"Fight" in Fullerton

One night in August 2007, a group of friends and I were in downtown Fullerton at a Deli getting some food. It was about 1:30am and of course there were a lot of drunk people around. The Deli is one of a handful of places open late that serve food, so it's a popular spot. On this night, things got a bit violent. Of course this is just my personal recollection about what happened, so it's certainly possible that I may have interpreted something wrong, and this in no way is what actually happened, it's just my perception of what happened, and what I can make out from the videos. When we first got there, some of us were waiting outside the deli. This chick at a table nearby comes towards us with a tray of trash and sets it inside the payphone. I look around, then say "this isn't a trash can, there's a trash can right there..." and I point about 5 feet away. Her bright reply was "it's not mine anyway". Well gee, that lets her put her trash anywhere? I don't think that's right. But it's no big deal, so we let it slide. Next, one of our group grabbed an extra chair from a table, but apparently someone didn't like that, but they didn't push it either. Then one of our guys took a photo. Apparently it appeared to be directed at one of the girls in their group, so one of their guys came over to us and started yelling at us that the photo would cost us $10. We're fairly sober, so we politely inform him that they are in a public place and that they have no expectation of privacy. People can take photos of anyone in public that they want to. Well, this genius says "I guess that if I'm in a public place then I can pee on your friend here!" He proceedes to unzip his pants and pantomime peeing on our friend. About now is when his friends realize their friend is an idiot, so they come get him off. He never actually peed nor did he touch anyone or expose himself, he was just trying to be a jerk. By this time, our group of about 10 people had come back together and the story spread. Their group, also of about 10 got together. A lot of evil eyes connected, then some shouting began. I put my camera on video mode and started recording everything. During a yelling match, one of their guys started dragging a chair (light weight plastic, probably wouldn't have done any damage) towards the back of our guy (in the red). I'm closest, so I put my free hand (the other one is holding the camera, recording) on the chair arm and say "whoa, whoa, hey, no chairs. No chairs." He lets go. Someone of their group threw a bottle at us, which bounced off one of our guys, then broke when it hit our girl's foot but didn't cause any serious damage, but apparently hot sauce and glass cuts hurt! More yelling ensues, more people get involved. At the end of the first clip one of them sees me with the camera, walks over to me says "I'll take that" and grabs my hand with the camera in it. Unfortunately, the camera shut off because I was holding my finger on the button, and when his hand closed around mine it stopped. D'oh! One of our gusy sees him grab me, so he pushes him off and I go ducking out of the way. Then a couple of their guys try to jump him, then some of our guys try to stop them. I'm missing all of this as I concentrate on the guy who is still going after me, so I tell him "I'm recording video! I'm recording video!" Well, he must have heard of youtube, because he immediately let go, then backed off and tried to play it off as just being fun, which was funny. So I get it recording again and video the yelling that's still going on. He says "just put the camera down" and I say "no" and that ended that :) Meanwhile, the fight had broken up a bit since most people on both sides were trying to stop the fight. Their hot head keeps yelling "you're fucked" at one of us. Their girlfriends keep getting in the way. A good number of them are trying to keep their two hot headed guys back, which is good, they were able to keep them back fairly well. Eventually they drag their friend out to the parking lot, yet he continues to yell. We're all calm and we get our food, then start to head out. As soon as we're leaving the cops show up, but since there is no fight they don't have anything to do. But their guy starts running over to the cops to try to try to get us in trouble, I assume. We were already around the corner by the time he got to the cops though, and we didn't see them the rest of the night. You can view the entire video here: fight_1.mov - 60MB, The initial yelling up until the guy grabs my camera fight_3.mov - 148MB, About 15 seconds later up until about 30 seconds before the cops got there. Guy who grabbed my camera The mad guy yelling "you're fucked" The mad guy being restrained by his friends So, some thoughts. It really only takes one hot headed friend to start a fight that can drag everyone in. In this case, Gino (if I hear from the video correctly) was their hot head, and he couldn't really control his actions. Even when his friends were telling him to cool it he kept trying to escalate the fight. By losing his control, he lost his friends. Instead of backing him up, they were trying to back him off, and he wasn't listening to them. Friends certainly act as a 3rd party conscience when tempers flare. Their chicks reminded me of Sarah Silverman's character in the beginning of Way of the Gun Youtube Clip. In the movie, she mouths off about how her boyfriend will kick their asses. She's not fighting with her own flesh, so she can escalate things. The girlfriends of these guys did the same thing, they kept trying to come back and start shit, even though the other friends kept telling them to back off. When people realize they're on video, their behavior can do a complete 180. The guy who came after me thought I was taking stills, but once he realized that if his boss saw this video, or if the police had evidence of him laying hands on me without provocation that he could go to jail for assault, he backed off completely. Personally, I live my life as if someone is recording most of it. There's very little I do that I wouldn't want replayed later, and that means I tend to make fairly responsible decisions. In the end, no real blows were thrown, no real crimes committed (though technically there was some assault, but only a complete jerk would prosecute for them), and no one went to jail or was hurt. So it was mostly a lot of yelling and threatening words.

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