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Cleveland Circle bars team up to fight scourge of booze-crazed BC undergrads
By adamg on Tue, 09/26/2017 - 11:55am
The owner of a Cleveland Circle pizza place with a beer and wine license says a new computerized scanner has finally brought his months of problems with underage BC students getting drinks under control.
At a hearing on yet another incident, on July 20, Agoros owner Dimitrios Liakos told the Boston Licensing Board he had taken the board's advice and walked over to Mary Ann's to see how they finally curbed their own, decades-long problem with BC students. And a key thing he learned was to buy a scanner that not only looks for fake IDs, it takes a photo of every patron - and lets other local bars know when somebody's been banned.
The photo part "is a huge intimidation factor," Liakos said. "They come in and, 'Oh, you're going to take a picture of me?" He added the device has already alerted him to several people trying to get into Agoros after being banned at another local establishment.
Two BPD detectives testified that during an inspection on July 20, they found a 20-year-old woman who had used somebody else's license to get in and buy a vodka cordial. The woman told detectives she had simply found the license.
Agoros attorney Curt Bletzer said that, this time, Agoros has finally gotten things under control. The board will hold another hearing next week on an incident involving an employee and a beer, but Bletzer said he hoped after that, the board would never see Liakos again. In addition to the scanner, Liakos, who owns a Somerset pizza place with his brother, now works the door on many weekend nights and has stopped hiring BC students to work the bar.
The board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take about the July 20 incident. Last month, the board ordered a five-day license suspension over a July 14 incident, which came after it ordered its license suspended for five days in May.
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Comments
You really don't want to patronize a place that uses that
Just another facet of a surveillance state that will be abused.
You really don't want to patronize a place full of frat douches
These are kiddy bars. In a sane world, they would be full of 18+ or 19+ revelers.
Too bad we live in the United
Arab EmiratesStates.patronizing a place that's constantly full of out of control
under-aged college undergrads isn't such a pleasant thing, either. Lowering the drinking age in this state would lead to disaster, because high school kids would have more access to alcohol, anyway, which isn't good, at all. The fact is that a teenager's brain, and that of a 20-year-old, is not completely developed, and is therefore much more susceptible to being permanently damaged as a result of excessive alcohol imbibement.
Secondly, teen-aged drivers often get into more accidents anyway, due to lack of experience, and because they're not quite mature enough to have self-control, and adding alcohol to that creates a lethal mix, if one gets the drift.
Also, if an underaged college undergrad/teenager gets arrested for drunkenness, or a DUI, s/he will have a record for as long as s/he lives, especially if s/he's 18 years old or over.
Thirdly, a college student who gets arrested for a DUI or whatever stands an excellent chance of losing his/her college scholarship if s/he has one, as well.
Is it really worth risking one's future just for an evening of, or one act of stupidity? No, it's not, as far as I'm concerned.
So everyone who gets drunk in
So everyone who gets drunk in college has a permanently damaged brain?
Plenty of bars have crowds I wouldn't want to hang out with. I find another one.
Seriously, who's running admissions/recruiting
At Canadian colleges? How is every family with a high school junior/senior from Maine to Maryland not getting bombarded with mailers which read, in big, plain lettering, tuition is "x" and drinking age is 18/19?
Let's see, do I want to go to expensive BC (Boston College, not British Columbia) and wait until I'm 21 to get my picture taken to enter a bar, or to cheaper McGill/Concordia/whatever and have a legal beer at the very end of the first day of freshman orientation while continuing to freeze my (expletive) off anyway?
How does that business work up there? Those guys aren't willing to take American money to reduce their dependence on Canadian government? Looks to me like Canadian colleges are sitting on a goldmine. College in this country is grossly overpriced. It's not housing where you have to live somewhere. It's frickin' college. You live there for four years. What's stopping these kids?
You might be surprised to
You might be surprised to learn this, but a lot of people take things other than the ease of getting a beer into consideration when choosing what college to attend.
Quality of the academic program, price, location, beer
If a Canadian college is superior to an American one on the first of those four, and I've already pointed out that it's not worse on the other three, then what am I missing?
Well, Will, let's see...
When I was in high school, back in the late Mesozoic era, virtually every student knew which states had 18-year-old drinking ages, whether they considered that a factor in their college application process or not. And we didn't even have the internet. So I have to think that today's nascent alcoholics are well aware of their options if they simply can't stand the thought of going to a school where you have to ask a friend to buy for you or find a bar with lax standards.
Are they aware?
I still see a lot of fakes get taken away.
Perhaps if we took using fake IDs seriously
and actually prosecuted those students using them (and sorry - continued without a finding is NOT an a suitable punishment), I'm pretty sure word would spread pretty quickly that it's not a cool thing to do.
Another brilliant idea
With legs.
Perhaps if we joined the rest of the developed world
And lowered the drinking age to the age of majority, fake ID purveyors would go out of business.
Drunk driving by people under 21 is so not happening that the CDC suppresses the exact death rates in Massachusetts!
https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/pdf/impaired_driving/drunk_drivin...
Time to lower the drinking age to 18, keep the zero tolerance laws for under 21, and lower the BAC level for drunk driving to 0.04.
And actually take away
And actually take away licenses for DUIs, maybe after the 2nd one, and not the 7th one?
Ironically
The quality of college hockey in Canada is inferior to that played in the United States.
I applied to 4 Division 1 hockey schools, 1 Division 3 hockey school, and one school that at the time did not have a hockey program. I knew this, yet I could barely skate (I was better by college graduation.)
Priorities, I guess.
Canadian colleges are very different with their recruiting
Their mission is to, first and foremost, serve the populations of their provinces and nation. Money from Yanks is good - but not so good that they want to drive out their own people to fill those spots. And, just like their medical system doesn't spend money on purple bathtub ads, they don't spend a lot of educational budget on marketing to people in the US.
My sons were courted by several Canadian unis - but they were courted in part because of my Canadian roots and family connection (mark that box that says "I have close relatives in Canada" and you get more attention). They were interested in McGill, and drinking age was factored in, but they also know how to get on a bus and book a room (or convince a friend to drive if all tolls and gas are paid for).
So, yes, with the current exchange rate McGill is cheaper than UMass and in a place where undergrads of all ages may freely party together. But there were other issues (uncertainty about licensing for teachers and civil engineers and "major uncertainty" included) that factored in.
They shouldn't have checked the box
Because you're only 1/32nd Canadian, and now I'm going to use that against you every time you talk because I don't have a better point to make, and then I'm going to move to New Hampshire.
:P
:P
Things I've come to expect at uHub
- stories about biking
- stories about the T
- stories about new real estate developments
- stories about this pizza place and their never-ending fight with BC students
Adam's pro Turkey, anti Eagle bias is
evident.
one more
- stories about Confederate Nazi Trump supporters
He's written about Howie Carr?
When?
That has to be on the list
There are many stories on here about the Pats and Sox!
It's like Adam is a decent human being!
If you don't like the content that Adam provides for free access 24/7/365 days/year, have fun at the other sites in Boston that provide the same level of local coverage. We will play tiny violins when you leave.
#Trumpland
Never forget....
I envision a lot of BC kids changing their appearance to thwart
these systems.
"Nice beard!"
"Yeah, I got 86'ed at Mary Ann's. This'll get me back in."
The fact that such extreme
The fact that such extreme measures are undertaken to violate and enforce this law might be a sign it's time to reevaluate if this law makes sense.