The Saloon Brawl that Never Was

Someone spills whiskey.  Someone cheats at cards.  Someone lets loose a rebel yell and throws a bottle.  Let the Saloon Brawl begin.

Looking back on my life I realize that I started working on a “bucket list” when I was 19 years old and moved to England.  That list consisted of two things that I wanted to do:

1-     That girl that looked just like Dara from Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber books.

2-     Get into a bar fight.  Especially one that looks like this.

I have no idea who drew this, but it is awesome

I ended up marrying that girl who looked just like Dara, and she has been my best friend for 17 years, so that worked out pretty well.  The second part, well, that was a tough one.  Blame it on too many westerns, too many funny scenes from F-Troop, and maybe way too much testosterone and Gen-X angst, but I really wanted to have an opportunity to let the wolf loose and throw some blind punches into a drunken night. 

I decided that I would go to the toughest town in Britain (Glasgow) on the drunkest night of the year (New Year’s Eve), find a loud bar, and see what happened.  Just to be sure, I hooked up with a group of Australians as soon as I got to the city.  We wandered the streets of Glasgow looking for a place to spend the night, and found a rowdy sounding place in a basement, appropriately named Austin’s Basement Bar.  Hanging out with drunk Aussies in a loud dive bar in Glasgow on New Year's?  I knew I would be throwing punches before midnight.

Austin’s Basement Bar turned out to be a gay karaoke bar.  The Aussies hit the trail, and I spent the night bellied up to the bar with a butch lesbian with a badass crewcut and leathers, holding off the advances of the ITV correspondent for Parliament.  As the years have gone by I have been much less enamored of bars, and with medications making me practically a hemophiliac I think my potential bar fight days are well behind me. But I can still dream...