After attending the last ever free Last Thursdays (starting in 2015, vendors will have to apply and pay a fee in order to participate in the previously ad-hock street fair), I met Ben, friend Kyle, and friend Colleen back in Southeast for some tacos, just in time to get the driving around the block looking for parking perspective of an epic fight in front of the very taco joint I intended on attending. According to Ben, Kyle, and Colleen, who were already inside, the events were as follows:
Packet of drunk possible bachelor partiers shows up at the restaurant and takes a seat outside. They’re all wearing suits, and various shades of trashed from slightly irrational all the way to sloppy angry mess. They order drinks and tacos, and immediately begin to fight each other. One has a briefcase, which he begins to hit the others with. Someone dislodges the case, it goes flying into the street at least once, and at least once all however many of them could be seen in the middle of Morrison on the ground, wrestling each other for control of the case. Apparently the group’s only weapon.
At some point, the briefcase guy, once again in possession of his club, threw the case across the table straight into the face of another guy, who then collapsed to the sidewalk, taking the table, drinks, and food with him in the process.
This is when I drove by for the second time, and saw two yelling women chasing the partiers away, the largest of whom was at least a foot taller than either of them. Incidentally, the giant was also the briefcase wielder, which I felt was unfair.
After this I parked, and walked past them while they were debating on whether they should go back, and how serious the cashier was when she threatened to call the police on them. Then someone hit someone else with a briefcase.
Several times, individual members of the party came back to the taco place and stared at the doors. I’m not sure why.
After that, Kyle went home to sleep, and Ben, Colleen, and I walked a few blocks to get some dessert, where we met our second fight of the night.
An awkward looking guy in a tracksuit was shout-talking at a very pretty girl several tables over from him. From what I could tell, he’d just established that she was going to the same college he’d graduated from, and then he gathered up the not inconsiderable pile of crap at his table, and moved himself and it over to her table. A few minutes after that, she walked purposefully out of the shop. Embarrassed, he moved his stuff back over to his original table.
He went on shout-talking to different patrons, either to say goodbye, or to introduce himself. He randomly asked a new patron where he was from, and just as randomly told the man he was born up the street.
Then one of the staff asked him to leave. Apparently, the woman he’d struck out with called the shop and told them he’d made her feel unsafe. He’d gone over to her table uninvited, and propositioned her. When she told him that she had a boyfriend, he told her that didn’t matter, and asked her to go somewhere with him, presumably to have sex.
He denied the advance, then said he hadn’t done anything wrong by trying to have a friendly conversation. The piano player tactfully hammered out a crashing distraction from what was obviously a painful conversation for at least one person involved. He insisted on paying his tab, and afterwards, stood in the middle of the dining room arguing his case in hushed tones with a very confident, no-nonsense staff person who repeated in no uncertain terms what he did, that he needed to leave, and that he was not allowed to come back.
Later we learned that he was a regular who frequently engaged people in awkward conversations, and that his behavior had been considered distracting by some staff people, while others felt that it was their duty to be welcoming to an atypical personality, although the line was clearly crossed when he propositioned a woman uninvited, and failed to take the initial brush-off.