doea anyone have the ACCURATE low down of what really happened with this event - i know the blue cats bouncers get a bad wrap from time to time, is this just another case of people automaticly assuming its the fault of the blue cats guys?? maybe its me but it seems a bit biased to me


from the metropulse:

http://www.metropulse.com/articles/2006/16_46/eye.shtml

Fight?
This past Thursday, right before King Buzzo and The Melvins took the stage at Blue Cats, there was a scuffle as a couple beefy bouncers hurried a small group out towards the sidewalk. Craig Kandel, one of the proprietors of Host Clothing in the Old City, had blood streaming down his face.

“Sit on the ground!â€

Lame.

Blue Cats/Tonic has the best security in town. The rules are real simple, when you are on private property, you do what the staff tells you. If you act like a douche bag, you'll be ejected.

Craig is a good friend of mine, I saw him a few days later and asked about the gash between his eyes. Him and Adam and Meredith are the ones that came in and took over the shop space.

Basically he was just standing there near the front and would push people moshing into him back into the pit. He was suddenly in a choke hold and he tried to get them off to ask what the fuck happened. They wailed on him, put him in handcuffs etc. They were giving each other high fives and totally riling each other up. He said if they hadn't have been giving each other highfives he probably would have let it go.

Also, this guy has no problem owning up to his own wrongdoing. I've heard of him getting into fights and he takes responsibility when he does things wrong. He goes to many bars in Knoxville and he's never talked about anything that has happened except this.

I believe him 100 percent. I saw the gash on his head firsthand.

Eh, without downing your place of biz jason, i gotta say...it doesn't sound like security has really changed in 2 years since i had an altercation with them.

big dumb motherfuckers, who smell trouble before it happens, overreact, and throw down like a bunch of fucking street thugs if they can.

thats not security, thats frat boys who watch roadhouse everyday and jack off thinking they could be that cool.

Arkady wrote:Lame.

Blue Cats/Tonic has the best security in town. The rules are real simple, when you are on private property, you do what the staff tells you. If you act like a douche bag, you'll be ejected.

Violently, apparently.

For security to say, "We don't really know what happened" shows that they either don't want to talk about it because even they know they overreacted, or that they're incredibly incompetent. How can *security* injure someone, eject them, and not know what happened?

"Geee... ummmm... i dunno. One minute I was standing wathcin' da crowd.. and da next ting i know i'm punchin' a dude in da face and draggin' him outside..."

For as many years as I've been going to clubs, this has not changed. Security, no matter how nice a person they are, get the job because they're big and not afraid to beat the shit out of someone... and they often do it for no reason at all. There is no training involved, there is no accountability. They are always "right." And 99% of them get off on getting to kick people out.

Yeah, some just use it as as a way to release pent-up aggression, just because they can... obviously... "I didn't get laid last night... whatta ya say we beat the shit out of this unsuspecting guy that just walked in?"

I've never had a problem with the bouncers. When I've been on other nights, I've had a couple of the bouncers recognize me from Sanctus and keep an extra eye out for anyone giving me a problem. But I'm a chick, and we often get special treatment.

no offense here jason, but the bouncers at sanctus were dicks to me the first time i ever came out....But i kept coming out and never had any problems again

Firstly, to those of you who have had a bad experience with security I'm sorry. I'm afraid that bad situations can happen at night clubs sometimes.

I can't really talk about the incident @ the Melvins show mainly because i didn't actually witness the altercation (and neither did any of the people that commented) but, I think it's wrong to lump everyone on the security staff into one group of meat head assholes. How many of you actually know ANY of the staff? How many of you actually have worked on a professional security staff in a venue the size of Blue Cats/Tonic? If you had any idea of what they have to put up with on a nightly basis and the danger they put themselves in, you might be a lot less inclined to armchair quarterback the job. The point is that there are 2 sides to every coin and right now a couple of you aren't even recognizing that.

I don't mean to deny that security people have gotten out of hand in the past and mistakes happen. There were a couple of people that used to be on staff that were assholes from time to time but they are no longer with us for that reason. What i mean to say is that it's not like some asshole security guy putting people and the business in danger is going to be condoned by management.

Please just remember that the security guys are people doing a job that protects you the general public as well as the venue at large risk to their health. I would encourage those of you that are KG event regulars should take the time to say hi to them at our events. They really are good people.

I've known excellent & shoddy examples of security, just like in any profession. I also know moshing is tricky from a security perspective & anyone engaging in it needs to be mindful that security may not be comfortable with it & react accordingly. There were undoubtedly multiple variables involved in this (& any other) situation & there's probably no one person or thing that can be blamed.

Its unfortunate that anyone got hurt and hopefully the security workers involved took some time at the end of the night or the next shift to discuss the situation & identify any areas of opportunity that might be improved in the next situation of this kind that they encounter. I'm sure those concerned are more in need of an understanding of what happened than of an opportuity to lay blame. Hopefully all the various needs in this situation will be adequately tended.

Again, not to be an asshole, but i've done security work at LARGER clubs than bluecats...and the object is, in no real order.

Stop chaos
eject assclowns

no where in that did it ever say start shit, gang up on cats, or beat the shit out of people for no other reason than "they started it"

And maybe not everyone at bluecats does that, and not everyone at any club does the job thats supposed to be done.

Alls i'm sayin is, when i got booted from blue cats, and i nearly got gangbanged, i simply called the biggest motherfucker out, 1 on 1, if he wanted to fight so bad...he backed the fuck off. MOST people in that line of work don't know what to do when danger is in their face, and they have 5 seconds to think about it, they freak out.

and that makes for horrid security.

of course, theres always three sides of the story...so maybe the truth is somewhere beetween patron #1 getting gangbanged, and security team "not knowing what happened"- regardless you're never gonna have a security team that does what they're supposed to do....but who cares, until one of them goes so far over the line, that someone gets sued, and then the club gets a rap, then it goes out of buisiness does anyone ever pout about it.

Oh I know some of the bouncers are really nice guys. I used to talk to the ones at the door during sanctus while I was talking to Vader or something.

But, I do think that that "pack" mentality can over quickly even the nicest guys. I think they really live for the altercations, and in this case the 3 or 4 of them were riling each other up and I think they were in the wrong.

99 percent of the time they probably do their jobs well.

1) of course they eject people violently. that's why they're called bouncers. they don't bounce around handing lollipops to people, they bounce people. if you have a problem with that, don't go to a club.

2) most likely, the only people who know what really went down in this case are those involved. obviously, every party is going to attempt to make themselves look as pristine as possible.

i honestly don't see what the point is in arguing about it, until there is hard evidence one way or another.

Well personally, I think the article was an example of really shitty reporting. i mean WTF was the point?

thats the point i was trying to make with the initial post, the reporting seemed biased - i mean, blue cats/tonic/fiction are one of metropulses weekly main advertisers - what good does it do them to write such a biased article about them???