Beatdown at The White Swan!

Holy crap. Got this forwarded from good pal Mel, who apparently knows one of the women involved; apparently late Thursday night the co-owner & the sound guy over at local loud-shit club The White Swan attacked a group of kids who’d been at the show, one of whom had knocked on the club door to see if she could get the car keys she’d forgotten inside the place. The White Swan staff reportedly got violent, the whole thing escalated, & it all sounds really, really fucking bad. Damn.

Here’s the start of the original LiveJournal post on the whole thing:

Last night (Thursday Aug. 14th) a couple of friends and I went to go see my friends’ bands play at The White Swan. It’s a venue I’ve been to before and it was a fun night up until girls started getting brutally beaten.

It all started when a (female) friend of mine who will remain nameless for now accidentally left her car keys inside and knocked on the door after closing and simply asked if she could get her keys… then for no reason, one of the OWNERS and employees started to brutally assault her and at least four other people (two of which were girls).

One of them was beaten in the head by the butt of a shotgun so badly that she had gashes in her head pouring blood all over and had to be taken away in an ambulence.

What sort of low-life scum beats women with the end of a shot gun?
There’s never a good enough reason for something like that to happen.

Read the whole thing for the details… Jesus freakin’ Christ. Now, I know this is second-hand and all, but the poster’s a friend of Mel’s and was one of the people attacked. The pictures on the original post are pretty damning, as well.

This really, really disturbs me. I know full well how easily things can get out of hand, esp. when folks are tired and/or drunk, but I can’t honestly think of a reason to beat somebody with the butt of a shotgun unless they’re trying to hurt somebody I love. Fuck.

Whether or not these guys suffer any legal consequences from this, I can tell you that I’m boycotting The White Swan, effective right now. All show listings for the place will be taken down, they’ll be removed from the Venues page, the whole deal. It ain’t much, but it’s what I can do, at least. Supposedly some bands have already decided to boycott the club, and I’m guessing booking people are going to think twice before booking shows there. Could be the end of the place, if this spreads far enough; H-town’s hardcore scene is a relatively small, close-knit place.

Nice going, morons. And to the folks who were injured: I seriously hope y’all are doing okay. Nobody deserves to be attacked like that, no matter the reason.