Furry beach-off: The truth about a fight with a megaphone at a California meet

by Patch O'Furr

Blood was drawn by violence between furries in California’s Huntington Beach, in a story that’s raising hype and misinformation. The hot-button term “nazi” is part of it. So is years of peaceful history for hundreds of members, even when a fight between a few of them is like red meat for media vultures who don’t care about the background. Here’s a story with witness evidence for readers who care.

The setting was the 11th annual Sunset Beach Bonfire meet on August 12, 2023. This event in Southern California is so popular, the attendance rivals entire furry conventions. Members of their nearly 1000-strong chat group go for grilling and fursuiting with so many friends, they need a megaphone for crowd control, like to organize group photos. This is a party for people who are full of love and fun who have been very successful at growing it.

In March, the official update channel announced they had reserved space: “It’s a private location with a volleyball playground.” Remember it was private access. Tents and a fursuit lounge were provided to keep cool in the sun. Nobody expected the chill vibes to heat up with a megaphone being used for a weapon, a scuffle on the ground, and an arrest with charges still to get decided in court.

A short video clip of the fight went viral, with context twisted by the hype. It started with accounts for fight videos, then went to sensational tabloid and right-wing “news” sources with trashy reputations:

  • Man Attacked By Furry At Huntington Beach Meetup, Wild Video Shows – TMZ
  • Furry Fight: Chaos Erupts At California Beach ‘Furmeet’ As Pirate Furry Drills ‘Chud’ With Megaphone – Outkick
  • Bizarre moment man is attacked by FURRY after he’s caught filming fetish group in Huntington Beach – Daily Mail
  • Pirate furry tackled by cops for attacking man with megaphone at ‘Furmeet’ – Dexerto
  • Furious furries fight back after busting man filming them on beach – NY Post 
  • Man filming fetish group attacked by furries on beach – Toronto Sun
  • Furry Attacks Man at Huntington Beach – Total Frat Move
  • VIDEO: Furries Attack Man At Beach – Barstool Sports

Those are archive links to deny traffic for stories of conjecture and regurgitated, third-hand info. They don’t care about accuracy because they have agendas. It’s implied that there was an “attack” on a random man for simply recording the group (but in fact, there were years of provocation by inside members causing a problem). Some of them wedge in malicious bias by mocking pronouns, using “fetish” innuendo, and for no sane reason, comparing furries to “street thugs” who do retail looting. There have even been bewares in furry groups about right-wing news trying to get inside. To help debunk the fake news, Dogpatch Press can provide direct info with cooperation from people involved.

Years of provocation – and why the Nazi term comes up

Apart from tabloid stories to blame the community, members tended to consider this to be community defense like a history of opposing neo-nazi infiltration in subcultures, from punks to furries. Were Nazi furries involved?

Quick points about the beach event:

  • The location was private and reserved, not public, and access could be denied.
  • Two people were banned from attending: Skaard and his boyfriend Renn (person hit with a megaphone).
  • Skaard is known for being in the neo-nazi Furry Raiders and doing the type of harassment the group is known for.
  • Dogpatch Press staff have been harassed by Skaard for reporting about neo-nazis, earning him a permanent block.
  • Skaard’s behavior went on for over six years and caused prior bans from furry groups and events, and they applied to enablers too.
  • Skaard and his partner knew they were banned from the beach meet, and picked the fight by going anyways.

Proof of years of provocation:

A witness statement and the aftermath

A source from the Sunset Beach Bonfire event explained the fight (identity withheld for security.)

“There were two people involved, Skaard (Nazi) and Renn (boyfriend to Nazi). Renn was the one who got bonked.

They were told previously that the two of them weren’t allowed to attend this meet; they ignored warnings on purpose. They were also escorted off premises at a similar meetup a week prior by law enforcement during the FurBQ. They have been banned from numerous southern Californian furry events because of death threats and harassment campaigns to the members, most of which were done verbally with no recordings, along with affiliation with the Furry Raiders, a known Neo Nazi Furry group.

We had a reserved area on the beach, and the staff of the event organizers were allowed limited control of who was or wasn’t allowed there. During the beginning of the confrontation, these people were told that they were allowed to go anywhere else on the beach other than our area which we had a reserved permit for. We also didn’t want them interacting with our suit lounge, which was part of the permit.

This was incident #3, and the other 2 incidents had been handled without further trouble. Law enforcement told us earlier in the day when the first incident occurred that they either wouldn’t help us, or couldn’t be able to help us.

Renn, who was recording the entire event the moment he walked onto the beach, after being talked to for over 5 minutes that they were not welcome, that they needed to leave, and that the person who owns the permit didn’t want them there, he basically said “Too bad, I’m not leaving.”

It’s regrettable that it came to violence, but there shouldn’t be regret about who it happened to. There was an attempt to just be loud at them using the megaphone to annoy them into leaving first. After Renn was hit, the alleged hitter was then tackled to the ground and pinned by a non-furry bystander. He didn’t resist being detained.”

The alleged hitter was arrested and booked at the county jail, then released after arraignment. The charge was Felony Assault with a Deadly Weapon, but it was reduced to a misdemeanor. The court ordered no contact by the accused with Skaard or Renn. A next court date is in September for the process of going to trial.

Editor’s opinion

This isn’t a story of furries confronting nazis using nazi symbols and trying to do hate crime at the event. It was inside conflict with people who refused to take “no” after bans. They happened to be a past nazi-sympathizer and enabler who wanted control to undermine healthy gatekeeping. It was up to the community to handle their intrusion after police wouldn’t. That’s about behavior more than politics, but can still count as community defense. If people want to cheer for punching nazis, it’s smart to consider the cost and try to avoid giving them what they want.

UPDATE:

UPDATE 2:

An attempted debunking was made to show an alternative truth to the experiences of a community who put up with 6 years of bad actors pushing in. It’s a longwinded journey that starts with a pre-made conclusion – forget how one called himself a “nazifur”, these aren’t “nazis”, so calling them nazis must be the real problem. This sets up the end goal of whataboutism at fed-up people.

Along the way it elevates the bad actors by swerving through excuses, speculation, and dubious assertions. It couldn’t have kept a straight story anyways, because most of the community refused to talk for it. (“The SoCal furries have included me in their media blackout order, so I’ve only been able to pick up that side of things by secondhand reports”, the author wrote to me.) It doesn’t disclose that reason for partial results… and they were right to be suspicious, when the whole thing was made to confuse cause and effect in the 6 year pattern with the common denominators.

6 reasons to skip it

1) Unreliable source. The author was previously most known by furries for doing a hoax that inflamed hate against furries from right-wing smear accounts. It was excused with justifications that you can entertain if you want to indulge everything else wrong here. The site host is also known for apologism about transphobia and overindulging obvious bad actors.

2) Bad faith. When bad actors push for 6 years, is it a surprise if someone pushes back? Or is the surprise that it took that long? Handwringing about reactions sets all that aside. Then it goes back to say the original offense was just “asking for rides.” That’s an obvious bad-faith reduction of disrespect, meltdowns, and threats that went along with it. The whole thing copes and swerves around such inconveniences, making a checkerboard of omissions to defend the two common denominators. They are absolved for problem after problem that got them dismissed from group after group over 6 years. Their feud with Golden State Fur Con is not even mentioned, where they were dropped from staff for bad behavior, then attacked the con with bad faith claims that it was “stolen” from them! (The firing had nothing to do with calling them “nazis.”) This distorted defense goes up to dismissing a BBQ incident that got police/rangers involved, because if police wouldn’t help, it must not matter. If someone threatens you, how many chances do you give them, anyways? Zero is all you owe, period. You don’t owe justifying your “No”. But the piece presumptuously declares, “there is no justification for treating someone as irredeemable based on their beliefs alone” — uh, bullshit. That’s not for us to decide for fed-up people, especially while minimizing threats.

3) Poor excuses. It all stands on one very unbelievable excuse. It’s fine to point out a confusing look of “not-nazis” acting leftish, but not while excusing a “not-nazi” for displaying swastikas… because… he was only 20. That’s not a child. Then we’re supposed to trust that the “not-nazi” who ranted against SJW’s for making him remove a swastika was just being an ironic edgelord but somehow also an innocent “socialist” member of furry nazis to “spy” on them. A claim with zero evidence of spying. Real spies don’t use main accounts, and guess what? There were real spies, they were organized, they knew each other, and this person wasn’t one. I know because I was there. We’re supposed to memory-hole how a not-nazi got pissed off about removing swastikas, because of posting leftish memes somewhere else. I would love to hear the math behind this: does a Bernie Sanders meme neutralize 2 swastikas and an n-bomb? Keep in mind that virtue-signalling isn’t actually incongruent as claimed, and being a 9/11 conspiracy truther helps to show how little you can trust these people for anything at all.

What a liar looks like

4) Platforming liars. To bolster the spy excuse it quotes Foxler, a person known for running the organized-crime-like Furry Raiders, claiming to be into bestiality, and child sex offending. Gosh if you ask a creep like that for the truth what do you think will happen? In another section it presents lying about me from someone going by “HeWhoRoarks” (about a story I didn’t write.) The results of this were…

5) Bad assertions. The piece claims complete truth based on half-assed, impossible to confirm information. Searching a Furry Raiders Telegram group for messages from the “spy” didn’t find any, so they say, (let’s be charitable about how many accounts they go through there.) But Furry Raiders were also on Discord during his membership. A spy would be on Discord and so would a gamer, when the worst activity was there. It was so bad that Discord repeatedly banned and deleted their groups along with a wider sweep. This wasn’t even considered for the narrative, and the excuse about learning this later was special pleading about not getting Discord records after not asking for them. While hypocritically failing to show evidence of “spying”. Which takes this back to #3.

6) Bad priorities. The big reason to skip it is how the whole thing treats nazi threats as overblown and just about personal spats. When cons have been canceled because of them, and they have terrorist organizers and mass shooters, don’t waste your time looking for the list of leftists who do any of that. But the priority is to excuse a 6 year pattern from bad actors who picked a fight, in order to do whataboutism at a threatened community. Based on the effort already expended you won’t see anything better from that source than lip service about the big picture. They just don’t care about all this evidence, because when you break down all the feigned bad-faith “reasonable” “centrism” as I’ve just done, what you’re left with is the ugly dishonesty at their hearts. It wasn’t journalism – it was counterprogramming made to manipulate people and get them complacent about bad actors, including the ones doing the apologism. If you ever see them come posing as reliable media again – beware!

Admitting being among “Aushwitz RP” and mass bans, but not being liable, trust me bro… Claiming naivety at age 20? K 👌

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