Thu Feb 13, 2020 3:18 pm
There was a time long ago that I worked as a bouncer, first in Cloud, then in downtown Minneapolis, then in Alexandria, that I basically got paid $100 a night to fight people. I literally can’t even count the amount of physical altercations I was in over that 3 or so year span. Cloud and Alex were mostly chill, but downtown was like ThunderDome pretty much every shift. Sunday nights (aka Hip Hop Night) were the absolute worst. I got maced/pepper sprayed so many times by MPLS PD as I was amongst whatever chaos that was going on that I essentially became immune to it. Several cops commented over that time period that they literally couldn’t believe I could still function after they’d empty their “party cans” (fire extinguisher sized containers full of pepper spray) into the crowd that was brawling.
I’m not cool, not tough, and not intimidating whatsoever and looking back it was an incredibly stupid roll of the dice. Thankfully, the worst I ever got messed up was getting punched, choked out a couple of times, and bitten in the biceps to the point of drawing blood as I was putting some puzzy frat boy into dreamland. I had lots of friends end up in the hospital though over those years that were “bouncing” just a few feet away from me as part of the same scuffle.
"The less I know about other people's affairs, the happier I am. I'm not interested in caring about people."
- Ron Swanson