PRINTFight Clubs?
Columbia’s bars are safer than citizens might think
Elisa Petersen
Columbia police frequently receive incident calls from Cody’s, but bouncer Robert “Crazy” Sheets says actual brawls among patrons are few and far between. Most calls to police are preventative measures by bar owners.
November 16, 2006 | 12:00 a.m. CST
When thinking about a rough-and-tumble bar, one would expect the most likely suspects to be out-of-the-way dives, the local legends talked about in hushed words and with shaking heads, the modern equivalents of Spaghetti Western saloons where horses are Harleys, but the Leone-style defenestrations still take place.
But when Vox checked out the places that call the cops most often, we found that the list included our town’s well-known watering holes, and it seems these are the safest, not the most dangerous, spots.
Vox picked Columbia’s toughest bars based on the number of incident calls the Columbia Police Department has received this year from Jan.-Oct.
Athena 18
The Blue Note 17
TP’s Bar and Grill 20*
Cody’s 16
* 2 locations in Columbia
Jeremiah Settles monitors the door at The Blue Note. As one of the main concert ...
Robert Sheets, the senior bouncer at Cody’s, dances with patron Amber Baker. Nicknamed “Crazy” by ...
“Just because we get a lot of calls doesn’t mean a bar’s a dangerous bar,” says Sgt. John White of the Columbia Police Department’s Community Services Unit, who provided the numbers. “We teach the bars to call us before things get out of control.”
Smells like teen spirit
When the We Always Swing Jazz Series comes to town at The Blue Note, the mood is calm, and the largely baby boomer audience sits quietly instead of fighting loudly. But when younger people pack the venue for a modern rock show, the mood soars to a higher intensity. Mitchell Lickey, a 21-year-old who frequents The Blue Note, saw Story of the Year, a high intensity band that plays fast, upbeat rock music, in concert there.
“I felt pretty safe,” Lickey says. “They do everything they can. There’s not a whole lot you can do — you can’t put security in the crowd.” Lickey, who has traveled to many venues across the state, calls The Blue Note one of the safest concert halls he’s visited. He credits the safety to what he views as a larger staff and security compared to other venues.
But if it is the style of the younger crowd to jump with the music and engage in mosh pits, can The Blue Note really manage all the action?
“We feel confident that we’re a very safe environment,” owner Richard King says. “If we see something outside on the street or anything at all, we call the police.”
King employs many measures to ensure patrons of The Blue Note are safe. All bartenders hired are fully trained and certified professional servers, and the bar has a policy of not serving already drunk patrons. During concerts, crowd surfing and slam dancing are outlawed.
In fact, King says he is surprised The Blue Note is so high on the list of calls to the police, though its spot might be attributed to what he says is “great communication” between his bar and the Columbia Police Department.
Mild, mild West
Making its home inside a steel warehouse, Cody’s blends right in with Columbia’s industrial district on Paris Road. On the inside, though, the bar has a different feel. Cody’s has a country-western atmosphere and pays homage to the Double Deuce, the fictional Missouri watering hole featured in the film Roadhouse. With pool tables and a mechanical bull, there are plenty of things over which a fight could break out. Throw in the large capacity of the building, which can house up to 1,700, and rumbles are looking even more likely.
Owner Becky Reynolds says arguments sometimes run the risk of turning violent, but Cody’s rarely needs police intervention.
“As long as they don’t hurt my staff or any of my guests, they can go home, sleep it off and are more than welcome to come back tomorrow,” Reynolds says.
Cody’s professional security staff, led by senior bouncer Robert Sheets, is there in case someone decides not to sleep it off. If Cody’s draws inspiration from the Double Deuce, then Sheets plays the role of head bouncer, James Dalton. Cody’s first line of defense, all 6’1”, 380 pounds of him, looks the part. A sinuous Chinese dragon tattoo wraps around one bicep that bulges out of a sleeveless black shirt. His shirt has the word “security” emblazoned across its back. If you dare to take a closer look at the front of the T-shirt, you’ll see the name that Sheets goes by has been stitched onto the fabric. That name is “Crazy.” One look at Crazy, and you know he means business.
“When I clock on, this is my house,” Crazy says. “We’re throwing a party for a bunch of my guests; that’s the way I look at it. If you’re going to cause trouble, there’s two ways out: your feet or your head.”
Crazy’s 12-year tenure as a Columbia bouncer began at Club Vogue after he competed in a strong man competition at the Boone County Fairgrounds. He started working at Cody’s when it opened four years ago. In his career, he’s seen his fair share of fighting; one incident involved using a pool stick to take down a knife-wielding man. He says those incidents are very rare, though, and who wouldn’t believe a guy named Crazy?
A fruitless brawl crawl
We returned to Sgt. White, unbattered and unbruised, and asked why there weren’t any tough bars in Columbia.
“Here’s the thing that I don’t think a lot of people understand: The police department and the bar owners get along pretty darn well with each other,” White says. “We realize they have a business that they are trying to run, and they realize that we have a job we’re trying to do to keep people safe.”
White says that such a good relationship between bar owners and the police didn’t always exist. He says bar owners used to tell their employees not to call the cops because the owners feared losing their liquor licenses.
“If we arrested anyone for violation in a bar, then the state came in, and it could cost you your business,” White says.
He attributes the change in attitude to cooperative crime prevention between the bars and the police. White’s department distributes training videos for bar employees that focus on the best way to handle conflict if it happens: Call the police. Although airing the video is optional, White says the bars that do are the ones that tend to succeed in the long run.
“I can only think of a handful of bars that didn’t want the training, and they’re no longer bars. They had so many violations that their licenses were taken away by the state,” White says. He adds that officers actively attend bar owner meetings where they provide direct training on how to respond to problems.
TP’s Bar and Grill on Rainforest Parkway takes measures in addition to preventative phone calls to ensure the environment remains calm.
“We used to always have men behind the bar,” says Rachel Jacoby, a manager at TP’s. “Since we put women behind the bar, we haven’t had a single fight.”
Jacoby says TP’s hasn’t had any major incidents in the past year.
According to White, if you go to one of these bars, or any other bar in town, hoping to witness an old-fashioned brawl, you’ll be disappointed. “I can’t point to a specific place and say, ‘Gee whiz, I wouldn’t go there if I was you,’ ” White says. “You are just as likely to have a problem at any bar, as opposed to just one bar.”
That wasn’t always the case, though. Bars used to try to handle their own problems.
“They’d have their bouncers try to take care of it,” White says. “If the bouncers couldn’t take care of it, it was out of control. I can think of times where there were 20-30 people fighting in the street.”
White says if you’re itching to witness a knock-down, drag-out fight, you’re unlikely to find it. “I think if you were to go out every night for a few weeks, you’d be surprised at how few problems you’d see,” White says. “I’m sure there’s still incidents where that kind of thing happens, but it’s not on a daily basis.”
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