Category Archives: fights

FIGHTING FOR WHAT by Peter Nolan Smith

Everything happened quick in CBGB’s subterranean toilets. The release of body waste was rivaled by magic-markering a band’s name atop the thousands of previous honorees in the toilet’s hall of fame and while the inhalation of cocaine or heroin in the stalls was more popular than shooting up dope or speedballs, sex within the battered […]

STARTING ANEW by Peter Nolan Smith

Someone once told me that how you spend the first day of the year depends how you will spend the rest of the year. January 1, 2009 I awoke with a hang-over and thought about heading over to the 10th Street Bath to sweat out the poisons of December 31, 2008. Recovery seemed the perfect […]

SHORTEST FIGHT IN THE WORLD by Peter Nolan Smith

The World on East 2nd Street hosted a screening of the Tyson-Spinks fight on June 27, 1988. The nightclubs’s door was handled by the tough guy mooks hired by the Bensonhurst fat boys hosting the event. The fee for televising the fight was $20,000. The Brooklyn boys wanted $25 a head. The NYFD occupancy limit […]

Cowboy Versus Batman

My friend Haoui Montauk bequeathed me a Paul Smith suit in his will. We had worked at a punk nightclub together in the late-70s. He had collected the cash and I had worked the door as a bouncer. Haoui liked to call me ‘rough trade’. He wasn’t wrong. I liked a good fight now and […]

RUN MOTHERFUCKERS RUN

Throughout the 60s the Eastern High School hockey tournament was held at the old Boston Arena. Games between bitter rivals packed the stands over the legal capacity of 4600. In the 1968 ECAC semi-finals BC High was pitted Somerville High. Fans from the public high school filled the rinkside seats, while BC High’s following crammed […]