“Since he (Cole Younger) believed that the Northfield raid had been botched because the three gang members who went into the bank were drunk, he became a fierce temperance advocate.”

-Edward E. Leslie, The Devil Knows How to Ride

One cold winter night I was interviewing Davy, a meth distributor who brought product in from Philly and Delaware and had local wholesalers funnel it to the actual dealers. He did not use drugs, but drank a lot. This particular night he was having a crisis of faith. He claimed to be a devout catholic, and when his big beefy hand covered mine and put my pen in his pocket I knew he was about to come clean.

It turns out that Davy had just recently beaten, tortured and threatened one of his wholesalers who had been behind on payments. He did not have a problem with breaking into the guy’s house and terrorizing him, but he was ridden with guilt over the fact that he had killed the man’s Rottweiler. The death of the dog haunted him. He said, “I was so mad at that prick for making me kill his dog that I almost killed him. That was a good dog, just doing its job. And I had to kill it with my own hands.”

Just then we were rudely interrupted by a tall skinny and extremely drunk redneck, who was pawing all over the only good looking woman in the place, who just happened to be sitting next to Davy. The man went on to tell Davy that he had no class for talking while the band played. A few verbal exchanges ensued as Davy, the bar tender and myself alternately threatened the guy. He eventually left the bar and ran straight into four coked up football players who had just come back from a drug run down town. The drunk called them “pussies” and was beaten and stomped and left in the center of the street.

Such are the “opponents” that pad the records of champion “bar-fighters.” Jerks with low alcohol tolerance, or who “grow beer balls,” and violent functional alcoholics, enjoy a symbiotic relationship of sorts. Is this predation or social violence taken to its most inane extreme, or a form of social predation? I did end up classifying the righteous stomping of the drunk, by the drunken coke heads, as an attack. It was not a mutual combat by any stretch—just baboon level justice.

One of the few things that keeps drunks from fighting constantly in public is the threat of armed retaliation. The most violent places on earth are working class bars in England that are so rough some bouncers have attained the status of champion athletes.

An example of the other extreme would be the old Eldorado Lounge in Baltimore. When you stepped through the door Chico, a heavyweight boxer, would pat you down for weapons. The establishment [which has since moved to East Baltimore] was 10 feet wide and 90 feet long, most of it occupied by bar and stage: a bright white ecosystem supporting 5 nude Afro-Asian vixens; and maintained by 3 tuxedoed mixologists. Perhaps 200 black men decked out in shades, chains and up-to-date athletic wear, flashing thick knot-rolls of cash, patronized the place.

The Eldorado was a model of tolerance and non-aggression. Chico told me that it had not always been so quiet. As soon as he instituted the pat downs at the door though, there were no more fights. The unspoken point was, that nobody wanted to roll the dice on who Chico would toss out first, because if you were second to hit the pavement, your opponent would be that much closer than you to his SAAB or BMW, and hence the comfort and solace of his 9MM handgun.