So, do most of these fights look like this?
So, it’s fisticuffs, is it?!
Yeah, this is a critical part of it. The accepted fiction is that when you’re drunk, rules go out the window but actually what happens is that the rules of sober behaviour get replaced with the rules of drunken behaviour, and it’s still taboo to break them. So for example:
- You can get in fights, but no knives or melee weapons
- You can vomit in the street and men can piss in the street but no one can shit in the street
- You can randomly make out with a stranger of the opposite sex, and women can make a big performance of making out with each other, but absolutely no men snogging men
- You can kick in windows and smash up a bus stops, but arson is right out
Also worth noting - if you interview e.g. Russian or Italian hooligans, they’re horrified at these British clowns who get drunk before fighting - drink slows you down and blurs your senses, so why take the risk?
Russians horrified at getting drunk? Somehow I doubt this.
Great. Now I’ll be getting a warning for hate speech.
Horrified at getting drunk and going out looking for an organized fight. Fight sober, get drunk afterwards.
It’s actually kind of surprising that someone finds this surprising. We have whole industries dedicated to letting young guys beat on each other in a manner that doesn’t destroy society.
Every boxing gym, martial arts dojo, wresting club, fencing club, SCA club, and LARPing club out there is built on the fundamental premise that it’s fun to get into a scrap with your buddies. It’s not as random and dangerous as going out to a pub to get into a fight, but it’s not fundamentally different, either.
Except that for a lot of martial arts teachers, it is just that. One of my own teachers has explicitly made this exact point on several occasions. He sees the role of martial arts in modern society as an acceptable outlet for the stupid things teens and twenty-something guys are likely going to do anyways.
And while some are too lazy to put in the long-term effort, a lot also like the idea of becoming a “badass”. Go and watch “Cobra Kai” to see this exact philosophy in action. Such media wouldn’t be half so popular if a lot of people didn’t enjoy at least some level of recreational violence.
Not to mention regular contact sports like football or hockey or even not contact sports like basketball or soccer. People like having a way to physically compete and dominate each other, ideally without resulting in someone getting their brains bashed in.
Maybe they aren’t specifically looking for a fight, but dudes in their teens and 20s often go out looking to see what they can get away with. Especially after a few drinks. They get big mouths or they get pissed off because some girl they like is talking to some other guy.
Although in my experience, very few people seem to want to get into an actual fistfight. Seems like most of the time they just want to talk shit until their friends drag them apart or the bouncers toss them all out and then everyone goes their separate ways feeling all proud of themselves for being “tough guys”. At least until they encounter someone who actually knows what they are doing and isn’t in the mood to put up with someone’s bullshit.
I personally don’t feel like getting a broken nose or losing some teeth just to blow of some steam.
Yes. here is an interesting documentary on the subject.
Classic Historical British Self Defense there. It’s evolved a bit since then.
I’m a straight guy and a foreigner and I didn’t understand it either during the two partial years I spent in England. Not only the fighting but drinking in general. I was used to Big City USA drinking, where you would drink all night and slowly get drunk. In Big City England, you drank beer as fast as you could to get drunk as quickly as possible. Pissing, barfing and passing out in public outside pubs was way more prevalent than I saw in the US. There was some overlap, of course, but it really was a different drinking culture.
I learned really early on to avoid women who were angry drunks. They could get you drawn into a fight that you wanted no part of. And they were surprisingly hard to drag away from confrontations. I’d much rather deal with an angry drunk guy because I didn’t have to worry about hurting them while dragging them away.
Damn, caught out again!
No, most don’t look that professional. It seems like most fights end up on the floor with guys throwing 50 punches, 48 of which land on the back, shoulders or furniture. Occasionally, you’ll see an actual stand up fight.
This is pretty much what I described above. Good to know things haven’t changed since I was there.
Yeah, this seems like more the US way. I’ve seen a lot if that.
No kidding. I hate belligerent drinkers. I go out to have a good time, not spend a couple of hours in the ER getting stitches.
What has changed is the frequency and prevalence. Today’s 18-24 year olds drink less and less often than previous generations, for a variety of reasons. That’s on average: the ones who do still get wasted every Saturday night are the ones who really really like it, so the behaviour is more intense.
Also worth saying that consensual punch ups are one thing - you also get people who work out their insecurities by beating up men or women who “offend” them by being happier, more successful at pulling, rejecting them, or just in their eyeline at the wrong moment.
Lastly, it’s relatively easy to identify which clubs are danger zones for this stuff and finding somewhere else. These are pretty localised cultures.
its weird but ive been told that if you want a good look at British /lower east side pub culture read the andy capp cartoon …
I just read about that a few days ago. That’s quite a drop in drinking compared to years past. There’s been a drop in the US, but I don’t thinks it’s as large.
Fortunately, that’s true in the US also. Easy enough to avoid the bad ones.
The drinking culture in the UK was very influenced by the pub licensing hours that placed strict rules on when you could go into a bar and buy a beer.
These are quite historic, many date from WW1 and ‘the great shells crisis’. This was a national panic that the big artillery pieces that formed an important role in the trench warfare were not performing as well as those of the Germans. The shells were not detonating as they should.
There was an investigation and it came to the conclusion that the munitions workers were at fault because they were drunk at work. So some laws were passed to deal with the problem at source and they imposed sweeping restrictions on pub opening hours.
Pubs were open during day until 3pm. Then closed until 6pm and open again until 11pm or in some towns 10:30 closing time. After, if you wanted a drink yoh had to go to a private club with a membership. Or a nightclub. These were often only open until 1:30am. There were more restrictions on Sundays.
Now you might have thought that these laws would have been repealed after the war. But no, they were still in place until quite recently.
The effect of these restrictions was that drinking was compressed into a few hours and every customer knew they did not have long before closing time. So there was a mad rush to the bar when the first bell was rung. The bar staff had the unenviable job of getting their customers to drink up and leave premises.
This rigamarole lasted until about 2008(?) when I think the rules were changed to make closing times a matter for local government and at the discretion of the pub owner, rather that a law that applies to the whole country.
Despite this relaxation in the rules, British drinking habits are to go out early and drink rather a lot before midnight. On the Continent, in Europe, it some bars don’t open until after midnight and will be open until dawn, they are still restaurants at midnight. This makes a nice change for British holiday maker when they head off to sunny Spain.
Most countries have their own cultural history regarding drinking. The north European nations have a beer drinking culture and many have restrictive laws. The wine drinking countries of the south are rather more civilised. It all goes a big crazy again when you reach the vodka belt of central and eastern Europe.
The US, of course, has its own story about drinking, the temperance movements, prohibition laws, Al Capone and the bootleggers.
It’s still hard to believe it was that recent. I remember all the stories about how crime and drunkenness would skyrocket if the hours were relaxed. I think a lot of people were surprised when things remained pretty much the same.
its weird but ive been told that if you want a good look at British /lower east side pub culture read the andy capp cartoon
The world of Andy Capp is stuck permanently in the 1950s, with rent collectors still coming round to demand the weekly rent and Florrie still having a bath in a tin bath in front of the coal fire, and Andy permanently down the pub playing billiards. It was out of date even when it first appeared.
Fortunately I haven’t had to deal with that much, but I know exactly what you are talking about.
Women in general are often a source of tension when there’s alcohol involved. Either you have a sloppy drunk bothering the girls in your group who won’t take “no” for an answer. Or you get some guy whose all pissed off because the girl he was interested in would rather talk to you.
For Russians the proper activity after getting Drunk isn’t fighting it’s morose existential brooding.
I knew a Western guy in Tokyo who loved to get into fights. I didn’t know that at first, of course, so we hung out sometimes. Then he showed up once with a black eye. . .
Shortly after that, I happened to see him at our usual bar. We chatted a bit then wondered off our separate ways.
A while later some guy comes up to me and tells me that my “buddy” is getting into trouble. I go to the back and find out he’s trying to pick a fight with a whole platoon of US Marines.
A couple of the Marines were starting to get really pissed off but fortunately there were a few who weren’t as hot so we managed to separate them. Actually, even though I probably saved him from getting beaten up, I look back and think that I didn’t do him any favors.
I’m not a skilled fighter, or lover for that matter, so I avoid being seen as his “buddy” after that.
Then there’s the sort of opposite of this. A group of women with one who thinks she’s the Alpha female and you pass her by to ask one of the others to dance or have a drink. Some react like you knocked them down and walked all over them. Anger and drinking are not a good combination. Everyone should be a happy drunk, just like me.
I just figure if I orgasm I did my part. Not my fault if she can’t keep up! 
Uhhh, I’m pretty sure that in both of these scenarios it’s the guys that are the actual source of tension… Just sayin’.
I have certainly encountered, plenty of drunk women who are a major problem when I was a bouncer when, due to being female, I was usually called on to deal with them- harassing guys, fighting (which could get really nasty) or starting fights that they then expected their male companions to finish and so on- but those descriptions are both just of asshole guys.