Punker Punches Debutante in Dinkytown, Marcy-Holmes Neighborhood (Photo One)

Photo by John Hoff

Yes, my self-appointed journalistic blog beat does cover the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood from time to time, especially when it's something this colorful and I actually have a photo of the participants...

Last night I had...well, OK, a date. A woman I met, um, on the internet(s). We met at the Kitty Kat Club in Dinkytown, then when the club grew noisy we went to a bunch of other noisy clubs, briefly, until we ended up at The Steak Knife. She's a serious vegetarian, but she managed to find some kind of veggie pita on the menu.

She was fascinated by the Dinkytown night life, the endless array of students carrying paper plates with single slices of pizza from Mesa Pizza. I told her how, on any weekend, you could sit and watch altercations, random puking, college women who don't have the grown-up good sense to wear their "big girl shoes" and instead walk barefoot on the dark sidewalks, just a visual buffet of violent, chaotic fun. I told her about the column I wrote called "Fear and loathing at zero miles an hour" and I should have told her about that crazy night when I tried to help some guy with (as it turned out later) a stab wound in his neck.

Sitting on a bench, we saw the things I had predicted: 1.) Women unable to walk in "big girl shoes," 2.) Students so drunk they were falling over, though when the women fell over they didn't go unassisted for very long. 3.) Puking.

There wasn't really a good altercation, and we'd decided to call it a night and walk together to her vehicle, when the chaotic madness which is Dinkytown on the weekend broke loose all at once.

There were some street youth, homeless, punk rocker type kids sitting in front of the post office, one of them playing a guitar for spare change. Suddenly there was some kind of physical altercation between two males, one of them a big punk rocker and the other seemingly some random college guy. There was a lot of sissified shoving and words shouted. At one point, as weird as this seems, I thought I heard the punk rock guy say, "I'll give you $20 bucks to leave me and my friends alone" while the shoves went back and forth.

I had my finger poised over the "9" on my cell phone, but I didn't call the cops quite yet because sissies shoving at each other's shoulders and spatting like angry kittens doesn't really merit a police response, even if it would technically count as assault. So many times I've seen the situation abruptly de-escalate as friends intervene and pull the angry participants apart, and I hate telling a 911 operator, "Never mind."

At that very moment--though we didn't know it at the time--a man lay shot and dying in the parking lot of the Fourth Street Bar on the North Side, a couple blocks from where I'd watched the "human chess tournament" the day before. In fact, two people were murdered the same day in separate incidents. But the drunk college kids in Dinkytown were, as usual, sucking up more than their fair share of police resources. (See my opinion column, "Send the 'party patrol' to North Minneapolis.")

The sissy slapping contest continued for a bit--enough time for my date to speculate the college student had tried to make change out of the open guitar case, and that had started the argument--I could hear it had something to do with leaving stuff alone, not touching other people's stuff, something along those lines.

All of a sudden, two women were wrestling, a dog was barking madly, and the punk rock guy who had been sissy-slapping with the college guy rushed into the middle of the melee between the two women. I saw actual punches being thrown and now I was dialing 911, but one and then two police cars pulled up that very moment and I didn't need to complete the call.

A small punk rock girl with a pink Mohawk haircut was arrested and put in the back of a squad car. I saw the police making the other punk rockers disperse, repeatedly, and it looked like an arrest or another wrestling match would start. The whole time, yards away, college students waited in line for pizza, not breaking from the line and losing their place.

A tall, leggy, long-haired brunette girl in a black cocktail dress was receiving medical attention from one of the officers. My date saw blood pouring out of the young woman's nose and speculated her nose was broken. I couldn't see blood from where I was watching, not in such bad light, but her face had something dark on it and the officer did appear to be paying attention to her nose.

"She looks like a debutante," I told my date. "That punk rock girl in the pink Mohawk must have hit her."

I couldn't resist pointing out THIS was what we had been waiting to see, and how fortunate it happened before we left so we didn't miss it.

I wanted to find out the story, somehow, but my date didn't want to get any closer to the action. It was already worrisome to walk to the parking lot with the angry, frustrated punk rockers wandering around. They did indeed wander right past while we stood at her car and talked.

After she left, I walked back toward The Library bar and grill, and I overheard some discussion among some college students about why the altercation had started. I heard, "One of their dogs got away, and Jesse grabbed the leash."

I heard another say, "Can you believe it? All this for a stupid dog."

The next day, after I parked my vehicle, I saw some of the punk rockers begging for change at the I-35 offramp, the one right before the bridge construction. The punk rocker with the pink Mohawk was there and I though, "Wow, I can't believe they let her out of jail so easily."

I had two very special beers in my vehicle, left over from cleaning my house before the sale. I'd found these beers inside 415 31st Avenue North, the house involved in the complex lawsuit with Citimortgage, and I'd removed the beers (two big cans of Steel Reserve) to keep them from falling into the hands of minors.

For myself, I can't stand beer. The smell alone makes me want to gag. But I hate to see things go to waste. With those two unopened beers--handed to the male, who looked to be easily over the age of 21--and a fistful of change, I managed to get the group to tell me the story.

Pink Mohawk claimed some crazy college students were saying, "Homeless people shouldn't have dogs. You're not taking care of your dogs." They were threatening to call the police and get Animal Control to take the dogs. A college girl grabbed the dog's leash and tried to make off with the dog and that's when the fight broke out, first among the two women--Pink Mohawk and the debutante-looking brunette--then one of the guys jumped into the fray.

The male claimed he had been arrested and put in a squad car for punching the college girl, but he had not punched her--he did not hit women, he said--rather it was his friend who looked a lot like him.

Currently, they were trying to leave town for Seattle, but there was talk of returning for the protests at RNC 2008 in late August, early September. Pink Mohawk wanted to build a raft and float down the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans. I suggested she should purchase a boat, instead, something proven to be water-worthy, but she was enamored with the idea of building a raft and floating down the river.

I urged them to call their parents and let them know their whereabouts. (I can't help it, I was deeply influenced by reading "Into The Wild" and watching the movie) I also added, lamely but for the record, "Remember, violence is not the answer."

I find myself not sure who or what to believe. Based on the two accounts I heard and what I observed, this is what I think happened. Some college students did indeed level some random criticisms about the punk rockers and their treatment of their animals. In my observation, college students are infamous for a particular type of immature act: unprovoked verbal criticisms leveled at random strangers, especially while walking around drunk.

They are young, naive and tender. Life has not yet taught them how a harsh word casually tossed around may result in a sudden blast of violent rage. They will learn. If they live.

I think that's what the initial pushing and verbal back-and-forth was about. I also don't think the young man came up with the notion of confronting the punk rockers all on his own. I think the brunette female was the one overwhelmingly concerned with the dogs, and the male was more concerned with...well, maybe he is a cat lover.

I think the young man may have actually offered money for the dogs, or suggested simply handing over the dogs, all because he wanted to impress the girl. One of the dogs got loose during the pushing and shoving and the college girl--obviously quite an animal lover--was concerned the animal would run into the street and get hit by a car, so she instinctively grabbed the trailing leash.

This caused two things to happen: 1.) The dog was probably yanked back hard on its leash, if it was running full-tilt. 2.) The college girl was physically handling and taking possession of the dog, which was the whole point of the dispute.

So the punk rock girl grabbed for the leash, as well. And the college girl who cared so much about the welfare of this animal didn't want to let go. She wanted to talk, to negotiate, to reason. The two began to have a physical altercation and, well, the college girl is about twice as big as the punk rock girl.

So the punk rock guy went over there and just DECKED THE DEBUTANTE, WHAM. The dispute was turning into a violent ball of people and one frantically yapping dog when the police rolled up.

Then again...I'm not sure. I want to label this as speculation.

For the record, the girl with the pink Mohawk denied the college girl suffered a broken nose, but said proudly, "She was covered in blood."

In the photo above, note they not only have two dogs--both pit bulls--but the male has a pet black-and-white rat in his shirt collar. It is a male. Its pink testes were amazingly prominent. The dog involved in the altercation is not one of the dogs pictured here. There were several other members of the group, and they were elsewhere when this photo was taken.

I think these punk rockers are unwise to remain around the campus. Punching a hot college girl in the face is bound to stir up all kinds of young men who will be looking for an opportunity to be knights in shining armor.

Yes, college kids have a kind of dangerously naive immaturity, but the punk rockers--despite literally living on the street--have their own naive blind spots. Last night was the blind punching the blind.