New York will have a new driver’s license that is black and white and full of tricks:
The new cards are so stiff that they sound like a compact disc when dropped. Personal data is also engraved, as is a “ghost image,” a small, second portrait of the driver that will float in a transparent window and will be visible from the front and the back. All of the elements are then fused together into what the department calls “a solid, monolithic structure that cannot be separated into layers and tampered with.”
This monolith guards against the awful prospect of a 19 year-old kid–who can die in Afghanistan or vote for President–walking into a bar and ordering a drink.
I remember visiting one of my brothers’ friends in a frat house in the mid-80s. On one of the large white walls, there was a six-foot high replica of a driver’s license, except for the picture. Each frat brother would stand so their head would appear in the appropriate place, while another brother snapped a Polaroid. After they ran that photo through the laminator at Kinko’s, they’d have a pretty decent fake ID. It’s sad to see skill like that cast into the dustbin of history, first by the advent of Photoshop, and now by unbreakable monolithic driver’s licenses. It’s almost like we’re not America anymore.
Zifnab
Firstly, I’m not entirely clear why the smoking age is 18 but the drinking age is 21.
Secondly, do they plan on ignoring out-of-town driver’s licenses in NY for the foreseeable future? Because if I were a 19-year-old looking for a drink in NY, I’d just show them my license from Jersey. Or Connecticut. Or Pennsylvania. Or Delaware. Or what-the-fuck-ever.
If the bartender wants to sell me a drink, I can hand him a xeroxed picture of my fat ass and he’ll take it as ID.
Forum Transmitted Disease
RFID equipped, and if not now they will be, just like passports.
Next step will be some form of national ID. I’m of two minds about that. On the one hand, Big Brother Surveillance State. On the other hand, Jesusoid freakout riots about the “mark of the beast”.
Nylund
We did something similar as kids. only we printed the template on a transparency. That way you could edit the name, DOB, and address information. With a wall, it sounds like everyone would have the same name, address, and DOB.
Raven
Was that at UGA? They busted a ring with that setup here too.
Schlemizel
I’m sure this was all done in the name of fatherland security. That it will make obtaining illegal booze much harder is just a accident. Of course a determined terrorist with the sort of money Saudi money can provide will have no great difficulty gaming the card.
In order to really secure the fatherland and restore us to our proper place we may have to move into the
Sudetenl. . .ah, er Iran and annexPola. . . eep, Venezuela.Yeah, I went there early!
Raven
One of the things that landed me in the Army at 127 was getting busted with fake ID’s. Back then you bought a sheet with a drivers license, discharge and draft card, social security ansd some other stuff. The fake draft card was a federal document so my shit was really weak. The judge said “one way or the other you ate outa here” and I was way too pretty for jail!
Villago Delenda Est
@Zifnab:
Frankly, if you’re old enough to go die for your country, you should be old enough to drink a fucking beer.
I sound like a broken record on this, but the Europeans have a far more mature and reasonable attitude about alcohol than Americans do. And nudity, and sex, and labor/management relations…
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Thrown in jail two weeks after coming home from the Nam at 19. When I turned 21 they lowered the age to 18!
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: They raise the drinking age in Wisconsin to 21 shortly after I turned 21. Technically, they had raised it earlier, but everyone who was already legal was grandfathered in.
NotMax
Back in the olden days, before there even was a picture on the NY license, was a NY resident but my license had a Pennsylvania address on it (my P.O. box, where I got all my mail – spent roughly half the year in each state at the time.)
Doubt that would pass muster today.
As for these new versions, first thing that popped into mind was “3-D printer.” That tech is advancing almost faster than they can be built.
maya
Well, plebes, New Yawk’s drinking age used to be 18. Lived in Jerz back then, where drinking age was 21 and the Friday night occupation was “flying the bridge” to Staten Island using borrowed draft cards until we were old enough to have our own. By then we were almost all somewheres else.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
What irony.
A few years later, it was raised universally back to 21, during the Reagan Administration, via Federal matching highway funds. No 21 drinking age, no money for roads. Very neat and tidy.
My troops in Germany could drink beer ON POST because the Army complies with local laws on alcohol consumption, even overseas. They’d come back from a tour in the land of the Biergarten and if they were under 21, no drinkee!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Raven:
Show me an Enormous State University (good ole ESU) in the 80s with frat houses and I’ll show you fake ID replica rings that were busted in the 90s. This happened everywhere.
My guess is that if we had some kind of guarantee against drunk driving by 18-20 year olds, we could get the booze age lowered.
Of course around here in red, rurl, Misery, everybody drives shitfaced drunk regardless of age.
Rita. R.
Thought I did a pretty decent job with chalk, pencil and hairspray on my NYS driver’s license in 1987. No problems until literally three days before my 21st birthday, when a particularly eagle-eyed bouncer kept staring at it. As I casually asked, “Anything wrong?” and glanced at him with a look that said don’t do this to me dude, he smiled knowingly, said nope, and let me in. I’ve always thought of it as his 21st birthday present to me. I bet every one of the people involved in making this high-tech card a reality did something similar before becoming prohibitionist zealots.
jrg
Say what you will about the legal drinking age, it works.
LULZ. Just kidding.
MattF
Reminds me of the old Gene Spafford line about cryptographic methods– “…like arranging for an armored car to transport information from someone living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.”
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Zifnab: Drinking age is 21 because your DUI stats go way down if it is. I don’t know why smoking isn’t 21. It probably should be.
Bobby Thomson
@Zifnab: fuckin’ Liddie Dole. Don’t get me started.
JPL
I over heard my niece explaining to my son, that she did not have to use a fake id. She just happened to find a license with a picture similar to hers at a table in a bar. If you are a female who went to UT and lost your license, I know who took it. lol
Another Halocene Human
Don’t be silly–the vendor sold them a new shiny machine. It’ll be about 6 months lag before they’re available on the black market.
Villago Delenda Est
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This is because we have created a drinking culture combined with a transportation system (the automobile) that insures that death on the highway is a normal condition. Why, just this past weekend the son of a BJ regular got busted for DUI for attempting to drive 12 fucking blocks with a .08 alcohol level.
In California, the distances that MUST be driven can be less than that!
Then there’s all these overpaid celebrity/jock types who INSIST on driving themselves after partying instead of having a fully sober driver standing by outside the club to give them a lift to the next location, be it another club or home or the pickup’s place.
Another Halocene Human
@Forum Transmitted Disease: We already have REAL ID act. Bush administration.
It’s not mark of the beast. It just makes life really, really hard for poor people.
Napoleon
Along the lines of mistermix’s frat house story, my brother had a friend whose family owned a rubber stamp maker which was located near the towns college bars. They would send one person into a bar who would then leave and get his hand stamped for in and out privilages. They would then go make a stamp like it and stamp all their buddies so they could get in for free.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I had to use an, ah, alternate ID, when I was actually old enough* to get into the bar we were visiting, but I’d neglected to bring my license as my friend was driving. It wasn’t an issue – I showed it to the door guy, who looked at the ID, then at me, and said “that’ll be a dollar.” It was my friend’s boyfriend’s license.
*(18; OH had g*dawful 3.2 blecch, so I certainly wasn’t going to drink but it was a social event).
@Napoleon: Now that’s ingenuity.
Another Halocene Human
How can they even know if 18-21 is high DUI risk when all the “pillar of the community” grownups who are DUI get off? At least they always got off in the 80s/90s.
According to crash statistics, you could really reduce crashes and fatalities by severely restricting driving ages 16-18, or at least preventing males from driving, especially with other teenaged males in the car.
Crash stats soar up again at 70. No state wants to do this, but elderly drivers need to be physically checked frequently from 60 on. Mental and physical impairment are behind the sudden jump in crashes.
R. Porrofatto
Funniest line in that piece:
Tonybrown74
@Villago Delenda Est:
Pretty much this.
gelfling545
@Another Halocene Human: I recently learned, now that it’s too late to ground them, that when my daughters who are 4 years apart but looked remarkably alike would go out the elder, legal, sister would go into the bar & then “go outside just for a minute” and pass her id to her younger, not yet legal, sister. Of course, there was a lot of traveling over the bridge to Canada for a while, too. On one occasion they apparently convinced the bar tender that they were twins & one had just lost her id but really, it was just the same, really. Good grief.
Roger Moore
Now only people with the money to bribe somebody at the DMV will be able to get fake drivers licenses.
Gozer
@Villago Delenda Est: Ha. My home state (Louisiana) was the last holdout when that policy hit. I think we lasted until 88.
Of course in most of southern Louisiana you could (and can) get away with it while underage. Only thing a lot of cops will do in NOLA is confiscate the booze.
Cassidy
@Forum Transmitted Disease: For voting rights alone, I’m all for a national ID. I also want a national elections commission/ directorate/ whatever so that these bigoted, motherfucking conservatives and republicans can’t try and keep people from voting. So personally, I’ll take a national ID full of RFID tags and a GPS tracker and a small camera to look a the inside of my pocket.
jayboat
Ah, the memories…
by the time I was in high school I had real experience in commercial printing production, and being a typographer/draftsman with a real rebellious streak- it was only natural that I made a *fair amount* of my pocket money in those days modifying the birth dates on all manner of id’s, especially NC drivers’ licenses.
Working under a magnifier, one can lay down some fine ass dots with a sewing needle and a drop of india ink.
DL’s in the late 60’s weren’t much more than a laminated print. The laminate could be split and re-heated (modified soldering iron) to a perfect finish. 8-]
Good times. It’s a miracle I didn’t wind up in juvenile detention…
I came in this room for something.
cat
@Villago Delenda Est:
The drinking age isn’t just made up BS, its based on lowering mortality rates due to DUI.
What you should be asking yourself is this, if people under 21 are to irresponsible to be allowed to drink why are we giving them guns and shipping them off to fight wars and being the only people the civilians are war zones interact with?
Which is stupider making these young people responsible for implementing our foreign policy or keeping them from drinking before they have matured enough to learn a good sense of impulse control?
Soonergrunt
Your drinking age is 21 because of MADD. Not that it was ever effective in reducing the rates of DUI. The law never did. Societal change did that, and MADD had little to do with it. It was all about the Public Health Service and their efforts to make driving while drunk socially unacceptable.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
We used to steal the unfinished laminates from Blockbuster video to make our fake IDs circa 1990. A couple of guys would go in and ask for help finding movies to tie up the staff and another guy would reach over the counter and grab a handful of the laminates they would use to make your Blockbuster card.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Another Halocene Human:
Which is why, in Texas at least, there are time limits on when someone 16-18 can drive and who they can have in the car: Cannot drive after midnight unless to/from a job, and other than their siblings, only one other teen is allowed in the car with them.
Roger Moore
@Another Halocene Human:
And they’ve been doing exactly that, at least here in California. Licenses for people between 16 and 18 years old are so restrictive that most kids don’t bother getting them anymore.
cmorenc
Do you folks really want a bunch of inebriated 18-year olds out sharing the highway with you, especially at night? As viscerally attractive as the “if you’re old enough to go to war at 18, you’re old enough to drink a beer” proposition is, in practical reality it’s one of the most colossally stupid ideas ever for us adults. Geez, I can still vividly recall the truly STUPID shit I did in cars after too many beers when I was older than 18 but younger than 21, like the night we were driving at 110mph in a rainstorm down I-95 back from a night out on the town. I wasn’t driving the car, but I wasn’t in any shape to, and neither obviously was the person driving. Most 19-year old guys have vastly less judgment after three or four beers than most 29-year old guys do, even though the latter demographic doesn’t necessarily display the best judgment either.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Soonergrunt: I don’t think social norms would have caused the creation of the designated driver. It took the law to get people to hand over their keys.
jrg
I’m getting a kick out of the people on this thread who seem to believe that a high drinking age prevents 18-year-olds from drinking, and therefore prevents them from drinking and driving.
dewzke
When I was 25 I went to live with my cousin in College Station, Texas. Landscaping for the summer sucked but here’s the funniest story. We go to the store for goodies and beer, he goes through the line and gets his and then I get carded for my 6 pack. Okay, I hand the cashier my ID and she wouldn’t accept it cause it’s an out of state ID (Wisconsin). I ask for the manager and my cousin is livid about this. The manager comes out and a scene of hilarity ensues. I tell the dood that this is a valid ID, the bars accept it…what’s the problem? He gets snippy about and my cousin intervenes. “Who do you think you are? Walker Texas Store Manager?” the cashier, all of the people in the store lines are cracking up and he sells it to me out of embarrassment and slinks away. I turned around to huge grins and much continuing laughter from the other customers. My cousin was pissed still but I loved it.
cat
@jrg:
Getting a kick out of people who little reading comprehension constructing “stawmans” and trying to come off cool and instead looking like idiots.
sparrow
I got to drink 5 months early because my idiotic Oklahoma ID (which was one of those tough plastic cards etc, used WHITE print on a blue background for the date. After a swipe of a blue sharpie, that “8” month became a “3”, and wahoo, I was 21! I mean if you looked CLOSE in bright light you could see it, but the clubs I was interested at that age weren’t exactly brightly lit.
Also, a drinking age is bullshit.
cmorenc
@jrg:
OK, so let’s legalize drinking and driving for 16 year-olds, or 14 year-olds even, since in some states the 14 year-olds are eligible for provisional licenses (originally intended for kids from farming families so they could operate farm machinery and trucks to help out their families’ farm operations). Can’t keep ’em out of daddy’s liquor cabinet or from taking a swig out of the moonshine jug as its being passed around at the end of a long workday out on the farm, can we?
Nicole
Slightly off topic, but it relates to driving- an acquaintance of mine is stumping for votes for his son-in-law, who is a finalist to win a handicapped accessible vehicle. Free to vote; story and link is below if you’re inclined to vote for him:
“They are running a contest where a new accesible van is being awarded. My son-in law Steve Herbst is a finalist. Steve was paralyzed in a high school football accident and is confined to a wheelchair. It’s inspirational to see how he leads a full life in spite of this. He married my daughter 11 years ago and he is the father of twins. He works full-time and is involved with the kids sports leagues as well as organizations to benefit others in similar situations. Not unexpectedly Steve’s condition has worsened lately making it impossible for him to drive his specially equipped van. The newer vans have advanced controls that would enable Steve to once again drive and regain more of his independence. Here’s where I need your help. The winner will be determined by votes to the mobility awareness site. I have posted the link. Anyone who can spare a few minutes please click in and cast a vote for Steve. It doesn’t cost anything and your help will be greatly appreciated.
http://www.mobilityawarenessmonth.com/entrant/steve-herbst-palatine-il/ ”
And as a NY driver I look forward to my new Terminator license because I’m a sucker for a gadget. I never owned a fake ID- getting served in NYC in the early 1990s was so easy I never needed one.
prufrock
Florida drivers licenses in the 1950s and 1960s weren’t laminated and didn’t even have a photo. This made modifying them easy. It became trivial when my dad and his friends discovered that the typewriters used by the Florida DMV and the typewriters used in the school office were the same model.
Many good times ensued.
sparrow
In other cultures (less puritanical), it’s normal for kids to drink at home in moderation. By in moderation I mean a glass of wine with dinner or a beer after helping mom or dad do some outdoors labor. My husband is Greek, and he finds the youth (and older) culture of getting totally shitfaced to be a seriously shameful facet of our fucked-up society, and I have a hard time disagreeing.
artem1s
fake drivers license is one of the most frequent methods of ID theft. It’s serious. It happened to me when my license got stolen. Luckily the thieves did a crappy job of putting someone face on my drivers license and an alert clerk had store security take them into custody. But they still hit 10-15 stores and took out $25K plus lines of credit, purchases and gift cards before they got caught. All within 48 hours.
This isn’t about booze
jrg
@cat: Correct me, then. What, exactly is the argument you are making?
@cmorenc: Sure, OK. Just as soon as those 14 year old kids are living in the same quarters as 21 year olds, like in college dorms.
This shit isn’t that complicated. Seriously.
IowaOldLady
I was shocked at the documentation I have to take to renew my driver’s license. My passport isn’t good enough to prove who I am. Nor is my current license. I also need utility bills or a similar proof of residence and my social security card (which says right on it “not to be used for identification”).
ET
While I am sure that keeping underage drinkers out of the bars is one goal I would hazard a guess that staying ahead of the identity thieves is a bigger priority.
Napoleon
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
I always loved that story. I assume that it also got a bunch of them around having their IDs checked, if it was a place that would not let underage people in by checking them the first time at the door.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc:
The problem is not, per se, drinking.
It’s drinking and driving. Regardless of the age of the individual involved.
The other problem is our transportation system is built around the single occupant automobile. It dictates our use of land. When I was stationed in Europe, things were within walking distance, even when drunk, and furthermore, there was convenient public transportation available. How many Friday nights did we head from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt to pub crawl? Many. We took the SBahn from Wiesbaden to Frankfurt, hit the Sachsenhausen district and all the pubs there, and took the train back when we were done.
We didn’t need an auto to get around…drunk or sober.
Likewise, Korea. Easy walk from the compound to the bar distict. No need to drive.
Take away the need to operate a 2 ton hunk of machinery, and suddenly it’s less of a life endangering problem.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Nicole: Voted! If you answer a quiz ? correctly your vote counts double, and you can vote once every 24 hours per IP. It’s going on tomorrow’s calendar.
The Moar You Know
@Cassidy: The nice thing is, you probably own a cell phone and therefore already have all those things.
Xecky Gilchrist
It’s sad to see skill like that cast into the dustbin of history, first by the advent of Photoshop, and now by unbreakable monolithic driver’s licenses.
hee hee
The new licenses don’t have that analog warmth like the licenses back in the 60s.
cat
@jrg:
That a drinking age of 21 lowers the mortality rate of people under 21 due to car accidents where alcohol is a factor. Many studies show this.
But because of bad policy that says 18 year olds can go fight in foreign wars that a good policy that reduces deaths should be revoked makes no sense.
Enlistment age should be raised not the drinking age lowered.
Soonergrunt
I’ll note for the record that the legal drinking age and the quality of fake IDs (supposedly Colorado’s ID was particularly easy to fake) were irrelevant to me because when I was thirteen, until after I was in the Army for a couple of years, my parents owned a liquor store.
Yutsano
@Soonergrunt: Shorter SG: I was popular in high school. :P
cat
@Villago Delenda Est:
And when that day comes to the US lower the drinking age, but till then keep it raised.
jrg
@cat: I’m not sure I believe that, for a couple of reasons:
1) The raised drinking age corresponded to other changes regarding DUI enforcement and public attitudes around drinking and driving.
2) It doesn’t match my personal experience. When I was under 21, the drinking age made very little difference to me WRT accessibility of alcohol.
At any rate, I’m not going to continue arguing. Too much to do today. Have a good one.
Soonergrunt
@Yutsano: Why yes, yes I was.
maya
@cat: “Enlistment age should be raised not the drinking age lowered. ”
This! Raise it to Lindsey Graham’s and Chuck Shumer’s age, hand them a helmet and drop kick them into Syria or Iran, their choice. They can take DiFi with them too for equality in the trenches.
Eric U.
we really have screwed the drinking age thing up. I think 13 y.o. should be forced to drink until they puke and then parents should be able to give them beer if they want. Anything but what we have now.
The freshmen here spend the first semester trying to get drunk and it is just about their only subject of conversation. I’m surprised more of them don’t flunk out. The thing that bothers me is that I’ve seen guys talking to women about getting drunk. I have felt like taking them aside and explaining that there are better things to talk to women about. Or maybe talking about drinking until you pass out is the new mating ritual, I dunno
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I got the shit kicked out of by a Korean cab driver we tried to cut and run on coming back from the turkey farm! I was so fucked up I couldn’t stop laughing as I tried to put run him ! Really fucking bright
maya
@Raven: Uh, what did you just say? Butt chugging kimchi sauce with turkeys?
Raven
@maya: the turkey farm was in Yangicol. Use your imagination how it got it’s name’
gvg
Sooner, MADD was the driving force that led to a change in societies code on drunk driving. They reached out to people in local chapters, advertised, got their personal stories in the papers a lot and changed a lot of peoples minds including IMO hollywood writers. It didn’t hurt their cause that people I knew either knew someone killed in one of those repeat offender accidents or passed a really gruesome accident. I knew kids in high school who died in DD accidents and I passed a few cars at accident scenes with bottles falling out of them and blood on the seats myself. I can’t think of anyone bUT the MADD organization that caused the change. It didn’t just happen magically. I recall it being a slow change.
The fact that some people get around the restrictions doesn’t mean they should be approved of. I was a pizza delivery driver for several years. Drunk Drivers scared me frequently and I prefer to reduce their numbers. Perfection isn’t possible in any endevor but improvement is pretty often. It is also quite possible to go too far. Balance is always best.
On the other hand I have the impression the Florida drivers license hoops to jump through are about voter supression.
On the other other hand ID theft is getting bigger and bigger.
J.W. Hamner
The only time I used a fake ID was when the DMV accidentally put the wrong birth date on my license. I think I was 22 or 21 but my new Massachusetts driver’s license said I was 19. Not the way you want it to work really, but my experience at the liquor store that day was exciting!
askew
@Nicole:
Voted. Good luck! You should link this in an open thread as well to get more votes.
mattminus
@jrg:
It doesnt prevent, but it does mitigate. When I was in HS in the 90s, it was way easier to get pot than booze. So, we smoked more and drank less.
Mnemosyne
@cat:
IIRC, what they’ve done in Europe is reverse the drinking and driving ages, so you can drink at 16, but you can’t get a driver’s license until you’re 18. Apparently it helps people get the “whoo-hoo, let’s drink until we puke!” phase out of their system well before they’re legally allowed to get behind the wheel of a car. So lowering the drinking age while raising the driver’s license age might be something to consider, especially since so many states are making it difficult to get your license before the age of 18 anyway.
Nicole
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): @askew: Thank you! And I’ll post in an Open Thread if I can catch one early enough. Good suggestion!
dance around in your bones
I grew up in New Mexico where they had “no beer/liquor sales on Sunday”. You could go into a grocery store and all the beer would be hidden behind thick plastic curtains.
I remember asking the cashier (many years later, whilst visiting) “Hey, I’m from California, does this Blue Sunday stuff apply to ME?”
No such luck. Didn’t matter where you were from – no gawdamn liquor on Sundays. It was quite frustrating. I mean, you could SEE the beer behind the curtain but you couldn’t touch it.
I love the story about the fake ID thing in the frat house, mistermix (your name is so long now it blurs into the text below!)
eta: also, what was that sci-fi story about having some chip or tattoo that you had to wave through a machine to get access to certain areas? I’ma have to look that up.
Persia
@Villago Delenda Est: A lot of European countries have higher rates of liver failure, too.
IMO, the biggest reason the smoking age is 18 and the drinking age is 21 is that Big Tobacco was better at lobbying at the time the drinking age got raised. DUI rates plummeting after the laws were adopted didn’t hurt either (and it wasn’t just the increased awareness, though that certainly helped, state rates went down as the limit went up, I didn’t believe it myself until I saw some of the research).
mainmati
I got a British driving license when I was 30 that expires when I reach 70 and it had no picture on it!! I was living there at the time. Whole different approach to driver IDs.
mainmati
@dance around in your bones: Sounds like something that William Gibson wrote.
fuckwit
My fake ID,
Sets me freeee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aTZokleX4c
fuckwit
I actually remember the New York driver’s licenses in the 1980s. No picture. Blue ink printed on a gray card-stock card, IIRC.
I remember, in high school, walking down to the Grand Union one afternoon to buy beer with a bunch of friends ready to have a party… one of my friends was elected to buy the beer because he was the tallest and most closely matched the description on the driver’s license that we’d “borrowed” from someone’s older brother. And I remember him reciting the information on it, over and over again, as we walked down the street, trying to memorize it, while we all said “I am Elmer J. Fudd, Millionaire. I own a mansion and a yacht….”
I also remember when those meddling MADD fuckers convinced Reagan to raise the drinking age. It was the same year I had to register for the draft, and I resented being able to be drafted but not being able to drink so much, I have never forgiven it.
I was finally 18.. and that was the same year Reagan extorted the state of NY into raising the drinking age to 19. Fucking A. I had been a fan of Reagan before that, but after this outrage, I vowed not to vote to re-elect him (I couldn’t see voting for Mondale, so I voted Libertarian), and vowed never to vote for a Republican again. Stayed registered Republican for a long time afterwards, due to family pressure (registration is public and my family looked at the voter rolls), but I voted Libertarian from then, until after the disaster Bush v. Gore, when I vowed never to vote third-party again, which meant supporting the Democrats, and that’s how I got here. Finally changed my registration to Democratic after campaiging for Dean and then Kerry in 2004.
Yutsano
@mainmati: Driver’s licences in Arizona don’t expire.
dance around in your bones
@mainmati:
I have been googling around – somehow thought it was Philip K. Dick? But no success so far. It was waaay back in the day.
One of my dad’s friends was a scientist at a government facility in ABQ, and he had shelves and shelves full of science fiction magazines and books. That’s where I read most of my early science fiction.
Luckily, my parents let me read any damn thing I wanted to.
Ruckus
@jrg:
Sort of like abstinence only keeps youngsters from fucking.
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
Things have changed that’s for sure but CA always(at least in my lifetime, which goes back before the middle of the last century) has had a 21 yr old limit. It made no difference to anybody that I knew. Including the senior who had the words “Miller Beer” in gold leaf about 2 foot high on the side of his car. The high school tried to force him to remove it but his parents fought them and won. And it was what he drank. Or the 16 yr old I used to ride to school with who would pull a fifth of bourbon from under the seat when we got to school and take a big hit to get him through the day.
pattonbt
@Nylund: If not already answered by others, we had a board with replaceable letters and numbers. So you could make up your own name, DOB etc.
Well, when I say we, I really mean, I heard this is how others who had done this sort of thing handled that. I wouldnt have any first hand knowledge of or ever participated in such chicanery.
pattonbt
I was also “lucky” in the fact that my original passport had the incorrect birthdate on it, making me 8 years older than I was. No one ever noticed at the time it was issued, and I only noticed by chance when I was 15. It was weird taking my passport to bars as my ID. Many a strange look from bouncers, but I would go with the “Ive had too many DUI’s so I dont have a drivers license” line and they would look befuddled but eventually let me in because who fakes a passport?!
Of course once I was of legal age I made sure the mistake was cleared up.
YellowJournalism
mistermix, the name on that frat fake ID wouldn’t happen to have been “Papagiorgio” and be from Yuma, would it?