Night number two of this year’s Halloweekend—that’s a thing, we swear… use it—brings with it the longest line Morningside Heights has seen since Campo Mike first introduced “Cloud Nine Saturdays” (may they rest in peace). And fear not, freshpeople, you don’t even need a fake ID once you reach the front!

A tipster reports a line of extraordinary (but not completely unprecedented) proportions outside our very own Ricky’s location. Looks like we’ll be sticking with last year’s FourLoko stained bunny ears…

Word to the wise: order online next year.

Update: Word on the street (literally…) is that Possibilities@Columbia, at Broadway and 111th Street has its own share of costumes and no line. And if you do make it off of said street(s), don’t forget to enter your costume via tips to our fifth annual contest.

We’ve seen you “going out” at night, freshpeople. Don’t worry, we were all awkward like you at some point: handing a bouncer some poorly-made fake and praying you remembered your zip code. The Bwog staff empathizes with you as we share some stories and nuggets of information about the one thing in your wallet you can’t live without…

• If the guy you’re buying from only sells IDs in sets of two, that’s a bad sign. If you (gangly, skinny, not threatening) and your equally unintimidating friends are buying IDs from a guy in a midtown Starbucks and, sweating nervously, the first thing he asks you is if you’re cops, that’s also a bad sign.
• When I got mine it was with a certain teammate downtown in the back of a sketchy unnamed shop. It was in November and eventually it started sleeting and we were all so stressed/tired/hungry from this guy being like “ARE YOU A COP? YA SURE?” and handing over mad cash money to someone we were sure would disappear with it. So much so that we rushed into the first restaurant we found while we were waiting for him to make good on his promise—it was a terrible vegan restaurant. I ate soy cheese dumplings and cried about my life. Literally worst day ever. But now I’m 23 in Delaware and can drink anywhere I want!
• Got my ID from a guy in a frat. The thing is not great; the edges are clearly X-Acto knife work, and the laminate is clearly laminate. But it was only $60, and has never failed me in Morningside. It’s even performed at NYU and beyond. And fraternity customer service is much better than some of the questionable characters students leave Morningside for; when he wasn’t sure which hologram looked better, he just surprised me with two for the price of one!
• I’ve had a slew of IDs that have been lost, taken, or retained and best advice is this: The only ID that will actually work is an older person’s REAL one that looks enough like you and isn’t expired.

More stories after the jump!

Anthony Johnson, CC ’13, was arrested on Tuesday after a package he ordered containing 42 fake IDs was intercepted in Lerner. Spec reports that he went into the scheme with a group of friends, who each ordered two cards. He has been suspended from school until his court date in June, and charged with 42 counts of Criminal Possession of a Forged Instrument in the Second Degree. Johnson is quoted as saying at the time of his arraignment, “I ordered the IDs online because there’s a lot of places around school where you need to be 21.”

Spec also reports that fake IDs are common among students. More on the story tomorrow!

If you don’t have a fake ID today and plan on going to a bar in New York City that isn’t a teen club  you should get one tomorrow morning. Below, tales of stories of Bwoggers’ first fakes. Hi, Mom!

• I got my first fake ID in the parking lot of a Ross Department Store in downtown Los Angeles, it said I had “blonde” eyes. A merciless club bouncer took it away in Savannah, Georgia.

• I got my first fake when I was vising my sister at Columbia when she was a freshman. It worked beautifully for three years until one day on a skiing trip to Hunter, I lost my wallet and someone turned it in to the Lost & Found. Before giving my wallet back to me, the security guy asked me when my birthday was, so I told him. He then took out my fake and told me that I was committing a felony. He said he’d call the cops on me if he let me have it back.

• Toronto’s Yonge Street presents, for a few blocks, a slew of greasy basement shops cramped underneath the strip clubs and sports bars at street level. Several of these advertise: “$25! Best Fake ID In Town!” I picked my first up during Toronto LGBTQ Pride 2009. It’s perfect, although it looks only about as good as you could expect for the cost: in Toronto they see that it’s a Quebec ID and ask me only si je parle français (I do), while in New York they see that it’s in French and give up trying to read it.

• I (wisely) skipped my Frontiers lecture winter of freshman year to get my fake. It was freezing cold and raining/snowing, and when my friend and I first got to [we're redacting the name in case it's still open], the place was closed for lunch. We wandered around in the cold for hours, but the first ID they made misspelled my last name. Identity-fraud wary and proud of my semi-anglo last name, I insisted the guy make me another one with my name properly spelled. Two Maine IDs for the price of one.

• I went to International to pick up a party-size bottle of Smirnoff, feeling like I knew what was up and how to play it cool – I mean I grew up in Brooklyn and I had my fake for like almost a whole year. When I got to the front of the line, said bottle of sminoroff in hand, the guy asked to see my id, so I – cool as cucumber – pulled out my trusty Delaware State id card – a non scan-able piece of junk I bought for $65 on Eighth Street in NYU land two summers previous.  The back of the card actually read “THIS IS NOT A TRANSFERABLE ID CARD.”  But hey, it worked – I mean most of the time.  And I never even learned my address in Delaware.
  Things continued to go smoothly, the guy did the usual glance at the card, glance at you thing, handed it back and began to ring up the vodka.  I pulled out my credit card and handed to him.  He looked at it.
  “This isn’t the name on your id.” My fake id had my first and last name on it and the credit card had my mother’s first and maiden name on it. “What is this?”
  “It’s my mom’s credit card! I promise!”
  “It doesn’t matter whose it is –it’s illegal to use someone else’s credit card, did you know that? Be careful next time,” He said handing back the credit card.
  “Crestfallen, humiliated and sure my night was ruined, I re-opened my wallet. “Hey, um, can I pay with cash then?”
  He paused for a half second, then shrugged “Sure.”
  So an early lesson in Morningside: International is tough on credit cards, lax on ids.

Pretty soon (August 30th doth approach!) dozens upon hundreds of fresh-things will run around campus screaming and sitting outside Carman just waiting for something, anything to happen.

We want to help them out. We’re reviving an old Bwog tradition and sharing stories of our first nights at college (if you did something funny or sad or interesting, tell us!) and our first fake ID’s (the more McLovin’-esque, the better). We’d also like to know what you wish you knew your first day at Columbia. If you have a good story or some inspired advice, send us line or two at tips@bwog.net. Don’t write angry comments if your “first” doesn’t go up: we can’t post ‘em all but we’ll try to get as many as possible.

A CUID deity has fallen.

Fraudulent CUID detective John Nordin has tipped that Rita Hollander’s ID– the CUID to which we are all meant to aspire– has expired! As of May 2009, the robotic Ms. Hollander, the (semi) anonymous face of the CUID, is no longer a registered member of the Columbia community. It’s going to be humiliating when she gets turned away at the Butler security desk. We’ll see you in Cafe 212, Rita.

The neighborhood is already losing one fine establishment, and now another is in trouble with The Man: tipsters confirm that old standby 1020 was raided hit by an NYPD sting operation last night. 

According to patrons, three cops showed up with fake IDs, and proceeded to fine 1020 $10,000. No word on whether there were any other penalties, or how close Morningside is to losing yet another watering hole, but it might not be a good idea to test your new fake there for the next  few weeks. 

UPDATE (9:00 PM): A 1020 staff member got in touch with Bwog to correct the record a little, telling us that the sting operation occurred before 10 (when 1020 puts a bouncer on the door). Rather than fakes, the bartender simply forgot to check IDs, and any fine assessed will occur after a court appearance.

–JCD, photo by AB

With Mona and Roadhouse closed down, the Morningside bar scene just got a little thinner. But there’s still stuff out there (MOST OF ALL THE WEST END [a.k.a. "Havana Central"] WHERE YOU’RE COMING FOR THE BWOG PARTY TONIGHT) and we thought it was time to re-run Addison Anderson’s gargantuan bar crawl from our Orientation 2006 coverage. Feel free to share your memories of the watering holes no longer with us.

On Friday night, I went on a bar-burning tour of every Columbia watering hole, roughly from south to north.  I named this epic pub crawl the Boot n’ Rally Rally.  Here’s how it works: I review my experience at the bar and assign a score using the facial expression I would make if you asked me, “Hey, Addison, you wanna go to [the bar in question]?”  Then I give an explanatory quote that comes out of that face.  These pictures were taken in order, so make a flipbook and watch me get faced. And no, I didn’t have a drink at every bar because I would have died.  I’m lil’, and the doctor doesn’t tell me my weight in pounds; he says I weigh a hundred and one gumdrops and half a lollipop.  Now let’s rally!

Here I am at the start of the night, with one black hoodie and negative one shower, the perfect look and smell for drinking a lot and alone. My adventures start after the jump! (more…)

Left Wing Jihad scores funds?

Left Wing Jihadist scores funds!

Spec dreads us having to “likely spend more money on better fakes”

Oh, you didn’t know? Yo’ ass better caaallll somebodyyy!

Man, I forgot how good Giuliani was. Maybe we should have let him cancel that election.

Class of 2010 apparently most athletic in history, too