Contact Us

Advertising

Comics

Crossword

The Arizona Daily Wildcat Online

Catcalls

Policebeat

Search

Archives

News Sports Opinions Arts Classifieds

Friday January 26, 2001

Basketball site
Pearl Jam

 

Police Beat
Catcalls

 

Alum site

AZ Student Media

KAMP Radio & TV

 


Local bars on the offensive against fake IDs

Headline Photo

Improving technology, easier access make detecting false IDs more difficult

In boxes and bags tucked away in a local bar, a graveyard grows each night.

A collection of fake IDs, stored at Dirtbag's, encompasses almost two decades of students trying to add just a few years to their age.

Gary Welch, owner of Dirtbag's, 1800 E. Speedway Blvd., and caretaker of this stack of thousands of IDs taken away from underaged people since 1982, said he expects the collection will do most of its growing within the next few weeks.

As University of Arizona students come back to school for a new semester, many of them bring along identification cards, which they are anxious to test at local bars. Unfortunately for them, Dirtbag's has been claiming up to five a night, said Adam Thrall, head bouncer of the bar.

Thrall said his staff undergoes a training program to learn how to detect these IDs, which "are usually pretty obvious."

[Read More]