Aging Up

A Violet nightlife bares little resemblance to the typical college student's. Sure, there are smatterings of apartment parties, but for the most part, we'd rather leave the pouring to the professionals. For more than half us, this requires breaking at least two laws, one of which carries a hefty punishment. The number of establishments that don't i.d. is a ever-dwindling one, though there is a liquor store down our street that wouldn't card a brace-faced tween. Those who don't want to spend every evening swigging Georgi with our roommate's Wentworth Miller posters have little choice but to muddle with our identity. Good fakes, ones that scan, are hard to come by, but getting caught with a real one almost guarantees a court-filled future.

Unless you have a nearly identical older sibling or friend, you're better off changing your b-day and finding bars whose bouncers, if they have them, are willing to exercise their imaginations. Sometimes you'll hit pay dirt, more often you'll be fending off the leers of the lecherous elderly, or spittle-flecked shot offers from just-released Goldman Sachers. The trash with cash tend to go the promoter route --three tables at Libation? Free bottles? Can the well-gelled thirty-somethings pour them straight into our hyper-glossed mouth? Our expat semester tricked us into thinking we were adults; the bouncers at Mansion made it clear we are not, yet. Fine, my underarmored musclemen, never again shall we lurk among the sunless-tanned stretch-satined hordes. Not even when we can.