Fight Club in Union Square: Wack Emo Hipsters, Berzerker Fury and Real Street Combat
Hey there, visitors — there’s more (and much better) photos of this here — check ‘em out.
I got another cryptic text from a friend last Friday afternoon: “Fight Club in Union Square. GET HERE.”
For those who don’t live in New York, Union Square has historically been a giant meeting place for political protesters, social activists, and merchants of all sizes. In the days following September 11th, it was a meeting place for rescuers and mourners alike. Now it’s home to a multiplex, Ann Taylor Loft, a Whole Foods, and a Diesel store.
So really, it makes perfect sense that in the inner chamber of Manhattan’s consumer culture, right there in Union Square, there would be a massive, public fight club.
I was off the subway and taking the stairs two at once, faster than you can spell-check Palahniuk. Hundreds of people stood in a big ring right there by the Shoe Mania, cheering and chanting. All kinds of people: old people, moms with strollers, skateboarding teens, foreign tourists throwing Euros around.
They could have been watching some awesome breakdancing group or an unusually good street magician. But instead, two shirtless guys were flopping around on the ground, grunting and grating one another’s faces across the cobblestones. One guy pinned the other and a shirtless ref called the match. Both fighters leapt up, gave each other the universally-approved one-armed bro-hug and left the ring together, laughing.
A number of shirtless, scraped-up men paced the perimeter of the circle, alternately refereeing and answering questions. The rules were simple: find a partner, get in the ring. No face shots, tapping out ends the fight. No settling scores, just fighting for the fun of fighting. No experience or discernible skill required.
A couple of emo-hipsters in matching floppy sideways haircuts and matching white belts got into the act, proving that one does not inherit martial arts skill by simply being Asian.
One of them actually SMOKED during the fight, paradoxically making himself look both tougher and more ridiculous.
You’ll note that a man scooted through the aforementioned fight in a wheeled office chair — this man:
He acted as a combination rodeo clown and Sandman, scooting through the ring to break slow, weak fighters. But in his own way, he fucking brought it to the ring, too in a simplistic, berzerker style: one hand behind his back, the other swinging wildly, with a small stuffed bird tied to his belt. If you listen closely, you can hear his opponent yelling “You keep hitting my NUTS!”
Not all the combatants were ridiculous, though. Most weren’t. Fighting styles were mixed: grappling, boxing, various martial arts—anything that could bring somebody down. I spoke with a wild-eyed Marine who’d learned hand-to-hand combat during tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Size won’t help you if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “I’ve seen little guys snap the arms off of big dudes who just want to throw their weight around. It’s about practice. Practice and just wanting it more.”
I’m not familiar with many combat techniques, but his seemed to owe as much to the Incredible Hulk as any sort of martial art:
“Legend” is petite and diamond-hard man with dreadlocks and a Tyson-esque lisp. He’s the apparent ringleader of the Union Square Spartans and claims to teach classes in martial-arts-influenced street combat. “We’re not trying to look pretty in a competition,” he said. “As you can see here,” pointing to the scars on his arm, chest and face, “I been in a few fights in the streets. I can teach you how to handle yourself, how to do what you got to do.”
He says classes are $50 per week, but beyond that, details are sketchy. Making an appointment to train is complicated. Union Square Spartans’ entire presence online currently amounts to a Myspace page that has three friends. I asked Legend for a phone number and got one that didn’t work. When I went back to the square, I got a different number. It didn’t work the first time I tried it, but later in the day it did.
Legend’s phone representative, a lanky, bespectacled 20-year old named Wraith, told me that fighters start showing up in the park at around 6 and generally train for a few hours. When I tried to find out hard and fast hours, I didn’t get hard and fast answers.
“Call me up at least a day ahead of time and let me know when you want to meet us,” Wraith said. “Someone will come meet you. A lot of people, they think they can miss a day and we’ll be there tomorrow, or like, we’re out here at the same time every day, and it’s not like that. They think we’re not serious about training people. But we are, we really are.” In a matter of time, Legend plans to open up a dojo, but for now, all interested parties can show up in the park.
Being moderately organized and being able to whip somebody’s ass real quick are not necessarily the same skill set. Sure, you’d want a little more overlap, but life doesn’t work that way.
The real fighting, among the Union Square Spartans and their peers was incredible, like an actual kung-fu film shot in New York in the early ’80s. People from all over the map fought with whatever they had — spinning, kicking and grappling in a fury of limbs and profanity. I saw jump kicks, back flips, and this: one man deftly caught another’s high kick between his hands, grinning. The kicker snapped his torso, spinning, to land on the previously captured foot while delivering a rib-crushing blow with the other.
In that moment, I would have given a tooth to be the guy that caught that kick in his hands and to his ribs. I stood there, fresh from work in my 3-piece suit and cuff links, feeling clueless and amazed. Like most white guys that work in the tech industry, I’ve never won a fight. Unless you count flame-wars on Digg as fights, but everyone loses those just for being there in the first place.
Public fighting is for everybody. It’s aspirational – even if you don’t get in the ring, you feel that pull. And no matter who you are, you stop and watch. Street fighting is a million times cooler than anything on TV has ever been, and New York’s the only city in America where a bunch of guys fight in public all weekend long while the cops watch and approve.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
jesus h christ. that’s better than chollita wrestling.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
If this happened in Atlanta they would bring out the SWAT team!
I would go out of my way to try and catch this – even pay admission.
May 28th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
buncha gay pussies
May 28th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
[...] not so good to live in NYC HERE. [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
i didn’t digg this post
May 28th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Srsly, what a bunch of faggots. Have these idiots ever been in a real fight? These are just a bunch of chronic masturbators harboring weird and horrible male rape fantasies…
May 28th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
if you fight as bad as you write i wouldn’t even bother trying.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
[...] http://www.andiamnotlying.com/ [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
How long has this been going on for? This is completely awesome. I’m about 15 minutes from Union Square…it’s too bad they’re so flakey on the meeting times. Maybe a twitter alert would work.
May 28th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Oh man is this going to happen again?
May 28th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
[...] [Gawker via And I Am Not Lying] [...]
May 28th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Bunch of poser wannabes.
May 28th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hmmm. Raises an interesting question. Let’s take a poll. #1: A restaurant in the park or #2. a bunch of fools bitch slapping each other around. My bet is all those standing around watching (or propping it here) would pass on decades over-due park upgrades (labeling them as some sort of social injustice) yet would readily endorse this incredibly immature display of behavior (more appropriate for second graders) as something beneficial to our collective existence.
Grow up New York. I live three blocks from this park and would not find this an interesting scene at all.
May 28th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Wow would I love to get a time/date to see this in person. If anyone finds out fill us in, please!
May 29th, 2008 at 4:01 am
[...] know the drill. But I wouldn’t leave you just hanging like that, not me. So please see how we get our fight club on in Union Square. (via) Which is to say, not overly effectively. The post seems so earnest (pretty annoyingly so) [...]
May 29th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Oh grow up Frank…..fighting is just an ancient technique of showing affection for loved ones. Go and get fat in your proposed restaurant, I’d rather wander the streets looking for free entertainment from piggy tailed lanky men, wheeling around in an office chair (what an excellent prop)
May 29th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Seeing a group of guys fighting for the sake of fighting in a public place is not your normal weekday in the park for most of America. Definitely not DC. Maybe trading text insults while waiting for the next administration to take office. Sneering at the interns. Observing that someone’s wearing last year’s Brooks Brothers gabardine trousers.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:18 am
You know, Jeff, I saw a real and somewhat gnarly fight between two middle-aged guys in Union Square in the crosswalk of 14th and University. One guy in the crosswalk flipped off a guy in a car and the guy got out of the car and tackled him. They wound up on the ground beating the hell out of each other. Maybe it’s just something about Union Square.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:24 am
This is some half-assed fighting though. It’s barely even sparring. If they just brought a couple of pairs of boxing gloves maybe everyone involved would begin to pound some face.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:08 am
I demand to see a youtube video of the infamous and legendary Simmermon Stomp-Strangle going on there at Union Square.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:28 am
damnit, did no one catch that asian kid choking out the marine and the guy with ups shirt?!
May 29th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Hipsters in white belts are gay!
May 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I came across this post purely by accident, but your videos are really mind-blowing.
Being brazilian I am used to see the capoeira circles sparring in public (it’s a traditional part of their training), but we’re brazilians and there’s a lot of things we do that anybody else wouldn’t.
That said, it’s not exactly good fighting (I’m a martial artist, Ultimate Mantis Kung Fu, so I kinda know what is a real fight and how to avoid being kicked in the head), but it’s better fighting than I would have expected from people sparring in a park with no training whatsoever. Watching other youtube videos from the same thing it actually seems that someone is training them. Some of them can throw some mean kicks and punches, others even know how to defend or that they’re supposed to keep up the guard. Very interesting…
Except for the emo guys. That fight was just lame.
May 29th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
wow…! what a bizarre thing to see…I can’t imagine. Your commentary is hilarious!
May 30th, 2008 at 6:58 am
hahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
Please. I live in B-more. PLEASE bring these assholes down here for some SERIOUS businesss!
B-more REP!
May 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
That’s pretty awesome. Specially considering that the police didn’t try to break it up or anything.
The videos posted weren’t really great fights, but from what it sounds like, there were quite a few that were amazing to watch.
May 30th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Wow …. I wouldve loved to have seen that!
May 30th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
everyone who said negative shit is retarded. it’s a bunch of folks fighting and watching for fun. if you don’t like it, keep walking. stupid fuck apathetic snobs. who cares if some can’t fight, you mock them and move on. not everyone is a leather-knuckled gladiator. it’s called FUN. you motherfuckers are the type to ruin your own wet dreams. lames.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
After watching the Friday Night UFC fights tonight, I decided I wanted some home-grown, underground, Fight Club action.
And now I find out I missed this by 2 days! Dammit. Can I get a text message please? And fuck people (i.e. “Steve”) judging these people for actually having the balls to get out there! You are the one missing out. They look ALIVE! Blood pumping.
Thanks for the sharing.
P.S. Frank…thank you for your intellectual and mature bitch post. What does living 3 blocks from the park have to do with your level of interest in this? The answer: not a damn thing. Stop complaining. You sound like a big, whiny, wet hole.
May 31st, 2008 at 5:55 am
I’d like to see any of the faggots who posted “this is gay, or what a bunch of babies” to do this. me and a friend used to beat the holy hell out of each other, and it was awesome. so shut the fuck up, and go lead a boring life.
May 31st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Wow, this is even more amazing because of the fact they are right in front of whole foods. Is there some deeper meaning to all of this?
May 31st, 2008 at 9:12 pm
holy crow, friend, you seem to have hit upon a commenting nerve… nice job
May 31st, 2008 at 11:38 pm
This is such great porn!
June 1st, 2008 at 7:31 am
Gay
June 1st, 2008 at 11:11 am
as someone who took part in this because it was very much just fun and something to do… and to prove the inherent superiority of jiu jitsu, fuck people who make negative comments.
i’m more than willing to bet most of you do things i will never understand and find to be enjoyable, yet i will never shit on you. why must you must you try to less something else that is enjoyable to other individuals in order to try and make yourselves somehow superior? if anything, that is horribly pathetic.
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” (Theodore Roosevelt)
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 am
If any of you are seriously interested in learning MMA check out Camp Undefeated in midtown. They teach Muay Thai, BJJ Gi and No Gi, Combat sports conditioning and MMA. they have a full cage in the gym to train MMA. More info on the website: http://www.campundefeated.com
Everyone should know how to fight.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I fapped to the videos. Twice
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 am
I am not too familiar with New York, but is Union Square known for its large population of gays. This is to a fight club what olive garden is to Italian food. A bunch of poor excuses for men “wailing” on a bunch of other poor excuses. If you want to join a fight club join the Marines you pansy hipster emo wannabe men.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:43 am
If this is a fight club, then olive garden REALLY is a taste of Italy. This erodes just a little bit more of the hope I have for my generation. If these “fighting” hipsters want to really learn to fight, join the Marines.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:38 pm
http://www.campundefeated.com ?
Why does it look like a gay porn site?
June 5th, 2008 at 11:54 am
some pictures from that night:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freshfish/sets/72157605298740335/
June 14th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Skaters and bikers get kicked out and get fined for doing their thing at Union square, yet they never say sh*t to these people and people who play soccer on top of the steps.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I hang out at Union square alot with friends, its fun and theres a bunch of cute guys. (not these losers tho)
July 14th, 2008 at 12:51 am
What a bunch of pussies. Just a bunch of attention whores that obviously don’t know how to fight. There’s a good reason why most people who decide to organize fights do it in gyms or at the very least a backyard.
August 3rd, 2008 at 5:57 pm
iv been looking for a fight club in va for 2 months and found nothing, people are to damn scared these days and to afraid of police, if anyone can give me a tip please do.
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 pm
oh and one more thing, the so called union square fight club are a bunch of attention whores.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
this looks like an awesome idea… when is the next one
August 7th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I would like to experience a real fight club, if any knows where in nyc contact me @ kemar2k@yahoo.com
August 30th, 2008 at 4:34 am
We want you, not your money.
As long as you’re at fight club, you’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank.
You’re not your job.
You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.
You’re not your name.
You’re not your problems.
You’re not your age.
You’re not your hopes.
You will not be saved.
We are all going to die, someday.
What will you wish you’d done before you died?
http://last-fight-club.blogspot.com/
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:30 pm
This blog does no justice to the Spartans. It’s no hipster-fight club.
check out youtube:
union square spartans
September 9th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Wow. This blog taints the meaning of Fight Club. The point of Fight Club is to be given the opportunity to become your true self rather than a product of society. To let out the inner self in a raw primal state of mind. This is just horse play not a Fight Club. Oh, and some advice you dont advertise Fight Club, it is given not taken like a soap product.
September 24th, 2009 at 1:11 am
you really believe for once im going to believe that im a 10year boxer and a kickboxer also a ufc attendent who ever got the box to step up im ready this da thing im 19 taking on all weight classes pray before you come get ur ass whoop and you will get pay i promise on my soul…..my email
lilwaltking19@yahoo.com
1773-559-7314
please we need new comers.
January 18th, 2010 at 12:52 am
I cant play the videos, but the mixed reviews give me a vague idea. Democracy is a joke. Do you think the fighters in that circle were thinking about the laws created to prevent people from doing what they are doing? (NO), Those fighters are embracing true freedom, not what some silver-tongued overpaid desk jockey says they can and can not do. We get a small taste of this freedom every time we run a red light or park in a fire lane. When you are fighting your not woried about having to take out the garbage when you get home or filling that report at work tommorow. Your only worry is destroying that other guys face and not getting your ass handed to you too badly.
October 13th, 2010 at 7:56 am
Every1 who’s tryin to shit on these ppl are just angry about how much there own lifes suck I live in queens and I think this is great Iv been diein for a fight just for the love of the sport