WHAT’S A REALLY bad night out? When a visit to a dance club ends in a hospital trip, 30 stitches, or death. Those are the three sorry incidents at stake in three separate lawsuits involving Portland bouncer company Top Flyte Security.

While tales of regrettable drunken incidents are no surprise at Old Town’s busy clubs, the series of legal complaints against Top Flyte raises a red flag about whether the beefy bouncers are being too rough.

Top Flyte owner Timo Porotesano—who manages security for several downtown clubs including Dirty, Candy, and the Barrel Room—says his bouncers (hired as independent contractors by the clubs) have unfairly earned a bad reputation after the high-profile death of 22-year-old Michael Ellis last winter. Ellis’ family filed a $2.5 million suit against Top Flyte and Club 915 in May after a bouncer kicked Ellis out of the club on the coldest night of the year and would not allow him back in to get his jacket; Ellis died of hypothermia near Tom McCall Waterfront Park that same night.

“We really do try our best to stay out of physical confrontation,” says Porotesano. “They call us the gentle teddy bears.”

That’s not the image two new lawsuits paint. Last week, attorney Lake Perriguey filed a complaint on behalf of his client Tushar Singh seeking $530,000 for pain and suffering and medical expenses incurred after an August 14 incident at Dirty.

Nike engineer Singh says he was at Dirty that night with three friends. He had only three drinks over the course of the night, and at 2 am, he walked behind a security guard standing near the bar. A security video shows Singh trip slightly, and then shows the guard grabbing Singh’s arm from behind. Singh tries to pull away, and the pair fall into the crowd. Singh’s head hit the side of a small stage, opening a gash that required 30 stitches. Although the suit doesn’t actually say the incident was ethnically motivated, it does note that Singh was wearing a turban at the time. Dirty was the scene of an anti-Arab hate crime last winter [“You Arab, I Know Your Kind,” News, Jan 13].

Singh says the guard aggressively pushed him down. Dirty owner Chris Lenahan says the video shows the opposite: Singh pulling down the much-larger guard.

With 1,200 people coming through Dirty’s doors on a busy Saturday night, says Lenahan, confrontations are inevitable: “We’re always trying to watch out for you. I’m like a giant babysitter. We’re one of the only bars with a drunk tank.”

Portland attorney Adam Greenman is expected to formally a file a suit against Dirty within the next six weeks, also calling out an altercation with Top Flyte guards. Greenman’s three clients were walking past the club on July 30 when he says a pair of bouncers mistook them for men suspected of robbing Dirty of liquor bottles.

“The bouncers set upon them,” says Greenman, who’s seeking damages from the nightclub. “My clients are three Afghanistan war veterans. They’re not little old ladies in wheelchairs. They were thrown to the ground and beaten.” All of the men required medical attention, and one went to the hospital.

Lenahan says he does not recall the incident, but that security employees at Dirty are allowed to use force on a “case-by-case basis” to defend themselves. “If you take a punch at us, we absolutely have the right to protect ourselves,” says Lenahan.

Sarah Shay Mirk reported on transportation, sex and gender issues, and politics at the Mercury from 2008-2013. They have gone on to make many things, including countless comics and several books.

10 replies on “Fighting Dirty”

  1. I worked as a doorman for a club which has been the recipient of quite a few bad reviews on Yelp the past couple years. It was one of the worse jobs I’ve ever had. You deal with so much BS checking IDs and no matter how nice or simple you make the process practically everyone thinks you’re an asshole bouncer. When the bartenders were having a bad night, for whatever reason, they would pick random people and ask me to “throw them out.” When the door was quiet I was expected to walk around and pick up empty glasses and bottles. You have people with drinks spilling on pool tables, breaking things. Sometimes the place would reach capacity and it was damn near impossible to maintain any type of calm or order. It’s a crap job. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have all the stress and anger and pent-up frustration build up every night–you see a side of humanity that is really quite despicable. There was a bartender at the club I worked who actually enjoyed beating people up. He told stories, with pride, of jumping over the bar to body slam patrons or the time he caught a guy pissing in the Men’s room sink, dragged him out the back door and threw him into the snow. When I read about Michael Ellis or Tushar Singh I have a great amount of sympathy. Unfortunately it’s an incurable situation if you ask me. You have people working a shit job dealing with shit-faced people. The guy who has had a couple drinks or just happens to be in the wrong place, wrong time is just as susceptible to vexation as the drunk punk who’s throwing the pool rack across the bar. I won’t even mention what it’s like at closing time, when the music stops & the bright lights come up, the drinks have to be finished and everyone has to go back out into the cold night.

  3. I think the big fat white elephant in the room here is the TYPE of bars/clubs and the TYPE the people they patronize. Basically, you’re talking about shitty people who go to shitty clubs (such as Dirty, Dixie, Barracuda, Etc.) and deal with the shitty people who work/run such places. “Bros” with spiked high-lites, bimbos with miniskirts and nothing else and it’s 40 degrees out. Just shitty pedestrian people, over all. I hear alot of shit talked about hipsters all the time, and it’s all well deserved. But the typical fake airheads (and yeah, a disproportionately large amount of them DO come in from Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, and Gresham) that make up the vast majority of Portland’s “club scene” get let off the hook far too often.

    All the issues mentioned in this article NEVER happen at Plan`B, East End, The Know, The Fez, Embers, Lovecraft, Mt. Tabor, Branx/Rotture, Someday, Holocene, or Crush. Gee, i wonder why?

  4. After watching the video,it looks to me like he had more than 3 drinks, or can’t handle his booze….
    but is that a reason for security to grab him? Are they supposed to toss people out for getting drunk?
    Over half a million is way excessive to claim, whatever side you take though.

  5. It looked to me like the guy slightly tripped over the bouncer’s big fat feet, in a very crowded bar. You can clearly see what an effort it was just to move around his ass – he was practically blocking off the bar! There’s no way to determine how many drinks the guy had, other than the ONE he grabbed for.

    Besides, if he’s Muslim, i doubt he was getting drunk in the first place. This looks like a definite hate crime.

  7. Wow DamosA, I seem to remember you arguing with someone else a few weeks ago about how wonderful it was to have a strip bar in your neighborhood vs. a church! My, my, how a few weeks can change things. And for the record, your comments about “Gresham” is veiled racism. The most racially diverse part of Portland are all the communities east of 82nd Ave., not your precious little downtown. There are far more blacks and Hispanics in bars east of 82nd than ever downtown. If you want to call out the gangbangers, be a man and do so, don’t hide behind your caucasian hipster defense shield.

  10. I believe i said “if he’s Muslim”.

    But all this is really way beside the point and having nothing to do with the article. But a cyber-stalker such as yourself already knew that, didn’t you?

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