Fake IDs

[Mr. Sunshine]

Worked the door at a bar on occasion years back. Whenever the ID seemed sketchy, and especially when I knew the person was using someone else's, I'd ask for their birth date. The kids never bothered to check the pertinent info on someone else's ID and without fail they'd end up stumbling over some excuse/begging me to let them in. Good times.

In my younger days bouncers at the many of the clubs here were trained to ask their astrological sign. Most people knew their birthdays.

My fraternity brother had a BAD fake ID that was confiscated at a bar-restaurant when we went out to dinner. The fake made him look Mexican. We teased him that he was using a Fernando Valenzuela baseball card as an ID.

Better than Manny Mota. Only baseball card I was scared of as a kid.

 

[micropolitan guy]

The drinking age was 18 in my day and NY didn't have photos on drivers licenses. Not that very many places even required ID.

Exactly, especially at some of the smaller bars out in the country. You needed a Sheriff's Card for the more popular bars because they didn't want to get popped for underage drinkers. Sometimes you could borrow a friend's DL, but that was always a little risky. I got my Sheriff's Card the day I turned 18.

Drank in a bar in Hamilton, NY, at 16 while visiting a friend at Colgate. The Old Stone Jug. Drank at Potsdam and at Oswego at 17 while visiting friends.

One you got in, if you kept a low profile and weren't an asshole, you generally were golden.

 

[SpeedTchr]

Worked the door at a bar on occasion years back. Whenever the ID seemed sketchy, and especially when I knew the person was using someone else's, I'd ask for their birth date. The kids never bothered to check the pertinent info on someone else's ID and without fail they'd end up stumbling over some excuse/begging me to let them in. Good times.

In my younger days bouncers at the many of the clubs here were trained to ask their astrological sign. Most people knew their birthdays.

My fraternity brother had a BAD fake ID that was confiscated at a bar-restaurant when we went out to dinner. The fake made him look Mexican. We teased him that he was using a Fernando Valenzuela baseball card as an ID.

Better than Manny Mota. Only baseball card I was scared of as a kid.

BOOGITY BOOGITY!

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Never needed one.

My usual bar offered a free drink on your 21st birthday. The owner threw me out when I tried to collect by saying "You've been coming here for two years now!" Took him a month to let me back in.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

There was something you could get from a store in downtown Toronto called a "BC Identicard." Back in the pre-internet days, you could claim -- in Toronto -- that this made you legal to drink in British Columbia. Who would know? It did work in some places, too.

But, when I went to visit my friends in college (I was 18, drinking age 19), bouncers were wise to it. They'd call the cops. So that was the end of that.

 

[JackReacher]

For about the last 18 months of my pre-21 life, I used an old ID of a buddy who had already turned 21. Our mug shots looked similar enough that it worked. But all a bouncer had to do was notice that I wasn't 6-3. None did. When we went to the bars together, he'd usually go in first, and I'd follow a few minutes later. One time, we went to a club in DC and they brought our entire group in for ID checks at the same time. The dude looked at our IDs at the same damn time and didn't notice the same name. That was by far the closest I ever came to getting caught. Usually, it was a breeze.

 

[Huggy]

There was something you could get from a store in downtown Toronto called a "BC Identicard." Back in the pre-internet days, you could claim -- in Toronto -- that this made you legal to drink in British Columbia. Who would know? It did work in some places, too.

But, when I went to visit my friends in college (I was 18, drinking age 19), bouncers were wise to it. They'd call the cops. So that was the end of that.

Was that Flashjack's on Yonge?

 

[YankeeFan]

Before I left for college, I got my picture on my older brother's drivers license, so it was bullet proof -- even used it for a traffic ticket. (He got off when he went to court, and the cop could not identify him as the driver of the car.)

That's pretty hard to believe.

Oh, it's all true.

Was heading back to the burbs from the Bronx, and didn't feel like I was going any faster than anyone else on the highway, and was pissed that I got pulled over.

I gave the cop some lip as a result, which he didn't appreciate. He threatened to give me a breathalyzer, which I told him I was happy to take (though he never made me take it).

Probably because I had admitted to having one beer hours earlier, I gave him my brother's license, which had my picture on it.

He game me a speeding ticket, and that was that.

My brother, who is one of the nicest people on the planet, wasn't even that pissed at me, and never told my folks -- at least not until decades later.

So, he went to court. The cop told the whole story, and remembered everything, since I had been a bit of a ****.

My brother got to cross examine him, and asked if he could identify him as the driver, which he couldn't.

He did have to admit the car was owned by my father, but the judge dismissed the charges.

My brother said the cop was really pissed.

 

[Elliotte Friedman]

There was something you could get from a store in downtown Toronto called a "BC Identicard." Back in the pre-internet days, you could claim -- in Toronto -- that this made you legal to drink in British Columbia. Who would know? It did work in some places, too.

But, when I went to visit my friends in college (I was 18, drinking age 19), bouncers were wise to it. They'd call the cops. So that was the end of that.

Was that Flashjack's on Yonge?

Yes

 

[YankeeFan]

One time in high school, before I got my picture on my brother's license, my buddy and I wanted to got to a bar that had become popular, and where a couple girls we knew were going to be that night.

The bouncer and bartender were guys we knew who were only a few years older than us.

My buddy had gone to grade school at a place named St. Michael's, and had a couple of stickers from the school. For some reason, he also had a laminating machine. So he decided to make up a couple of college IDs using St. Michael's College in Vermont as the school we attended.

Problem was, we didn't have pictures.

But, because of his older brother, we did have a high school yearbook that included the pictures of both the bouncer and the bartender.

So, we put their pictures on our IDs.

We showed up at the bar, and presented our IDs to the bouncer, who thought it was so ****ing funny, he let us in.

 

[Huggy]

There was something you could get from a store in downtown Toronto called a "BC Identicard." Back in the pre-internet days, you could claim -- in Toronto -- that this made you legal to drink in British Columbia. Who would know? It did work in some places, too.

But, when I went to visit my friends in college (I was 18, drinking age 19), bouncers were wise to it. They'd call the cops. So that was the end of that.

Was that Flashjack's on Yonge?

Yes

Always a mandatory stop on trips downtown for this kid from Brampton.

 

[YankeeFan]

This was the place in Times Square where we got our IDs as high school freshmen:

You can see they weren't shy about advertising their ID business.

 

[Songbird]

This was the place in Times Square where we got our IDs as high school freshmen:

You can see they weren't shy about advertising their ID business.

Where poor Bernard almost choked himself out.

http://youtu.be/oBnWE-llJgg?t=17m

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

I got one when I was 17 in San Francisco. I paid $10 for it. It looked remarkably similar to a Nebraska license and worked like a charm for three years. It worked about 99 percent of the time. I was smart about using it carefully for a couple years. When I was 20, I got overconfident and was using it all the time, at places where they were strict. I got it confiscated at a club about six months before I turned 21. I went back to the same club the next day and paid a bartender $20 to get it back for me, not so I could use it, but so they didn't turn them over to the cops. I realize now that the chances that they could find me (or would care enough to) are about zero percent, but there would have been no convincing me of that 20 years ago.

 

[MisterCreosote]

At one point in the 1990s, New Jersey driver's licenses were so easy to fake that a random 20-something in Philadelphia made millions selling fake ones to college kids along pretty much the entire East Coast.

Some Rutgers kids were the ones to get caught, and the whole thing unraveled from there.

 

[RecoveringJournalist]

I'm guessing getting a good fake today is about a thousand times harder/riskier/more expensive than it was when I was younger.

The way it was explained to me back in 1991 was, pick a state that you would likely never be in and one that bouncers/liquor store cashiers don't see on a regular basis.

 

[The Big Ragu]

At one point in the 1990s, New Jersey driver's licenses were so easy to fake that a random 20-something in Philadelphia made millions selling fake ones to college kids along pretty much the entire East Coast.

Some Rutgers kids were the ones to get caught, and the whole thing unraveled from there.

I believe that. My friend who made them in college (late 80s) wasn't dealing with the licenses they have today. They were laminated, had text on a white background and just one state seal looking thing over the text. He was able to make his licenses with a poloroid camera, an occasional run off an offset press and a laminating machine.

 

[Cyrus]

I had a fake ID for about a year when I was 19 in 2001. Got it at Bob's Photo ID in downtown Detroit on my way to Windsor one night for a round of boozing (Pre 9/11 days). It was the best. Lost it about a year later in my hometown, wife of the man who owned the store kept it. I politely reminder her (yes, really) that I spent about $100 weekend there for almost a year buying for friends. It was a great year.

I agree with whoever said it was completely different "back in the day." IDs are way too secure now to get away with ****ty fakes.

 

[Dick Whitman]

My friend worked at the license bureau and would make duplicates of guys that looked like us as they came in.

Then we'd go buy beer in black neighborhoods, assuming (correctly) that the clerks would have a more difficult time distinguishing us from the license photo.

 

[SpeedTchr]

My friend worked at the license bureau and would make duplicates of guys that looked like us as they came in.

Then we'd go buy beer in black neighborhoods, assuming (correctly) that the clerks would have a more difficult time distinguishing us from the license photo.

Make sure you teach your kids that one...