Kito’s Kave and the Art of Bar Fighting

Kito’s Kave and the Art of Bar Fighting

I learned a lot about life the summer after I graduated from college.  Despite having a dream job lined up in New York as a staff writer for a major U.S. newspaper, I also had a strong desire to see the world before getting locked into a serious work commitment.  With this in mind, I managed to convince my soon-to-be editor at the paper to give me a little time before I would officially start.  He was a good guy, like most journalists, and said I could take the time I needed to travel before reporting for duty.  With the job safely on hold, I left Boulder for the Pacific Northwest, which was all the rage back then.  After a couple months of bouncing around between Seattle, Oregon and Vancouver, and wasting the little savings I had, an interesting opportunity presented itself and I found myself in Petersburg, Alaska working in a cannery during the salmon season.  My entire Alaskan experience could be the basis of a short novel, but I will do my best to confine this blog to just a fun tale from the many experiences and lessons learned up on America’s last frontier.  

After a couple days working on the “slime line” where I endlessly gutted salmon that came through on a small conveyer belt for hours and hours on end, I lucked into one of the best jobs and was assigned to the warehouse.  Alaska is a place of extremes and during the season, this was more than a job, it was my entire life.  In the warehouse I worked a physically demanding shift of eighteen hours a day seven days a week for about two and half months straight.  I arrived for work at 1am and clocked out a 7pm.  Working hours like this you lose track of time and I rarely even knew what day it was.  

Once the salmon season ended, I was offered to stay on for the black cod and halibut season, which would start in a couple weeks.  I decided to stick around for it.  The cannery let whoever was going stay remain in the bunk house/dorms (which we called the flophouse) and kept providing room and board for us if we did odd jobs fixing up the cannery during the downtime.  There wasn’t much work to actually do and we usually finished the tasks they assigned to us by lunchtime and then had the rest of the day to ourselves.  Besides working, there really isn’t much else to do when stuck on a small fishing island in Alaska, so we would go to the only bar and get drunk for the rest of the day/night.

The bar was called Kito’s Kave and it was a true fishermen/Alaska dive bar.  It was tough, no frills, and full of drunks.  Its clientele was pretty much all guys all the time (women are few and far between in these fishing towns).  It was also the first real bar outside of Boulder that I cut my teeth in.  It had a big square bar up top and a dance floor and stage at the bottom.  They had live music a few nights a week and it was the same act- a guy on a keyboard and a girl in black leather pants singing the same lousy songs over and over.  They weren’t very good and the act got old fast, but we didn’t mind or even pay it any attention.  We would just sit at the bar drinking.     

Kito’s was a rough place.  When fisherman and cannery workers have time off between seasons, especially after working such intense hours, all they do is drink and many of them are also on drugs.  That usually can be a fun combination in a normal city, but in Alaska, it was a potent and dangerous mix.  As you could expect, in such an environment, fights were just a part of everyday life.  Since Kito’s was the only place in town to tie one on, we would usually go there after lunch and stay until we couldn’t see straight.  We would then stumble home to sleep it off.  I should point out that the cannery’s staff was basically comprised of two groups of people- rednecks and Mexicans.  The rednecks usually got the best jobs and the Mexicans did everything else.  Everyone worked their ass off though and if you couldn’t pull your weight, you didn’t survive.  That’s a universal truth up North and it covers all work- from the boats to the cannery warehouse to working on the “slime line” and everything in between.

Eighteen hour days seven days a week for months on end is a real test of oneself and it was here that I learned where I stood in terms of mental and physical constitution relative to my fellow man.  The whole experience was a real awakening of my spirit and self-confidence and I soon realized that I had more in me than many of the other schlubs that came through.  I cannot remember how many people would fly up to Petersburg, come into the cannery, work less than half of one shift, quit and fly back down to the lower forty-eight the next day, but it happened a lot. 

Since I have Spanish and Mediterranean roots, but was born and raised in Chicago, I was in a unique position to bridge both worlds at the cannery.  The rednecks largely accepted me as an American and Mexicans accepted me as a Latino.  This boded well for me because I worked in the cannery warehouse with the rednecks, but was able to party and get drugs at a good price from the Mexicans during the downtime.  It was a good balance. 

The Mexicans didn’t go to Kito’s Kave and they usually just sat around the flophouse getting ripped between seasons.  Kito’s was mostly rednecks from the cannery, but some also worked on the boats.  We saw a lot of weird shit and talked about a lot of different things sitting at the bar all day drinking.  Most of the people there were on speed or coke and rounds of shots were always being bought by someone.  As time would pass, the drunk would start overcoming the drug buzz and fights would often break out over nothing.  My darker skin and long black hair was an invitation that many of the drunken hillbillies couldn’t pass up and just about every day someone would eventually start picking a fight with me and calling me all kinds of racist shit.

The first time it happened, I didn’t know how to react and the guy got some good shots in before I even realized what was happening.  The good news was that my job at the cannery was intensely physical, so I was the strongest and in the best shape of my life and I could take a few hits.  Also, the fights wouldn’t last long, usually just a few minutes before the other bar patrons would jump in and break them up.  The bar staff largely just ignored them.  What was funny is that after these little skirmishes, we would usually just sit back down and continue drinking.  It was rare to get kicked out or cut off from the bar for fighting at Kito’s, but sometimes the loser of the fight would be carried out bleeding.    

At first I tried to talk my way out of these conflicts, but that only ended up with me getting sucker punched by the asshole (or one of his friends) and then I would be fighting anyway.  I quickly learned that the only way to deal with these cowboys was go after them before they could come after me.  In Alaska, actions, not words are what get you respect, so I decided after my first few fights that I would just attack the next bastard that came up looking for trouble.  

I didn’t have to wait very long.  A couple hours later, some big, blond redneck with a beard came up behind my chair and said something along the lines of, “Hey spic!  What’s a piece of shit like you doing in here-” and then he pushed me from behind. 

I jumped up, slammed my beer down (with it spilling everywhere), turned and pushed the fucker back hard against the wall in one fast motion and then jumped on him before he even knew what was happening, “ YOU MOTHER FUCKER- YOU WANT TO GO- LET’S FUCKIN’ GO- I’M GOING FUCKIN KILL YOU-”  I was yelling, spiting and foaming at the mouth.

I was about to start clocking him, but the guy immediately recoiled, “Whoa, whoa, take it easy.  I’m so fucking drunk, I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean anything.  Let me buy you a drink.”

I huffed and puffed a bit telling him “Don’t get me fuckin’ started, you don’t want to fuck with me- I’ll fucking kill you” and then allowed him to buy a couple shots of whiskey and a new beer for me.  We took the shots together and the guy faded back into the bar’s scenery.  

The next time another idiot came up to me, I did the same thing again and it also defused the situation before any punches were thrown.  That’s when I realized that all I needed to be left alone was a little bravado, bluster and swagger.  You show strength, you get respect, you show weakness, you get preyed on.  It got even better, as after a few more of these “freak outs”, everyone there started believing that I wasn’t someone to fuck with and they stopped confronting me altogether.  Being a loud, out of control asshole turned out to be the best deterrent and Kito’s was back to being a comfortable place to tack on a serious buzz amongst my fishing colleagues.  I keep that lesson with me even today: a good offense is always the best defense.     

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