The Scumbags Involved In The Brawl At The Saugus Kowloon On Black Wednesday Have Been Apprehended And Arrested (BONUS- A Primer On New England Asian Restaurants and Their Sacredness)
Fox Boston - Four people, including a woman who was seen on video wielding a glass bottle, will be summoned to court to face charges in connection with an “unacceptable and disgusting” brawl that broke out inside the packed Kowloon Restaurant on Thanksgiving Eve, officials announced Thursday.
Rosaria Sophia McCauly, 32, of North Reading, is slated to be arraigned in Lynn District Court on charges of two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (to wit glass bottle), and disorderly conduct, according to the Saugus Police Department.
Anthony John Micelli, 35, also of North Reading, is facing charges of assault and battery and disorderly conduct.
Arnold John Carey Marujo, 19, of Somerville, will be charged with procuring liquor to someone less than 21 and disorderly conduct. Donovan Clark, of Lynn, also 19, will be charged with procuring liquor to someone less than 21, disorderly conduct, and assault and battery.
Crews responding to a fight in progress involving several people inside the landmark restaurant on Route 1 around 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, one of the biggest drinking nights of the year, found six detail officers who were already working to break up the altercation, according to police.
A video sent to Boston 25 showed pushing, shoving, and punches being thrown. At one point in the video, someone appears to pick up a glass bottle and smash it over another patron’s head.
The restaurant and bar closed early and Saugus Police Chief Michael Ricciardelli called the disturbance “unacceptable and disgusting.”
This might have got lost in the holiday frenzy last week, but last Wednesday night, some real low life's just couldn't help themselves, and desecrated sacred ground in Saugus, Massachusetts, on the holiest of nights.
Black Wednesday might induce eyerolls from you hot shots and mature adults from outside of New England who think you're too school for cool. But in the Northeast its arguably the biggest night of the year. It's the fucking super bowl for high school heroes that they look forward to every year and start counting down the days from November 25th until the next one, on repeat.
Don't believe me, look at this fucking line to get in last Wednesday evening, before the brawl broke out.
Mind you, this wasn't a Jenna Jameson free blowjob giveaway these hundreds of people were lining up for. This is a polynesian restaurant/bar, on the night before Thanksgiving. A place that serves fairly priced, pre-batched, well alcohol Mai Tai's that taste amazing going down, and induce some of the most mind-splitting headaches you've ever experienced the next morning.
When my phone started blowing up Wednesday night with videos and links of the fight from friends back home telling me I needed to blog it, I rushed to the backend mobile site (which fucking blows btw), excited to get to work. I was dismayed to see that Karim had already got to it.
I wanted to be mad that a guy I think is from LA? (he's a Lakers fan I know), who's never stepped foot in Kowloon blogged the story, but I couldn't because he did a really good job with it. For example-
Karim's Blog - Unreal video here out of Kowloon in Saugus on Blackout Wednesday. I can't stop watching. Let me start off by saying we need to find the cameraman of this video and give him a job immediately. We don't have the Saugus Rocket on the roster here anymore, but there's a couple shows we could use a steady camera hand for. A second hat tip to the DJ who never stopped performing under immense pressure. Clutch like you read about. And if you're throwing hands to David Guetta, you have to continue until someone's knocked out. Those are just the rules.
He's correct. The camera work done on this was top-notch. I'd be shocked if this person doesn't already have a job working for us and Rough n Rowdy.
I don't know a damn thing about Massachusetts, Boston, or the North Shore besides Large telling me they have good beefs and I thought that might have multiple meanings. Anything I've heard has been off hand from Gaz's experience terrorizing those bars for the last 2 decades while Dave yells at him from the throne. It seems like a relatively fun place to spend your time, until you run into a Masshole who wants to swing at you just because you're wearing your favorite Barstool retro hat that you bought 20% off during our Black Friday sale that he was mad he didn't think of buying and wearing first:
Every time you watch this video, you notice something different. It just kept on providing. I don't want to be the one that pauses the video in the first few seconds to confirm to see if I thought I saw what I did, but take a gander for me and let me know down below. And I didn't think it could get crazier, until the legendary cameraman panned his phone over into pure pandemonium. The guy bleeding from his head after getting a bottle smashed on it. Tyler Seguin, Boston Terrier legend, in the background in a square up on the TV. The DJ letting that shit play on. The cops struggling to control the crowd. Just nonstop chaos for thirty seconds.
Fair admission here. I'll allow it.
Here's the thing about Kowloon, it is the bluefin tuna swimming amongst a sea of Skipjacks. One thing I never actually realized until I moved out of the New England area and to Chicago, is that there is an absurd amount of Chinese-American or polynesian restaurants in New England. Especially when you consider there really isn't that crazy of an Asian population necessarily compared to everywhere else.
There's basically a smaller, toned-down version of the Kowloon in every town in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. No joke. And they all crush.
They're all run by an older Asian couple, usually named something Americanized like "Steve" and "Tracey", their drinks are all the stiffest and most sugary things you've ever tasted and give you straight diabetes and brutal fucking hangovers. The menues are almost nearly identical, but the food is fucking incredible. (MSG is an amazing thing). And best of all, they don't card at all or they check to make sure you are holding something, anything, on you that resembles an ID.
So these spots are rights of passage for almost every high school kid in the area.
For us, we had the Dragon-88 on Shrewsbury St. in Boylston. I'll never forget my first time going there one day with some friends after school on a Friday night. I was fucking TERRIFIED walking in. I think I was like 15 at the time (but had an unreal ID), and up until then the only places I'd dare to drink before was wine at my family's dinners, stolen beers or Mike's Hard Lemonade's in the woods, friends houses whose parents were out of town, or my friend T-Box's Saturn sedan in an area high school parking lot. The first time you go to an actual establishment to order a drink like a real adult is a harrowing experience.
But it was all for naught. We walked in and the guys we were with were greeted by the owner "David", like they were regulars (they were), and he cleared a spot for us at the bar and threw us all Keno cards.
It was there and then that I was introduced to another New England staple that I took for granted and had no idea how lucky we were to have at the time: The Scorpion Bowl.
Don't be fooled by the foo-foo floral accouterments and slices of cirtus heaven. For they are floating on an ABV% that would confuse Will fucking Hunting. And see that pretty little flame in the middle symbolizing a volcano? Yah that's Bacardi 151. As in 151 proof. Something I didn't even realize isn't even legal to be sold in most states.
(Sidebar- has anybody ever questioned how up until like 5 years ago Massachusetts still had these "Blue Laws" in place that were essentially in existence since The Mayflower landed that didn't allow places to sell alcohol of any sort on Sundays, or holidays, or after like 5pm in some places? Yet you could buy shit like 151, Southern Comfort Black Label, and Everclear literally with the XXX on the bottle at pretty much any package store? Stocking up for NFL Sundays or a long holiday weekend was a fucking nightmare I remember back then. Made zero sense.)
So you splash that 151 around into the drink, or watch one of your lunatic buddies sip it straight through the straw, then proceed to tell you how his high school football coach and father conspired to sabotage his football career where he would have been Julian Edleman before Julian Edleman. Always great times.
You could smoke in all of these places because why couldn't you?
The owners all chain-smoked.
The entire kitchen staff chain-smoked.
There would be pregnant women in there chain smoking for crying out loud.
Even if you didn't smoke, you basically breathed in 2 packs of Marlboro reds second-handedly that you were a schmuck for thinking you were being healthy by not.
The absolute best part of these places were that nobody ever fought in them. (See how I'm bringing this full circle?)
I think everybody there knew they either weren't supposed to be there, or if they were, they had a story and didn't want it known they were there, or they were simply there having a great fucking time. This sounds strange for people in other parts of the country but when you're from the northeast, you realize what a rarity it is to go out to a drinking establishment and not witness, encounter, be challenged to, fend off, or have to break up a physical altercation. It's legit a nightly occurrence. Often multiple. And the reason bouncers in and around Boston have some of the toughest jobs I know. (Another big eye-opener when moving to the Midwest. "Guys don't go out looking to just start fights every night here? Weird")
Plus, how could you possibly disrespect hard-working, great people, like David who enjoy hosting their guests and laughing it up with them night after night?
(that's David with my boys Whitey and TP)
So with ALL of that said, you can see why it's such bullshit these 4 pieces of shit decided to ruin what was otherwise going to be one of the best nights of the year for the hundreds of other people at The Kowloon last Wednesday evening. The owners and staff, and the police. All everybody wanted to do was have a few cocktails, retell the same stories from highschool for the 500th time, and get home safely before having to spend a day with their miserable family watching a piss-poor quality NFL product on TV.
But these fucks had to ruin all that.
The Saugus Board of Selectmen is awaiting receipt of a police report detailing the violent melee. Upon reviewing the details, the board will weigh in on “potential violation of the liquor rules and regulations.”
The Saugus selectmen better rain hellfire down upon these deadbeats so that it sends a clear message to anybody else who thinks about fucking around in one of these places of peace.
Since I wanted to do this story justice, I reached out to the end-all, be-all source for all things Saugus. That's right, The Rocket, Jared Carrabis. Because that's what a good journalist does. I asked him his thoughts on this incident, and the resulting arrests being made. Here's what he had to say-
Jared raised a fair, but critical point here.
As you can tell, by his mention and distinction between those being from Saugus and those not, what town/city you are from means a lot to people from Massachusetts.
My friend Magee and I joke about this all the time.
He lives in Chicago now also, but he's from Tewksbury originally. It took both of us moving out there to realize it wasn't this way everywhere. People in Chicago care a lot about where you went to high school, but not really where you grew up. And once you're older, you don't really hear people who give a shit about it, unless you're at the Barstool office. If you're from "Chicago", you're from Chicago.
But back in Massachusetts battle-lines get drawn at the town line and God help you if you step out of line outside your turf.
You may think I'm joking but it's far from a joke.
Nevermind the fact that all of these towns and cities are essentially exactly the same and identical down to the Friendly's and greek "George's House of Pizza" in the downtown plaza, the Cumberland Farms all the high school kids hang out at who have nothing better to do, and the 4 same size neighboring towns having pretty much the same exact name except for a few directional differences preceding the "-bridge, -borough, -boro, -ship, -ville, or -ton". (Looking at you Northboro, Southboro, Westboro, Marlboro, Attleboro, North Attleboro, Tynsboro, Foxboro)
You will see blood enemies band together to join forces if it's against somebody who's from another town. It's allegiance like you've never seen before.
I’ve seen family members fight family members, like scenes from Civil War movies, over townie disputes.
“My towns better than your town @$#€^!”
It’s insanity. And makes no sense. But that’s New England.
But I digress..
Hopefully The Kowloon and all of it's great customers and staff can now move on and put this terrible incident behind them. And get back to doing what they do best, providing the best in entertainment by hosting local Mass comedians
and autograph signings with megastars like Parking Lot Payton
p.s. - people forget Kowloon is so big that Jose Canseco was talking shit about it in his run up to getting dropped by Billy Football
p.p.s.- I swear I’m not hating here, as I’ve confirmed it with THE source on this, Donnie Does, but we really had no idea how good we had it back home with the Chinese food offerings. We took it so for granted. All these places I just wrote 10,000 words about are so fucking good for the most part, and yah, no shit it’s not “traditional” Chinese food. But I put up with the bastardized “Italian” places everywhere here and don’t nitpick tradition. It’s Americanized as hell, and crazy unhealthy, but so damn good. If anybody knows of one place like this that can measure up in Chicago please please let us know… my go to used to be Chen’s in Wrigleyville for context… r.i.p.