Nightclub Violence Sucks

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.