A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I went to Montrae Lounge on a Friday night. The bar was completely empty and silent. It was just us, one other customer, and one bartender physically in the room. When we arrived, there was a white car parked dangerously outside the parking lines, blocking the driving path. We walked inside of the bar and I went to the bathroom while my partner ordered our drinks. While I was in the bathroom, I heard my boyfriend politely mentioned the car to the bartender to see if it belonged to anyone, just to prevent it from getting hit. Mind you again, this bar is completely silent. There's no music or tv's playing. So I can hear this entire conversation from the bathroom.
Another female employee suddenly entered, I guess she was sitting out on the patio the whole time, immediately rude and defensive, and said the car was hers. When my boyfriend calmly tried to explain the parking issue, she became hostile, told him to "mind his business," began yelling, cussing, and calling him homophobic slurs multiple times in front of customers (multiple of her coworkers and her manager are part of the lgbt community by the way). She targeted him using his first name saying she knows exactly who he is, even though both of us have never seen her or spoken to her before, leaving us both confused as to how she even knows his name. Anyways, My boyfriend disengaged and walked out of the bar. As he was leaving, I walked out of the bathroom, the woman saw me, pointed at me while looking back at my boyfriend, and said "yea and get your fucking whore out of here too", despite me never having spoken to her before or have ever even seen her working there before. At that point, my boyfriend defended me and became understandably upset, responding to her verbally after she insulted me and continued yelling over us.
Once outside, as we were leaving, this woman ran out of the bar, chased my boyfriend, and hit him in the face, then attempted to kick him multiple times. He did not hit her back and repeatedly told her to stay away. He actually held me back from getting physical with her as well after I witnessed her hit him in the face. Another bartender had to physically restrain her and apologized to us multiple times, admitting her coworker was completely wrong. For about 2 minutes straight this woman was trying to break free from her coworker's arms to try and attack my boyfriend again before they were finally able to get her back inside and the coworker had to hold the door shut with her entire body so that the aggressor would not come back out.
We called the police to press charges. Before they arrived, the bartender moved the aggressor's car so officers wouldn't see how badly it was parked. Despite witnesses and cameras in the bar, police refused to review footage, refused to give us the aggressor's information, and dismissed the assault entirely, siding with her. My boyfriend was physically attacked when his intentions were to just help whoever was the owner of the car, yet no action was taken. If we felt like we did anything wrong that night, and things wouldn't work in our favor, we would have never called the cops in the first place. We called the cops, my boyfriend got assaulted, and in the end, we were the ones who got punished.
Afterward, we were told we are banned from Montrae. We have been going to that bar for years and have never had any issues in the slightest until this incident happened. We later contacted the manager and owners requesting camera footage, but they dismissed the situation and took no responsibility. The aggressor's name is Blanca, and we've since learned this is not the first time she has been aggressive with customers, yet she is still employed.
We don't care about being banned. We care that an employee physically assaulted a customer who was already leaving and outside of the building, and nothing was done. We were advised to bring awareness to this incident, which is why I'm sharing this now. read more