Ugh, brilliant use of cutting-edge humor there with the "unattractive big-ass white girl/42" waist/moooo" references, final bartender.

Do Portland bartenders get out much?

"It's raised in the front, and sparkles in the moonlight. It roars to life and they drive away with the lights off." That, combined with the use of the historical present, and I'm purple patched out for a good while. That first writer should ditch the bar and apply for a position at Pitchfork.

I smell a weekly column here.... Love it!!

mel, don't get all offended. It's an article about drunk people and inappropriate behavior. I thought it painted the picture quite lyrically myself. We're not talking about the guys who built the railroads here.

I'm not offended, just bored.

Folks be getting drunk and fighting/boning.

Great article Tonry, wish there was more to read.

@ the first story....that story is one that i've seen happen similarly lots of times, but it never fails...the loudest guy in the bar is 9 times out of 10, the weakest one. I'm a big guy, but i try to be friends with everyone unless there's no other option but to go head up with a fool.

Reggae skinheads love to beat down hipsters when hipsters act tough, because there's always one around their set trying to be loud when it ain't even necessary. Just be cool with the skinheads, and they'll be cool with you. DJ Matty Valentine's clique are some of the most awesome dudes you could know unless you get on their bad side.

It's just after sunset.Cars driving by.Some on the way home from a long days work.Others perhaps cruising the whores out front.I wipe the dust off the counter and take a long deep breath.They will arrive soon.The neon outside lights up the first group of folks approaching the doorway.Their heeeere.....sudsuckers!"Damn,here we go again".Fuck it.I need the money."Welcome folks"I say to the first couple in the doorway."Suds"is all they say."You got it".As I serve them up,I overhear one say,"He looks kind of nerdy".Another adds "Yea a fat nerd too".Yes here we go again.....or not?I walk back to the table and spit on the one that called me a nerd.I then proceed to smash a bottle of suds over the one who said I was fat.Hollow hearted hipsters.That was my third and last night as a bartender.

bartenders always have the best stories! This should be a weekly column...great idea!

Weekly column hell, a television series.

Thanks Showstopper. I'm glad someone finally had the courage to deliver a much needed tirade against those terrible hipsters, whoever they are. If we all band together and work hard enough, we may be able to make this indefinable yet somehow ubiquitous subgroup of youth a universal foil for every local issue.

As a bartender you eventually reach a point of saturation where no amount of piss, shit, blood and puke will phase you anymore. Your nostrils pucker, you let out a practiced sigh that is intended as much to clear your breathing passages of any airborne filth as it is to show disdain, and then you get the bucket. The human body can do amazing, terrible things and when those terrible things happen to you or on you, the worst part is realizing that in no small way this is your fault, and then you add someone to the list of people who can't hold their alcohol and who must be watched with vigilance.

Fights are a little different. When you run a bar, your regulars become like family. There's the brother you wish you had, the annoying but completely lovable sister, the alcoholic aunt or uncle and without fail, there's always idiot cousin. Your idiot cousin is that stupid fucking hipster. The last time he threw something like a punch was by pressing down on the right thumbstick while playing Call of Duty, but he talks big and he's so certain that he'll win a fight strictly because he's never been in a real one. For reference; when two hipsters hit each other once, yell a little bit and then walk away from the party with tears in their eyes it isn't a fight, it's a regression to grade school. Nonetheless a few of them or their alternates from other social circles will inevitably find their way into real fights, and as a bartender watching it, it's like choosing between letting your cousin get the ass kicking he needs and deserves and stopping someone from beating the shit out of a member of your family. It isn't an easy call to make, made worse by the knowledge that a single, well-placed punch can change the direction of someone's life in its entirety.

The first story of these, unquestionably the best written one, is indicative of those moments. I may have tried to keep the thugs from going outside, asking them to give the idiot a pass and buying them a round of drinks but sometimes these things happen too fast for you to control. I remember watching blood shoot six inches into the air from a head wound as the bleeder insisted that he was just fine. Like the kid who got his teeth kicked out, some people, especially drunk ones just don't want the help.

As for the subsequent stories about sex in bathroom stalls, on sidewalk walls and people shitting themselves: that's par for the course. They suck and if you have to clean up after any of it you pull your t-shirt over your nose and hate humanity for just a little more but then you get on with it. None of those stories are particularly noteworthy, several of them are unquestionably exaggerated and a couple are probably at least ninety percent bullshit.

This could be a good article but it's dragged down by the fact that most of the stories are sloppy filler. As suggested by a few comments, this could be a good weekly column but seek out stories at least as good as the first one. There's enough of us around that it really won't be that hard.

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/faze.htm…

Good reporting Andrew Tonry a cracking read.

Be cool with the reggae skinheads?

That is one tall order.

@ glassplayground

Now that was some work for teaching someone proper use of a word. lol.