guys having a heated argument in there started throwing punches.
Our guy said that he didn’t want to get involved but he also couldn’t leave since he was in um mid-stream. He said he hopped down a row of urinals one at a time straining to finish as these guys traded punches and jostled closer to him.
Finally, he finished and started to zip up as he ran out the door.
With the door open, the two fighters spilled out of the men’s room and onto a pool table where they ruined what must have been an important game. Some bottles flew, a few other people threw some punches and a bunch of shouting happened.
That’s when the bartender hopped over the bar, grabbed a pool stick, broke it over one of the guy’s head and punched the other guy.
He grabbed both of them by their arms and walked them with their wobbly legs to the door where he pushed them outside. He then jumped back over the bar like it was no big deal.
Meanwhile our guitarist had run across the room, dove onto the stage, and stood behind me (big guy) and the Bass player (bigger guy).
Our bass player who was a veteran of these kinds of nights said,“Honky Tonk Woman. Let’s have a beat”. And we launched into our second set of the night.
Our place was just outside Plattsburg Mo.
Way too many to count. I used to own a bar in rural Texas. The cops were there every weekend. The largest one involved about 75 people and started in the bar and eventually spilled out into the parking lot. Beer bottles were a flyin’! My partner and I were afraid someone would be seriously hurt and there was other way to stop it. He shoot a .38 into the air and they scattered like cockroaches. Then the cops showed up.
Thankfully no one was injured, but my partner was ticketed for unlawful discharge of a firearm and during cleanup we found no less than five shanks. We found out later that the “Mexican Mafia” started the whole thing because we were known about town as being friendly to the “Bandidos” (the local biker gang).
Glad those days are over.
During college, I was removed from many a bar for fighting. I never started a fight myself, though. One of the most memorable was a time a group of friends and myself entered a bar and encountered another group of guys. One of my friends had recently had a thing with one of these other guy’s ex. Without warning, this other guy wound up and unloaded a vicious upercut on my friend. I immediately retaliated by landing a blow to this guy’s chin and taking him to the ground. The next thing I knew there were about a dozen guys brawling on the floor of this bar. The other group of guys was kicked out, as they were seen as the instigators. Amazingly, my friends and I were allowed to stay and drink.
Bubbadog, are you sure it wasn’t Bob’s Country Bunker?
I’ve seen plenty of fights in bars. Possibly even been in one.
A full-out bar-wide brawl? Never. But I’ve always wanted to see one.
Well, he did mention that his band played both kinds of music.
Happened all the time in military clubs, usually about closing time. I always made it a policy to have ‘last call’ an hour before closing time and get the hell out of Dodge. In the 70s, a lot of it was racially motivated, but often it was brawls between Marines and sailors, or fleet sailors and Seabees, or. . .whatever. Some people just loved to brawl and would start up some shit and the place would erupt.
No, Jim’s doesn’t have chicken wire. Gotta learn to duck or you won’t last long on the stage.
Many involving two drunken idiots. One involving 5 drunken idiots – the most idiotic of them pulled a gun from his sweatpants and chased the 3 on the opposite side into the street with his friend behind him. This was an Irish bar in New Jersey on St. Patrick’s Day right before closing time. Last time I played there. No chicken wire, though.
None involving an entire roomful of drunken idiots.
Well, there was the one time this guy came in and told the bartender “Give me a drink, quick, before the fight starts!” He chugged it down and said “Another one, quick, before the fight starts!” Then chugs down the second and says “A third one, quick, before the fight starts!” The bartender was curious at this point, and while the guy was inhaling his third drink, he asked “Why do you think there’s going to be a fight?” Then all hell broke loose.
(sorry, I don’t have any bar fight stories)
I have but it wasn’t much of a crowd; maybe ten or twelve people and a lot of us were involved only to the extent of punches thrown in self defense while trying to get to the door. The four main participants (3 against 1) caused each other some serious damage. Incidentally, the lone man in that fight was the last one standing; he was the only certified bad ass I ever knew.
I saw some really bad fights in Texas on the Jacksboro Strip back in the 1950s but without being involved; there were a few more in some beer joints around Lake Texoma in that same time frame; I escaped involvement in them as well.
Kind of not what the OP is asking but there was a shooting in a bar here last weekend. Two dead one wounded. Gang related. 200 or so people in the club, surge out into the parking lot.
Name of the bar?
Rick O’ Shay’s
All out bar brall, yes, and thankfully people left their guns in their car. It was ugly and unnecessary.