Monday, September 5, 2011

Unnecessary acts of violence

And now, for a change of pace, it is time for some hard-hitting journalism from Dave.

This past week in Sydney, as part of their only job requirement - keeping patrons safe and having fun, several bouncers at nightclub hot spot, ‘The Ivy’ dragged a man into the basement and beat him near to death. Then when the cops showed up they told them ‘the bad man done run away boss, he not in the room in the underground being having the skin on his face bones ripped off with knuckles, I swear he ain’t boss, I swear’ and when the cops chased after this ghost down the street the bouncers used the time to clean up the crime scene so, they hoped, they could get away with it.

‘Come to the Ivy this weekend, everyone is safe and having fun at the Ivy, we hire security to SECURE it!’

What did this guy do so wrong to earn this beating? Well he was wearing the wrong shoes of course.

Well I am only speculating, but Sydney Bouncers are obsessed with shoes in way that makes the Sex and the City girls look like double leg amputees who cry at the mere mention of footwear existing. And due to some vortex of logic at some point in history the police and government have declared that bouncers are welcome to perform any act of prejudice, cruelty or violence to anyone they want to as long as before hand the bouncer has told them that he doesn’t like the guys shoes.

I have numerous Asian friends, for example, and there are several clubs in Sydney that have a no Asians allowed policy, but that’s hard to enforce under normal laws so instead what they say is ‘Sorry, you can’t come in… wearing THOSE shoes!’ It doesn’t matter what shoes he is wearing, they can be sneakers, they can be brand new $500 leather shoes hand crafted by the pope, or they can be, and almost always are, the exact same shoes as other people are wearing that are let in just before you and just after you. This can be if you’re Asian or any other ethnic minority, or literally any other sub-group they want to be prejudice against, long hair, gay, fat, old, too ugly, fancy shirt wearer, hat wearer – this is true, there is literally several men hired by the State government who’s job is to drive around to pubs and make sure no one is wearing a hat in them – seriously as ludicrous as it sounds this is 100% true! I think a politician saw a spy movie once where a bad guy had a hat that had a knife in the peak and he screamed ‘hats can kill’ and dedicated his life to making sure if someone is wearing one when he gets to the pub he must leave it on the table, NOT on his head, phew everyone is safe.

Now what often happens is the person being discriminated against will say ‘but I can see four people in there from here wearing almost identical shoes as mine, what the fuck?’ The bouncer is now allowed to say that he felt ‘threatened by this behavior’ and is allowed to beat this man to any level of pulp he so desires and the next day the media shouts ‘alcohol fueled louts creating violence in Sydney streets again!’

It should be pointed out that this is very much allowed by the cops. I once witnessed a man getting rejected by a bar because his outfit was wrong (he was Asian) and this man responded by purposely walking through the velvet rope, which inspired the bouncer to pick him up and throw him onto a very busy highway, only not killing him by the fate of a red light, before chasing him up the street. I frantically located policemen fearing for the man’s life and after telling him what happened the first cop said to me ‘fuck off mate’ and when I looked to his partner to figure out what was going on he added ‘he said fuck off mate’.

Ah to protect and serve.

Another time I was in a bar where the bouncer was such a cock to me on the way in that I vowed not to spend a cent on the inside so I didn’t drink anything at all. A couple of hours later I was kicked out with no explanation. Pissed off I tried to argue with him at the door merely wanting an explanation and the cops showed up saying:

‘What’s going on here’?
‘I was kicked out and I merely want an explanation’
‘It’s because you’re drunk you fucking idiot and if you don’t leave right now I’ll smash you in the face with my baton and throw you in the paddy wagon’ said a police officer to me, and fuck you I haven’t had a sip of alcohol.

Ah to protect and serve. I literally cried after this, it was the moment I knew the wonderful Sydney I grew up in no longer existed. It was also the closest I ever have or ever will go to committing an act of violence, I actually thought about it - that's intense for me. I also once thought about picking flowers, but I didn’t do that either, I am not a man of action.

Violence on Sydney streets has been a big talking point in the media in the past year, much to the surprise of everyone, even though I had this article published in the Sydney Morning Herald five years ago:

http://www.bouncers.com.au/bouncers-articles/2006/2/20/looking-for-a-night-out-but-finding-only-trouble/

Yep – I predicted this all! Yet I still don’t have a real journalism job.

No one can figure out why this is getting so out of hand even though it’s been the same for many years, and also the fact that the nights they do police blitzes there is always WAY more violence. Wait, add way more cops and there is way more violence, I just can’t figure it out!

Let me think about this – when I put chocolate powder in milk the milk gets chocolaty, and if I put more chocolate in the milk gets more chocolaty, so if more cops means more violence it’s the milks fault?

Of course all of the discussion is coming from police commissioners, politicians and journalists, 100% of whom haven’t tried to have a party night since 1972, and therefore have no fucking clue what they are talking about so just blame it on alcohol and young party enthusiasts.

Equivalents to this idiocy:
- Toddlers teaching people how to perform heart surgery
- A ‘Where to stay in Tunisia’ book written by a someone who’s never left Anchorage Alaska, and has never learned to read
- A vegan proclaiming ‘Now THAT was a good meal’
- People who are Chris Brown fans

Despite this being a big talking point for a long time this specific beating at the Ivy was particularly shocking, because the Ivy is a hotspot, and therefore is a place where men who are very, very boring go to lie about how much money they have so plastic women will sleep with them. The Ivy is swarming with so much pretentiousness and vanity that one time a guy there mentioned that he had once been to an art gallery for fun and the roof caught on fire. Another time two girls walked past having a lively political discussion and three people instantly drowned in the VIP pool. So being a bouncer here is considered the cream of the crop for Bouncers, and sadly owner of the Ivy, nightclub baron Justin Hemmes, has been forced to fire the men who beat that poor man, because, I assume, in his words ‘I built you that space in the basement so you could beat people near to death and NOT get caught you idiots, and when I encourage you to really badly hurt people because they don’t satisfy my personal aesthetics, and that is very often, I want you to beat them so bad they will never fully recover in way that doesn’t make me look bad, because I want to fuck lots of plastic women, and the ones that like to fuck violent people all want Chris Brown, YOU’RE FIRED, but if you see an Asian guy trying to get in on the way out take him down to the basement and beat him near to death please, just make sure you tell him he has the wrong shoes first’

‘Hey we know how to be bouncers!’ they responded. Yes they do.


If you also don't like random acts of severe prejudice or violence please click on this link, or copy and paste it if the link thing wont work, spot me, David Tieck on the top right, and hit like. If you do like people being beaten for no reason you can skip this step, but really what kind of a person does that make you?

http://www.pedestrian.tv/blogster/tech_media_culture