After a brief history of the barroom brawl -- "the original bar fight surely happened within hours or days of the appearance of the first bar" -- Miles reveals the results of his unscientific survey of bartenders, bouncers and barflies about the main causes of these battles.
"Women, property lines and dogs," said one of those experts.
"Drunks, women and drunk women," said another.
Other causes include arguments over politics, sports and the songs played on the bar's jukebox. They may sound like dumb reasons for a fight but, as Miles points out, there's frequently more to the story.
"To the unschooled observer, a fight that breaks out in a bar because one guy took offense at the song another guy played on the jukebox might seem random and ridiculous," he writes. "If you'd known that the guy who played that song had stolen the other guy's girlfriend a half-decade before, and that the song he played was the Aerosmith ballad that had been on the radio when the poor fella first unsnapped her bra that night by the lake, it might make more sense."
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