On June 9, 1949, a brawl occurred in the Beirut neighborhood of Gemayzeh between two popular organizations: the Kata’ib and Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). While the night began with a Kata’ib event at Café Gemayzeh, it ended with the destruction of the SSNP’s newspaper office. How this conflict arose is unknown, but what followed is clear: a government-led crackdown on the SSNP, a call for revolution by its leader Antoun Saadeh, and his eventual execution in Damascus. Some scholars argue that the brawl was a Kata’ib-government conspiracy. Others claim it was a spontaneous clash. In either narrative, scholars use Gemayzeh and its aftermath to characterize Lebanon’s early state-building efforts. Like other incidents, the state attempted to assert control with help from its external allies. While this scholarly approach situates Lebanon in its global context, it fails to locate this incident within the history of Beirut’s popular organizations. This paper argues that the Gemayzeh incident was representative of a broader conflict among popular organizations over physical space—neighborhoods and street corners—and imaginary space—zones of identity solidification—across the Mandate and early Independence periods. This paper employs unused primary sources, including announcements, pictures and event reports of popular organizations, and government decrees criminalizing these groups. It does such to explore organizational practices throughout the 1930s-1950s, and how they represented space-claiming attempts. Whether occupying a field for strength training or promoting a lecture, these organizations were creating places, real and imagined, for their existence. Furthermore, as Beirut’s urban space was saturated with various socio-political groupings, popular organizations created distinction through ideologies and symbols to stay relevant among the popular classes. Slogans and flags were on streets and storefronts, linking group identity to space. And as state officials policed these spaces, groups crafted alliances and attacked rivals to survive Beirut’s socio-political field. Collectively, these sources and approach highlight the intersection of state-building efforts and struggles between popular organizations, which was exhibited during the Gemayzeh incident. While claims of conspiracy or spontaneity are too narrow, the Kata’ib took the opportunity to dominate this space. Theoretically, an investigation of space-claiming practices leading to the Gemayzeh incident captures the utility of Bourdieu’s “distinction” and Lefebvre’s “social space” in analyzing contentious public events. Finally, by painting the incident as part of a battle over people and space in contention with the state incorporates Lebanon into the study of mass politics in the post-WWII Middle East.