Would You Card this Woman?
A few weeks ago, Rose — who is 91 — went with her daughter Elizabeth, 52, to enjoy a Christmas Eve cocktail at Von’s Grand City Cafe, a martini bar on Pine Street in downtown Seattle’s shopping district.
Rose didn’t bring along her purse. She’s been forgetful of late, leaving things behind. Her daughter was buying anyway, so why bother?
Big mistake. The waitress carded Rose. When Rose couldn’t produce proof of her age, she was told she couldn’t order a drink and would have to leave the bar.
“I was kind of in shock,” Rose says. “I didn’t know I looked so young!”
…
“In the good old days,” Rose says, “I don’t remember things being so fussy.”
This story reminds me of an incident at a Belltown bar a few weeks ago when a bouncer would not let a fifty-year-old friend of ours into the bar because he did not have his ID. Granted, it’s kind of dumb to go out without your ID, but it’s also pretty ridiculous to deny someone entry into a bar that is obviously at least twice the legal drinking age.
The bouncer did let our friend in the bar after about twenty minutes. We asked him why, and he told us that he determined our friend wasn’t a cop. He said the undercover cops that try and get in without ID so they can bust bouncers don’t stand around waiting for their friends, they move on to the next bar.
This is what we Seattleites get thanks to a recent police crackdown on underage drinking. I don’t have any problem with police issuing citations to bars that aren’t careful about checking ID’s and end up serving minors. It’s the law, and drinking establishments should comply with it.
I do have a problem with the police bothering bars for serving people that are, without a doubt, well over the legal drinking age. For one, I’m not even sure that drinking without an ID is against the law; and two, sending undercover cops out to see if bars will serve people who are obviously over age 21 that don’t happen to be carrying ID smells like entrapment to me.
The bars don’t want any citations that will put them at risk of losing their licenses, so they end up doing stupid things like not serving a ninety-one-year-old lady a martini and then, as if that’s not bad enough, they make her leave the premises.
I thought it was bad enough around here that we can’t walk around Bumbershoot festival grounds with a beer in our hands, and that we can’t open a beer or a bottle of wine on a public beach. But now, old people get denied a drink and kicked out of bars.
Hey Seattle! Pull that stick out of your ass and loosen up a little.
