The doorman looks down at the IDs, then up at the girl, and now he gets nervous. He knows it’s not her. He takes a deep breath, puts the IDs in his right hand, and pushes them back toward the girl.
“I’m sorry,’’ he says, and he means it, too.
School is back in session in this college town, and the 2011-2012 edition of fake ID season has begun again at those bars that cater to undergrads. It is a cat-and-mouse game that has been going on for decades, and while technology has changed the playing field - bars have better detection methods, and forgers have better tools, too - the ultimate decision still rests with the doorman, and his gut. He can, both sides agree, still be fooled with a good fake, or a good smile.
At Mary Ann’s, the doorman is always a BC student, and his job is to card BC students, because Mary Ann’s is the most BC bar on the planet, and part of the social pecking order involves getting into “M.A.’s’’ early and often. The Brighton dive has been a fixture of campus life since the Nixon administration, back when an 18-year-old could drink and smoke in a bar. As that drinking age rose to 20 at the end of the ’70s before hitting its current number in 1985, the social dynamic at college bars - and the doorman’s job - changed dramatically.
Legally drinking at a college bar became the province of juniors and seniors. Getting around the law became the quest of everyone else.
Mary Ann’s has long been vigilant at the door. They have a scanner to read the strips and barcodes on IDs - which they rarely use - and make everyone sign their name, driver’s license number, and date of birth in ledgers right at the doorman’s stand. It’s a good way to spot nerves. “And it’s also a good sobriety test,’’ Chris Eld, the manager, said as he watched a girl put down her BlackBerry to pick up a pen.
