By NADIA PFLAUM
Forget banning smoking in bars and clubs. Let’s ban trick-ass bitches.
Trick-ass bitches, as rappers might call them, were the reason that there was a fight Sunday night at Hip Hop and Hot Wings, a weekly gathering of DJs, rappers and scenesters that had been filling a little bar called the Peanut to capacity at 9th and Broadway for nearly four years now without incident.
A bar fight might not sound like a big deal to most, but at the Peanut, it’s different. Those of us who have been attending regularly have always seen the Peanut as a safe haven for the old-school and underground music we love, but we knew that it was a fragile arrangement. When fights and, God forbid, shootings break out at other clubs, hip-hop gets the rap. People blame the music for attracting the “wrong crowd” or encouraging violence and misogyny. People blamed hip-hop for the first homicide of the year, at the River Market club Skybox, even though they’d changed their format to salsa dancing not long before the killing. Salsa dancing, for fuck’s sake.
So those of us who became Peanut regulars understood that if anything ever went down – like a fight, which, you know, tends to happen when people drink, and people at the Peanut do drink – it could mean be the end of our favorite hangout spot.
And so a trust was built. The regulars at the Peanut became like family, and the family was ever-expanding. It sounds almost stupidly idyllic, the way that people of all shapes and sizes and colors and tastes found a common ground at Hip Hop and Hotwings.
Until some trick-ass bitches came and fucked it all up last night.
It was probably near midnight upstairs at the Peanut, and a rhyme cypher had formed in front of the DJ booth. I think it probably formed because Gunn Jakc (see second photo above), whom I’ve interviewed for this paper before, was making a rare appearance at the Peanut and someone earlier had challenged him to freestyle for them. So a cluster of dudes were passing the microphone amongst each other and rhyming off the cuff to the beats the DJs Mythik and Dublow were spinning.
Lou Rip, part of the hip-hop groups the Soul Servers and the Bluez Brothers, was officiating, for the very reason that open-mics sometimes get sticky. Rappers might diss each other in their rhymes, get their feelings hurt, or hog the microphone, and problems escalate. So Lou was doling out the microphone according to whose turn it was. But some dude slapped the microphone out of another dude’s hand, that guy threw a punch, and it was on.
A Wild-West style barroom brawl, as someone would later describe it on Hiphopkc.com, ensued -- over a microphone. It’s embarrassing to even type the words.
I recognized three of the guys fighting because they’d spoken to me earlier in the night. Perfectly nice people. One had told me that this was their first visit ever to Hip-Hop and Hot Wings. A few hours and a few drinks later, and they were up on some guy in the center of the bar, kicking and punching while guys I have come to know and love tried to get in between and break things up. In the middle of this high-school-style melee, one of the three dudes doubled over and started throwing up. Some chick they’d come in with grabbed him by the waist and tried to help him towards the stairs. It might have been funny if it weren’t so pathetic.
“Get the fuck out of here and don’t ever come back!” I heard myself screaming. The chick looked at me and said, “What, bitch?” She had a broken bottle in her hand. If a friend of mine who hails from a rough neighborhood in Virginia hadn’t stepped between us and backed her off, I would have been fighting too, and been no better than the rest of them.
The fight seemed to last a long time. It would break up briefly and then someone would look at someone crazy again and it would start all over. As in any fight, there was the crying girl, screaming, “Just stop it!”
It wasn’t as though anyone was hurt badly. One guy ended up with blood on his face, but otherwise, the worst injuries were probably sustained by some rapper’s favorite dunks.
What was hurt, though, was the Peanut’s near-spotless reputation. The place where hip-hop heads could come hang out without incident – where problems just don’t happen – well, we can’t really say that anymore.
About 15minutes after all the fighters had been ushered outside and were headed to their respective vehicles, screaming “bitch!” into the night, the cops arrived. I tried to explain to one officer that the people who started the trouble weren’t regulars, had never hung out at the Peanut before. He looked at me like I just said my name was Jenny Tequilapants. He didn’t care that Hip-Hop and Hot Wings had defied the sad pattern of hip-hop events for so many years. He was just ready to write up a “tavern disturbance” report for Regulated Industries and chalk it up to a bunch of gangstas who shouldn’t have a place to converge in large numbers.
When I went to retrieve my debit card from the Peanut Monday afternoon – nobody was gonna run my tab in the middle of that wrestling match – Randy, the bartender, came around the bar and gave me a hug. I needed it.
I know there are enough good people out there to make up for all the ones who want to ruin good things like our Sunday nights at the Peanut, and I hope the owner of the Peanut doesn’t put an end to this good thing because of a few trick-ass bitches.
We just have to keep the peace.
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Photos of HH&HW from archive at Hiphopkc.com.
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Some cities are actually requiring nightclubs to connect to one another using what they call a Club Watch Community Connection system. Based on their website endorsements and the times I've actually seen it at clubs it seems to be pretty effective at preventing violence and other problems.
If anybody wants to learn more, they can check it out here: http://www.club-watch.com
PLEASE FIND SOMETHING MORE TO SAY ABOUT THE HIP HOP SCENE THAN THAT. BOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG
^^^Awww is someones lame ass rap group or rock band not getting the shine they think they deserve?? Awwwwwww
high school melee? how about high school reporting? what's truly sad is the state of the pitch music section/blog. written by 16 year olds, for 16 year olds.
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