I don't know how many times bouncers have asked me for I.D. when I obviously look my age which is 28 years past the legal drinking age. Usually I whip it out and go on in, but occasionally their lack of knowledge concerning the law and my awareness of the truth gets to me and I challenge them.
  "Don't I look 21?" I ask them, knowing they are going to reveal their ineptness.
   "Doesn't matter, you have to have your i.d. on you to go into the bar," they always say.
   They don't want to hear the truth and never believe me when I ask if they heard that from the liquer board or was something their boss told them and they never really thought beyond that.
    Think about it, do we live in a Grestapo state that requires us to have our I.D. on us at all times? Do you have to have I.D. on you when you go into a grocery store or the dentist office. Does a 90 year old man have to prove with his I.D. that he is over 21 to drink in a bar. It is not the law to carry I.D. in a bar, it is the law that you be over 21.
   Once in a packed downtown bar a cop asked me for my I.D. which really torked me off since I figured he should know the law
and not be hassling me with the urban myth that I was required to have my I.D. on me in a bar. So I challenged him and said I did not have to have it and he simply said " Your right" and left me alone. I kept hearing it so much that I doubted myself and asked our liquer control officer when we owned the Rock Inn and he told me the same thing.
   The reason bars push it on patrons that it is the law is because they don't trust their employees to make intelligent judgment calls on their own and so they just tell them everyone has to have it to come in. For some reason, the owners and hence their employees hand it down as the law which is false. It is one thing for a
young person who looks maybe 21 not to have his I.D. and a completely different thing for a 49 year old not to have their I.D.
   But some times playing it safe costs the owner...
   An old customer of ours took his family into a bar for a birthday party. There was nearly 30  of them  and  I guess after a while the server got annoyed with one of them and even though he served this gal two drinks already he decided to pull the old "Let me see your I.D. routine" on her and it turns out this 30-something gal did not have it. So they argue a bit and the server calls over the owner who also asks for I.D. The owner had not been in the business long and he probably believed the myth about I.D.'s and he told the gal she would have to leave since she had no I.D. Well she left and so did the entire party, vowing they would never return.
   What is it they say? One unhappy customer will tell 10. By not knowing the law this newbie owner just gave himself a bad name to 300 people! The truth is you don't have to have I.D. to drink, you just have to look a good bit beyond 21. Patrons and employees may not have to know that, but owners sure should.