Money = Violence

David C, two of his friends and I went out on the town. We went to a small bar for a while, then decided to change venues. As we were walking down Little Collins Street, a huge fight broke out. It was not more than ten meters in front of us to begin with, but we backed away a short distance so as not to be pulled in.

Unlike normal street fights, this particular one kept going and going. It lasted for many minutes, even longer than the emergency call. I think it says a lot about the police force here, that when calling 000 (911) they go into a long series of questions, starting from “What state are you in?” What sort of question is that, since they can see exactly where the call is originating anyway.

While waiting for the police to arrive, and as we started heading out of the street, two men broke from the fight, one supporting the other, and came past us. The one being supported was soaked in blood, with more pouring out of lacerations on his forehead, temple and cheeks. It did not look all too pleasant for either of them.

We moved on, after pointing the squad car in the right direction. We took some time finding the next haunt, but we did come up with quite a nice one. I do not recall seeing any names for these places, and since we walked back and forth along foreign streets, I am not able to provide addresses either. We made ourselves quite comfortable, shared in excellent conversation and so on.

From there, we moved on to the Casino. The Crown, that is. The others engaged in poker, I decided to refrain, having spent enough money that day on shoes. I did watch, and advise as well as make and share in plenty of humour. While the other two remained playing, David and myself went up to the food area for some chinese. It was alright, but nothing special, the drinks were absolutely laughably expensive.

While we were eating, two fights broke out in the Casino. This night people certainly were not acting very laid back, as the Australian norm would appear to be. The first was smaller, but the second required close to twenty members of the security staff to subdue. By this time it was getting rather late, so David and I decided to leave.

Getting a taxi was apparently going to be difficult, there was a line of probably over a hundred people at the Casino entrance, and all cabs were being diverted there. Somehow David managed to flag one down though, from the other side of the road, and we were on our way. First driving over to Richmond to drop David off home, then continuing on up to Kew for me.

Unfortunately, the cabby as even more ignorant of this part of the city than I am. We ended up driving all the way up to Balwyn, since he sped right through the intersection where we should have turned onto Edward and then Rowland streets.  Luckily I did manage to see it on the way back, and got home without further incident.