Rob K., Jarl, and I went to the North East Brewing Company in Allston one cold night.  The NEBC, for those who have never been there, looks something like someone's ski chalet in that its all wood inside, has sprigs of evergreens here and there, has a fireplace with couches and backgammon, and the people there are casual and pleasant.

We found a place close to the bar where we were could talk over some beer.

Now being a popular bar, people are always coming in to the bar area and trying to squeeze a little more room out of it.  A group of half a dozen people came in and stood next to us (Jarl was the closest person in our group to them).  That particular group was fairly well-dressed and clearly
out for a special occassion.

One of the guys in the group pushed a little closer to Jarl and then tried to push Jarl towards us (i.e. stealing our space).  Jarl wouldn't budge. When the guy said "can you give us some room?" Jarl simply responded "no." The guy then turned to face the back of Jarl's head and told him directly to
"push over."  The guy was being a dick.

Jarl looked back and with a look of disgust put his open hand up in this guy's face as if to say "talk to the hand", except he kept it there while this guy talked.  His hand was close enough to this guy's face so as to push his glasses up off the bridge of his nose!

Now enraged (and highly embarassed in front of his friends, which apparently he was leading that night) the guy started yelling about how he was the "manager of the bar" and "was there some sort of problem?"  Jarl's hand was still in his face.  Jarl said "no" and felt that he wasn't going to be pushed into an uncomfortable position at the bar because someone's telling him to.  Jarl said later that he felt the guy wasn't a "good guy" right off from the start and he wasn't going to yield to him in any way, particularly because of this fact.

At this point the guy motions for the bouncers to come over.  Rob and I are looking at each other figuring we were going to get booted in a second, so we were slowly reaching for our coats.  Rob said later that he wasn't 100% sure what was going on even.  A minute before we had been talking to ourselves and minding our own business.

Two bouncers come over and ask "what the problem is" and so we were saying we didn't know what the problem was: that we had been minding our own business and this guy walks in and is immediately pushing us around.  The guy, now the center of attention amongst his friends, huffs some words and takes his group off to be seated in the restaurant part of the bar.

So with the guy and his group gone at this point we were trying to figure out exactly what the guy did and said to Jarl, and we were laughing about how Jarl put his hand up in this guy's face.  Jarl said that he'd rather be kicked out by dicks, then bow down to them and stay.

Then the woman behind the bar asked us what happened and we told her that we weren't sure, just that this guy came in and was telling us what to do.  She told us that "ya, we've had problems with him before."  She explained that he was a "silent partner" for the bar (meaning someone who invests in the bar, but who doesn't deal in the day-to-day management of it).

She walked over to another guy and talked with him.  He came over and he announced himself as the [real] manager of the bar, and explained that the guy had caused similar problems before, and wasn't going to be a silent partner much longer.  He then apologized on behalf of the bar, and gave us a free pitcher of beer for the trouble.

What a crazy night...

Something interesting always happened with Jarl around.