Booze, boobs and brawls
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By the time I arrived for the frolicking Tuesday night, there were 3,000 or 4,000 or 5,000 at the intersection of First Avenue and Yesler Way - it's hard to guess when bodies are jam packed - I noticed there were a lot of young guys with video cameras.
I noticed lots of other stuff at our wonderful Fat Tuesday celebration in Pioneer Square, but I did wonder if the dozens of young women showing their breasts had pondered what happens to videos in this Internet age.
I talked to Maureene O'Sullivan, 18, who's studying law at the University of Washington. She was there with her girlfriend, Gabby Davis, also 18. The ritual was that you were hoisted above the crowd on the shoulders of your boyfriend, or some male friend, as the overhormonized guys in the crowd chanted, "Show us your titties!" If you lifted your shirt, then guys would give you cheap Mardi Gras bead necklaces they had bought on the street or at a costume shop.
Then, as the young women did so, the video cameras zoomed in, and the throwaway cameras popped flashes, and sometimes guys would reach up to touch and fondle the young women.
Maureene told her dad she was going to Fat Tuesday, and he asked if she was going to bare her breasts, and she said, "Yep," and what could he say but, "Oh, my God."
But the way Maureene saw all this, it was innocent fun, and you're only young once. "All eyes are on you," she said. "You're at the center of attention." As for the digital images of her, she had this to say to the young guys, "Fine, keep it in your memory, put it on the wall, but don't put it on a public site."
Just then, the packed crowd began pushing outward, like a wave. It was parting because in the middle, one guy was kicking another guy in the head. People with the video cameras held them up high to record the event. "That one dude is dead!" somebody shouted. "Look at the blood!" somebody else said.
Some Good Samaritan young guys tried to pull away the pummeled man, and managed to carry him out through the crowd, which looked on in fascination. The bloodied guy, his head hanging listlessly, was put down in front of the Trattoria Mitchelli restaurant near Yesler and Western.
That's where the riot-helmeted cops had made their boundary. The cops had ringed Pioneer Square at the various intersections and let the crowd take over. I guess I couldn't blame them. What was the point of going into a crowd of thousands that was just looking for an excuse to riot?
A cop walked over to the pummeled guy, and the cop looked disgusted. I told the cop the guy really had been bashed around. "He's one of 50. There is going to be a lot more like him before this is over."
By now the pummeled guy was regaining some coherence. He looked about 20. I couldn't help but asked the guy why he'd get into a stupid fight in the middle of a boozed-up crowd. "I don't know," he said. The medic car arrived and took the guy away. The cops went back to guarding the perimeter.
I walked south on First Avenue, to South Washington, and watched some young guys holding beer cans take photos of each other in front of another line of cops. In reality, it was guys like this that composed much of the crowd. Just guys wanting to be part of the action, the same guys who tomorrow are your waiters at a restaurant or selling you a TV set at an electronics shop.
Chris Morrison, 24, studying culinary arts at a community college, and working at a restaurant, was one of the guys posing for the photos.
"Hey, with 50,000 people in one place, there's bound to be fights. But with this many people in one spot, we're doing good. Everybody is having fun," he said.
The bars were supposed to have closed by midnight, but there were patrons inside. And beer and wine was everywhere. I stood in one spot on First Avenue, and within a few feet around me I counted 10 beer cans, a whiskey bottle and some other containers too shattered to identify.
The problem was those other guys, who simply wanted to destroy something. I walked over to the parking garage across the street from the Bohemian Cafe. Some hapless person had earlier left their two-door Mazda parked on the street. I watched a young guy with shaved blond hair and an AA battery through his left ear try to get friends to flip the car. The AA guy saw me looking at him.
"Don't do it," I said, "leave," and AA assessed the blue blazer I was wearing and quieted down.
But about 15 minutes later, AA was back with half-a-dozen friends and one, two, three, the Mazda was turned over. Then they and others jumped on the car and began bashing windows. AA's girlfriend turned to me and gave me the finger.
A bouncer at the Bohemian was watching it all and he said, "Why are they so (expletive) violent?" That was right after two young women threw a booze bottle at a window of the club, and tried to get the crowd to smash them all. The bouncer walked over and squirted the women with pepper spray. The crowd backed off.
They understood, just the same as the guys looking for action understood, not to fool around with some parked bikes belonging to a Harley-Davidson club. A big, burly biker named "Airdog" stood by the expensive bikes. A few feet away, the crowd had knocked down one of those antique-looking lightposts on First Avenue.
"When I was that age, I went out in the woods with a keg of beer," Airdog said in disgust. "I didn't do this."
Finally, at exactly 1:36 a.m., the cops hurled the first tear gas canister. By then, the streets and sidewalks of Pioneer Square were layered with cans and bottles of booze, and the glass from shattered car windows.
"Police brutality!" a kid shouted. The cops began marching east on Yesler, shooting tear gas. "I'm going to rape your mother!" another kid shouted at a cop who was in a line with other cops across Second Avenue, stopping the kids from going into downtown.
I joined the young guys in getting away from the tear gas and managed to catch a taxi, having known better than to drive to Pioneer Square.
I watched my fellow revelers still in the streets. What had the bouncer wondered? "Why are they so violent?"
The answer is, because we let them get away with it.