This starts off kinda slow, but shadily turns into one of my favorite street fight videos of all time. There’s just so many great one-liners, it’s tough to pick a favorite.
This appears to have taken place on St. Marks St. in the East Village, so I’m going to assume these bros just left basic bro watering hole, The 13th Step. The challenger, NYC Local, decides he needs to “teach [the Bros] a fucking lesson, dog.” I’m glad that our public school system hasn’t adopted his education method of choice – savage beatings.
The Bros want nothing to do with this fight from the start. I have no idea why. There are four of them vs. one NYC Local. “Why are you trying to fight with us, we did nothing to you,” is what you say when you’re outnumbered, not when you can easily stomp this guy out.
At first, I’m rooting for The Bros. Once NYC Local lunges and gets tossed to the side, his response of “oh, word?” kinda endears me to him. Then I immediately switch sides when The Bros start yelling “you’re thirty years old, dude!” Fuck you, bros, being thirty isn’t an insult. Now, I wish I were there to help him teach you a lesson.
Unrelated to the fight, my favorite moment might come at the 1:05 mark, when an unseen bystander yells to those involved in the fight, “DO THEY HAVE ANY BLOW?!” That guy needs his own spin-off youtube video immediately.
As the fight escalates, NYC Local is getting his ass handed to him, but all it takes is one big punch to immediately turn the tables. From that point on, he just teaches lesson after lesson, pummeling these dudes in a very NYC fashion. It gets to the point, at the 2:45 mark, that he starts calling them over individually to take their beating like disobedient children.
I’m all for honor in fights or whatever, but if I’m with three friends, and one of them is getting his shit stomped in after trying his hardest not to engage in the fight, I’m jumping in. There’s two schools of thought here – a) if you jump in then you’re a pussy for making it an unfair fight, b) if you don’t jump in you’re a pussy for abandoning your friend. I think it’s a case-by-case basis, but when it comes to a street fight with some random drunk dude, I think it’s fair game to save your buddy’s ass.
There’s no way you can’t love NYC Local’s departing speech at 3:28 though. It’s very reminiscent of this scene in Half-Baked. “If you ain’t from New York City, don’t pretend like you are!” I wonder what they were doing to pretend like they were from New York City… Probably yelling about pizza and the Yankees and bagels or some shit.
I hate to say it, but Bros, you need to step up your street fight game unless you wanna keep getting embarrassed like this. Would you have let your bro handle this one-on-one, or jumped in?