Different people have different ways of releasing pent-up tension. Some spend their time with model train sets, others indulge in television or sky-diving. Alcohol and drugs are common remedies that facilitate relaxation. For many people, these activities are the things that separate us from our work and make us feel human again - they are ways to forget the stress and problems of our offices or families, relief from our financial worries.
Some forms of release are more extreme...
more »Different people have different ways of releasing pent-up tension. Some spend their time with model train sets, others indulge in television or sky-diving. Alcohol and drugs are common remedies that facilitate relaxation. For many people, these activities are the things that separate us from our work and make us feel human again - they are ways to forget the stress and problems of our offices or families, relief from our financial worries.
Some forms of release are more extreme than others. For some of Silicon Valley's many high-powered software engineers and production control managers, release comes in a most obscure form. When they're not glued to their screens at Apple, Google, Yahoo or any of the many dotcom ventures around the Bay Area, they congregate at each other's garages, out of sight of prying corporate eyes, to give each other a good thrashing.
These senseless and often painful violence may seem like a rather inappropriate and immature way for fully grown men with good jobs to be letting off some steam. For participants however, the GFC is not so much about aggression and inflicting pain as they are about bonding. Their fights are an expression of rage against the stuffiness and atrophy of middle class America, a chance to rediscover their animal roots.
Weapons used range from computer keyboards and dustbusters to rolled up women's magazines and dull knives. There are no weight classes and no martial-arts style white gowns. There definitely is no respectful bowing before or after the fight and no referee to adjudicate. No whistles, no rulebook, no instructors or promoters. All they need is a garage, a cement floor and a clock.
As Gints K., the founder of Gentleman's Fight Club, puts it: "In Silicon Valley, we have the highest concentration of aggressive people in the United States. Life has been reduced to working in a cubical [and] I'm kinda looking for something a little more primitive, something that appeals to the essential nature of a man."
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