EDKO.Onion

I’m looking at the ‘wall of fame’ semi-legal graffiti area behind the old burned out Carriage works and abandoned Westmoreland House; Ashley Road’s ever changing backdrop to our ever changing lives.

Last week it was 6 foot songbirds. This week it looks like robots beating each other to death.

I’ve left my car on Jamaica Street, walked past Pizza King and Café Kino, (ideological opposites on the spectrum of Croft culture) and now I am shielding my eyes from the glare of the setting sun in order to look at the art. I feel like a tourist.

It looks like a still from a Transformers movie, one robot's head is being punched clean off by the other, leaving a trail of sparks and torn wires in its wake.  Despite losing his head, he is giving as good as he gets.  Decapitated, his iron fist reaches forward to pull out the battery-based heart of his assailant. Between them, barely legible and entangled with their pistons and tubing, are the words, ‘Electric Death KO’

Around the edges of the image is a forest of black tags and other wild-style scribblings…

Until very recently I thought these were just the artists names, in-jokes and gang threats maybe. What I didn’t know, despite having been a journalist here for several years  is that there is sometimes a code to it, a secret language of networked traveller/promoters, a set of calling cards that hints at message-board url names usefull for the hardworking tax-free economy that paddles hard beneath the surface of Stokes Croft.

Tonight it points to EDKO.onion the unusual URL that is typical of the Deep Web.
Tonight it’s fight night. Tickets available only on the kind of websites that search engines can’t find.

My companion gives the password and the gates are pushed open only just far enough for she and I to squeeze through. Then a very tall and thin man with circus-level skin damage, extends his hand towards us, . He holds his skeletal hand in the air and briefly I am fascinated with how easy it is to see how the muscles and ligaments connect and manipulate the bones.

I reach into my pocket and place both my money and my printed ticket in his palm.

He gives me a smile full of yellowing teeth and waves us through with unnecessary aplomb.

People like that, I think, are always out to try to frighten you, or make you think that they are something supernatural. But they’re not, they’re just funny looking guys who’ve made a few poor life choices and are now running with the aesthetic. These people are like king snakes, or  false-bees  wrapped in the trappings of venom but lacking the bite. It's a universal truth that they have to do their own washing up just like everyone else. To tell the truth, he reminds me of the teenagers that would tell me ghost stories when I was a kid.

I look back at him again. He must be like seven feet tall, even without the top-hat.  Perhaps he’s wearing stilts I think. 

Music is playing, a kind of Mexican style house beat that’s difficult to pin down. An arena has been roped out. There is a sign that reads ‘peak oil is already here!’ I am wondering what the hell that has to do with anything when I notice another sign, hand written on one of the caravans that reads 'Tequilla £2 a shot.'

No other refreshments appear to be on sale, however looking at the early arrivers, I am sure that if I wanted it, I could find a whole range of intoxicants and stimulants. I just want a bottle of water but when I ask for it I get nothing but a laugh and a shot of tequila for my trouble, served in a plastic cup.

‘Fine, Here you go’ I say… and hand over my two pounds.

I guess I’m kind of hot and bothered by the heat of the day, nervous to be out of my environment, but I find all of this vaguely juvenile. Why should everyone in Bristol pretend we are in 'From Dusk till Dawn' It makes me feel like this whole thing is fake in some way.  A kind set up for the camera’s.

I thought this would be less about theatrical posing and more about the sport and the gambling. Which would be fitting as right now, we are all stood in the shadow of Westmorland House.  Built in the mid-1960s by the Regional Pools Company, to house a bingo-style football lottery business. It turned out to be a bad bet and is now abandoned and has been empty so long that I have never even seen a picture of it in its heyday. (Nor can I find one online.)

Without walls and glass, some of the sunlight passes all the way through creating the kind of golden glow that makes even this most obvious and ugly of human failures seem almost beautiful.
Peak oil is already here… another gentle reminder of impending global apocalypse. Another bad bet.

I need a distraction.

Before the main event, there is always burlesque. Before that though there is a man with a handful of Ping-Pong balls and a weird wooden structure that he has clearly built himself.

At first the crowd seems uninterested; I mean, the guy is clearly a juggler. And the only thing people hate more than jugglers is mimes. But after about five minutes he actually has our attention.

He is bouncing Ping-Pong balls in and out of his mouth,  spitting them out and bouncing them off the floor, firing them into the air and catching the ricochets off the various panels on his jury-rigged prop all with his mouth. It’s fascinating, but also grotesque. Even the air is dusty and spit from his mouth can been seen falling between his feet and on his chest. And it’s not the kind you find on the tip of your tongue… but rather spit from deep in his throat. Thick and visceral.

As the balls fly around in a hypnotising virtual mesh of parabolic trajectories, I realise the tequila is going to my  head. I reel for a moment, stare at the floor to get my barings, but then suddenly, without warning everyone is clapping at once.

 

 It’s the end of the floor show…

And time to bring on the girls.

I’m sure that you have seen Burlesque before, that you have an idea in your head of what it’s about, but this is Bristol, the closest big city to the Glastonbury festival, A city that’s still pissed off that it now has to pay for tickets.  A town full of music, that riots when corporate interests threaten to spoil the unbroken line of thrift shops and record stores that stretch from here to Bishopston Hardware.  A city with an unpoliceable carnival that’s been voted the best place in the UK to live, more than twice in a row. A port town, with access to the sea only via a tidal river of mud and a floating harbour stuffed full of small boats making furtive trips to god knows where…. This is a somewhat psychedelic city, a city of  street art and street performance and I am reminded of this fact when the first dancer comes out with a giant papier-mâché eyeball instead of a head.

There are three girls in total, all tattooed and chauvinistic and interesting for more than the fact that they are going to be naked. The second does interesting things with a stapler, the last of the three is truly beautiful, she has an amazing figure, perfectly decorated  by a snake tattoo and henna-red hair. Long and straight it falls down her back like slow water over a stone.

She finishes her act by falling to her knees and leaning backwards, just as the tips of her hair touch the ground behind her, she pours honey down the front of her body. The crowd goes crazy and I go buy another couple of tequilas and touch my wedding ring to my heart to remind myself that I’m married.

In the time that we have been watching the mouth juggler and the girls do their thing, the light has changed. It feels cooler now. The yellow glare of the sun on the dust has been replaced by a ring of oil-barrel braziers.  We have all been here a while and it’s starting to feel more normal. The sky has transposed from pastel blue into the border-black indigo of spilt ink on velvet.

There are two truck mounted floodlights shining down on the centre of the arena. 

In the firelight faces flicker and are difficult to focus on…  but  closer to the front of the crowd, pressed up against the rope, expressions are easy to make out. As I push my way back thought to my companion I can tell that the crowd is restless. We came here to see a knock out. We came to watch electric death.  People are forming themselves into miniature huddles. Bundles of cash change hands under hunched shoulders. There is a murmur of soft-spoken activity as people discuss the form, and argue over what is fact and what is hearsay. Every so often someone breaks away from one of the groups and head towards the base of one of the flood light trucks where the bookies and banks and their bodyguards have set up shop

One of the bookies looks oddly out of place, tall and well built, blond hair and wears designer sports clothing. He looks for all the world like an oxford rower… or perhaps a personal trainer.

My companion tells me that they call him Bono, She says that he lives up on the hill, that it’s his money that provides the purse. That he started this whole thing as a kind of unofficial student society: FightSoc,  a group of trustifarian rich-kid students. More money than sense. Bored of rock climbing and the ukulele, they made a decision to get their thrills by experiencing life outside of the Clifton elite.
I look at him again, in the shadow of the spotlight. He looks familiar like maybe I have seen him at the Clifton Lido.

Looking around there are a few more rower types, wearing identical tracksuits and moving from group to group collecting bits of paper. More members of FightSoc I assume. They look to me like Romans soldiers strutting their stuff among the Saxon herd. Here they are, paying the locals to bash each other senseless and making a profit from the ensuing confusion. Good training perhaps for a future career in global politics.

Time seems to be passing slowly in the gap between strippers and fighters. It’s been a full twenty minutes since the honey incident but it feels like a lot more. People are starting to wonder if this is really going to happen or if somebody has chickened out. The murmuring increases…

Then drops to silence when the seven foot man from the gate, walks confidently into the middle of the arena and announces that Tommy Crib will indeed fight Angry Mike Farragher -AKA the Kentish Knob, over  a series of 3 minute rounds to be decided by knock out or retirement…

He bows low… and I look at where he bends and it seems to me like those really are his natural legs. Also I am surprised by how his top-hat stays on his head like that. It must either be too tight… or glued on or something.
As he moves up, either it’s a trick of the firelight or he actively looks right at me. Just long enough to say… you are not meant to be here, and your presence has been marked.

With all this obvious pageantry I am left to wonder,  if this a real thing why does it feel so much like some arts-council funded interactive theatre event?

Surely if it’s about bare Knuckle Boxing the opening acts wouldn’t just be strippers and jugglers but simply more bare-knuckle boxing.

Things are starting to take on a disturbing unworldly quality for me.  This may just be the effect of the tequila. But as the Top-Hat circles the ring… goading the crowd…  I feel like I am starting to believe in his ghost stories. Right now  I am less than a mile from my house, wrapped up in magic, twenty feet from a street I basically grew up on, and I have no idea where I am.

The first of the fighters comes out of his trailer to thunderous applause.  He wears a white sleeveless vest, black shoes, that look like penny loafers, with tall white socks, and what look like…  knee britches? 

They are held up by a cloth chord that ties at the back. I’m glad he doesn’t have an eyeball for a head but I’m still pretty confused. This looks like period costume, it looks like Victorian underwear.  I console myself with the rationale that he if  goes by the name of Tommy Crib,  surely a homage to Bristol’s famous Tom Crib, (after whom the Crib’s causeway shopping centre isn’t actually named… Though a lot of people think it is) then the clothes must be part of the act.

Angry Mike Farrager, also seems weirdly dressed.  Black leather boxing boots, tight blue spandex trousers and a red waist sash, It reads ‘TKK=KO’ surrounded by stars and stripes. It appears that the top-hat giant will act as referee, he makes the men shake hands. Both their hands are taped but not gloved.

This dress code, isn’t totally outlandish. Bare Knuckle boxing isn’t really like regular boxing. The modern version mostly came out of MMA cage fighting, which has some of the characterisation of pro-wrestling. It’s also not as brutal as you might expect.  It tends to be a much cagier affair than the Queensbury rules. Smashed and broken bones in the hand end more fights than glass jaws. It happens when over excited fighters swing too hard and connect with a bony forehead instead of a nose.

As a result, I am reliably informed, to avoid being hoist on their own petard fighters tend to go for body shots more often. They go for the face mostly to distract and unnerve their opponent, unless of course they are absolutely sure they can connect with something vulnerable..

This is what I have read.

During my extensive research on Wikipedia.

The Top-Hat is happy that both men are fully aware of the rules and backs away.
Then the bell rings.

The first punch of the fight is a hard Jab, direct to Tommy Cribs nose. It’s only as the fist connects that the reality of what I have come along to see starts to dawn on me.  

With an anti-climactic slapping sound and a brief spray of scarlet onto a pure-white sleeveless-vest, for all the smoke and mirrors and shots of tequila it suddenly looks like two drunk men punching each other, held up and caged by a baying, animal crowd.

Unused to real violence and trauma as I am, when I see the red on his t-shirt it is as if time stops.

At first, at home… when planning this article, the idea was exciting and dangerous, something cool to go and do and then write about, a deregulated off-the-grid break from our overly surveyed Google-cop world. This was a soiled nappy as yet undiscovered by the nanny state. Its just that now that I’m here, the stench of it has become all too evident.

I find myself completely mentally unprepared for even a single punch in the face by the supposedly desensitising beheadings of game of thrones.

The fight swings in my direction and the crowd moves away from the fighters as they brush against the rope, but I cannot move far  for the rush of people and then suddenly there they are, right up close, blood dripping from Tommy Crib’s nose, just a foot or two from my own.

‘I’d like to leave,’ I shout to my companion, but she doesn’t hear me, there is a lot of yelling and shouting going on… men and even a few women are pumping their fists in the air, waving money like they are a cliché of evil in some dark cartoon. The soon to be donkeys from Pinochio.

‘I don’t want to be here anymore.’ I say a little louder as the crown surges forward again when the brawl tumbles away to the other side of the arena. I feel slightly nauseous, wave tossed and seasick  as I am pushed forward and have to hold onto the barrier, suffering some slight rope burn just trying to stay upright. And then just as I think I’m going to embarrass myself by throwing up, it’s over… end of round one.

The girl with the Henna-Red hair walks around holding a card saying 1. She is wearing a branded T-shirt now:

'EDKO.Onion'

What's her motivation for being here I wonder?

Mostly I just really want to leave. I'm feeling the start of a panic-attack coming on, but I’m hemmed in by the press of people behind me and the violence ahead. People surround me, who just a few moments I thought I was one of.. now seem completely alien to me.

Please… someone remind me again why we pushed to the front? I start to turn around with a plan to make a quiet exit when my Companion grabs my shirt. ‘No, she says… you stay.’

I don’t understand…. ‘You have a brief to fill' she says,  'Your here to cover something, not to enjoy yourself’ and then I remember that I only found out about this thing in the first place because my companion wanted it publicised. She doesn’t look very happy about how pale I look.

Trapped, but trying to keep a brave face. I steel myself for round two.

If the first round belonged to The Kentish Knob, this one is all Tommy. He comes out looking for revenge. During the interval they have shoved some tissue in his nose, but I notice it fly out with the exertion as he punches hard into Angry Mikes ribs. Presumably making him even angrier. Mike retaliates, swings and misses… Tommy connects again. The two men end up clutching each other and are separated by the Top-Hat. The rest of the round is spent circling with the occasional exploratory jab.

The next few rounds are very similar. Lots of energy at the start, followed a build up of lactic acid and tiredness, no-one really looking like getting close to a knock out.

I am told by my companion, who I am starting to view as a slightly sinister person, that the only way the fight ends is through knock out. This could go on for hours. Which is why there were no support fights.

Rather than rising tension as I had expected of an extended brawl, the excitement actually seems to dwindle. As the rounds go on, the crowd starts to thin out. In round ten people expect a knock-out blow to at any minute, in round twenty it all starts to feel a little samey.

By round thirty, they have been fighting for more than three hours, drinking nothing but shots of tequila.

It is less of fight by now and more a flailing of arms at one another in the hope of connecting. Both men look dead, lurching like zombies and bleeding from hands and face. I do eventually throw up. The man in the top-hat laughs, as does the red-headed dancer as she walks the ring between the rounds. My companion doesn't look pleased.

Eventually in round forty three, Tommy Crib, the local boy, falls to the ground and doesn’t get up, I don’t remember if it was even preceded by a punch.  Whatever happed before he fell,  Angry Mike Farrager has just enough energy left to hold one hand in the air and celebrate his glorious victory.

It is one in the morning.

‘Are you happy now?’ Said my companion…

‘I’ll write this up,’ I said…'but I don’t think anyone will publish it, people don’t really want to see something like this.'

‘You did’

I nod. I did. I was there. A pale face in the crowd, a nauseous accidental-traveller on a swelling tide of bloodlust and rage.

Finally I'm allowed to leave.

We push through the gate back onto Ashley Road and I look up towards the moon and feel the crushing weight of celestial disapproval. Not only was I the moth drawn towards the false light of a dangerous flame, but when I got there I found that I did not have what it takes not to get burned.

I have failed on two counts. Not smart enough to stay away, not stupid enough to enjoy the spectacle. Caught between two camps, I can only hang my head and walk slowly too my car.

On my way I pause between ‘Slix Burger’ and ‘The Croft’, shake my head and carry on walking, first past ‘The Museum of Stokes Croft’ , a highbrow hipster shrine to the urban experience, and then past the back entrance to the ‘The Massage Club', which I have known since I was 11 was a front for a brothel.

I don't stop. I walk on. All the way back to my car and drive home to my luxury flat in Sea Mills, where stuff like this just doesn’t happen.