Is George St getting violent?

Sydney's strip of terror

By Gemma Jones and Henry Budd
April 02, 2007 12:00

Shopkeepers fed up with the sickening violence have spoken out about attacks by teenage gangs who hang around late at night.

Senior police say the strip is one of the worst in the city for alcohol-fuelled assaults because of the number of pubs, clubs and restaurants in the area.

One shop attendant, who asked not to be identified for fear of being attacked, told The Daily Telegraph that brawls and drug deals were frequent.

"Every Friday and Saturday night it's a theatre down here, you just watch the street," he said.

"After midnight, there are four or five fights every night.

"I've seen one person go around to pick the fight and when the fight starts the others jump in so you have got six or seven people on one person," he said.
"They walk up and down and bump into people on purpose to start a fight. It is getting worse."

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Incident 1: Romper Stomper

Last night outside Bar 333, I saw a guy work outta the bar with his shirt off. Now this is a upmarket joint, so I thought this was strange. Then all his mates started filing out the bar and I noticed a trickle of blood around his mouth. They started yelling and posturing and talking to the bouncers.

After 5 minutes, in the open area next to the bar, I see people running and all of a sudden there is all in brawl. I have no idea who's on who's side.

There's one guy on the ground in the fetal position while getting kicked and stomped to the head by 5 other guys. This Indian dude and another Aussie guy are both facing each other with their fists cocked and start swinging. More Aussies guys jump into the fight to pull people off the one becoming someone's doormat.

I actually walked over half for curiousty's sake but also to yell at the guys beating the hell outta the guy on the ground. I actually contemplated jumping in and trying to stop him getting knocked out. It wasn't a fair fight.

About 6 bouncers from Bar 333 run into the various fights and try to stop them. One bouncer has this guy on the ground with his arm twisted in a arm bar position and his knee to the guy's head. Another burly bouncer yells out "we've called the police". The fight gets worse as the bouncers try to break it up. This girl runs into the fracas and bitch slaps this guy. She gets shoved and punched. It's no holds barred on George St tonite!

This goes on for a good 5 minutes. Eventually the fight is broken up and everyone goes their own ways. Apparently there was these two guys with these two girls who were getting the living daylights beaten out of them. And they were still talking trash calling the guys "cowards, come back!!". To top it off, those two girls were still trying to start these guys by running after them and pushing them.

A while later, John and I decide to get some food. We walk past the big group of wankers on George St and the guy who was in the arm lock position yells at me to come here. As per usual, I ignore him and he then says to me to give him my shirt. I can see that his mate's shirt had been ripped. Of course, I wasn't going to give it to him. It's one of the my favourite shirts! So I give him the hand sign and wave him off. His other mates yells "Their Asian - triads!" and decide to leave us alone. They proceed to hassle other people for their shirts. Which I thought was quite funny.

Ah, a crazy night on George St.

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Incident 2: The Big Kahuna Burger

Last Friday, i was at Privilege and decided I needed some much needed dinner. I'm in Macdonald's @ Wynard eating my Big Mac burger. I'm all content and enjoying the calories much like Marcus eating the Big Kahuna burger in Pulp Fiction.

On the communal table, there's a young 20 year old asian guy with his girlfriend who i saw at Privilege. He's got this security pass which is tied onto a retractable string.

He suddenly thinks its a great idea to impress his gf by flicking the pass at me and it lands about 30 cms away. Like a yo-yo, he retracts it. I ignore him.

He flicks it at me again. I notice it this time and give him a dirty look.

Marie calls me and I answer the phone. I'm happily chatting to her and ignoring this dickhead. This idiot tells his girl - "maybe he'll notice it this time!" and flicks it at me again. There's only so much I can take.

So I point directly at him and tell him in a loud, slightly aggressive voice bordering on a I'll shove this Big Mac down your throat and the security pass up your ass tone "I wouldn't do that again".

His girlfriend gets concerned and tells him to stop. He also sees the wisdom in not pissing me off. Normally I'm a very calm and passive guy. But don't annoy me when I'm enjoying my big Mac.

His friends show up, a couple of asian guys and some girls. They ask me if the seat is taken and then if there;s anything wrong. I tell his stocky asian friend, your mate is pissing me off because he threw his security pass at me three times. I notice that there is 1 idiot with 3 male friends and 1 DJ Ho.

I decide to not pursue this issue, tell him that everything is cool, and call up some mates to see if they are in the area. Another little ball comes rolling my way. I suspect its from my little friend. Seeing that this guy has a brain the size of a peanut, i stay there, calmly finish eating and walk out.

There's a side of me that says that if he had thrown that security pass at me one more time, I would have run over the other side of that table and banged his head on the table like a door knob.

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Incident 3: Kebabs save the day

About a year ago, I was at George st Macdonald's near the cinema strip. I walk out at 2am in the morning and step on to the pavement. There's one guy with a hat on being pursued by 20 (yes 20 guys) that have just emerged out of Bar Ace or Maloney's. they look like a mix of people from Aussies, Wogs, Lebs. The one lone guy who looks Leb is getting punched to the head, shoved into the wall at Metro. The security at Playtime shove them away because that's their jurisdiction.

This guys is totally outnumbered and in for a massive beating. I couldn't really get a good view, and it wasn't safe to stand in front of MacDonald's. So I crossed the road and stood on the steps of Starbucks to watch it unfold. Quite sadistic actually. The one guy did the best thing he could have done: run into Ali Baba's kebabs which is next door. He had no chance of surviving. By running into the store, the attackers stop pursuing him.

But he had a brain explosion and started taunting his attackers, motioning at them to come in and fight him. So you know what they did? A couple of them started to walk up the steps and almost into the stop but were stopped by the owners of the Kebab shop. Who were more concerned about the loss of business and the potential damage to their store.

At this point, the fight was over and i climbed down from my lofty perch.

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I'm a lover not a fighter.

DJ Ho.