Center City Sips: A Fight
Summer on the East Coast is a funny thing. It is the beacon of hope you look to while trudging through the seasonal affective disorder inducing dreary winter. It is the culmination of the good* period of weather that sees boots and Canada Geese give way to sundresses and Summer Fridays. Your friends go to Sea Isle and Avalon for seemingly weeks at a time.
(*good is a relative term here, as all East Coast weather is #actually bad, outside of about 20 days per year when it is warm but not too hot and there is no humidity)
And it brings us Sips.
The city-wide happy hour that draws participation from 90 different bars and restaurants in the Center City area of Philadelphia has become a staple of summer life, so much so that people who don’t even live and/or work in the city still come out to participate. From the recent insurgency of festival-chic college girls, Big 4 co-ops, Market Street finance bros, and everyone in between, the streets are overrun with mobs of 20 and 30 somethings searching for a pocket of space in a bar to get a fit pic off and enjoy the communal warm weather while engaging in alcohol consumption.
Many participants of this midweek cocktail hour flock to one of the three large, open air plaza bars: Paganos, Marathon, and CHOPS at Comcast Center. It is at CHOPS where the following incident, captured on video by someone who is certainly not employed by a large sports-pop culture media blog and disseminated by my roommate and known sneaker black market smuggler Kyle.
The video you are about to watch is highly offensive if you have martial arts experience at any level and have played Mortal Kombat or Street fighter even one (1) time.
So you have watched the video two, maybe even three times. What stands out? Well, the fight sucks, for one. As a bar fight enthusiast this doesn’t hold a candle to the time I saw a Blockley bouncer one hit KO a charging bro in Nike Shox in the summer of 2011. There is no real technical or mechanical mastery exhibit by any of the combatants worth commenting on. In fact, there is just the opposite. The opening kick, punch combo by the lad in the white polo at the 0:01–0:03 window is a truly sorry pugilistic display. The kick looks more like an unenthusiastic kick-ball-change by a fourth grader who refuses to give 100% in a mandatory dance class than any sort of unarmed combat move.
It should come as no surprise that our hero delivers an equally sorry punch. He has no base, he doesn’t get into his back hip and create any sort of leverage or force. All arm and extremely pushy. Terrible mechanics. It’s a sweeping right (which on its own is a problem. Use your jab, son!) that, if slowed down 20%, actually looks like Baker Mayfield hitting the Whip.
If we move to the foreground we can observe a pretty solid ground-and-pound display (0:04–0:12). The real highlight there comes at the 0:12 mark though, when a guy with a top knot and douchey Burberry button down pulls the would be MMA fighter off his opponent. Where was friend of the program Mark John during this kerfuffle? Kinda looks like him.
Finally, we must acknowledge the true star of the show. If you look the above image you can catch a glimpse of his leg, like a grainy recording of Big Foot sneaking between the trees.
I cannot stop watching the guy in the light blue shorts. I am truly mesmerized. He is a cameraman, a hypeman, and a potential tag team partner all rolled up into one Brooks Brother’s Summer window display package. This dude is on the precipice of engaging in some Capoeira while simultaneously giving us a second camera angle for what is sure to be the second most underwhelming fight of this summer.
While others are fighting, peace keeping, or throwing beers, our bouncy Zapruder exists above the fray. He is the Greek Chorus of this ass backwards Battle of Troy, providing commentary to the audience while those there don’t even acknowledge his existence while still maintaining that this is Center City Sips, damnit, and he is gonna get lit and stay lit. “The DJ is playing that hot new Travis Scott track guys, I’m not going to stop turning up just because Brayden, Aiden, Hayden, and Chad got into a fight.”
Or for all we know he has the camera flipped and is just himself reacting to all this nonsense for his Instagram live. Millennials.
