New Orleans Eats Forums at NOLAEats.com

Some of you folks that hang there and know the mgmt there might be interested in reading this post that was just put up on a very busy internet forum.
If there is a good response to this, I would be willing to get someone I know to post the reply.

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So I went to Avenue Pub on Saturday around 10 to meet up w/ some friends that were there. TA was leaving with his gf when me and my 3 other friends arrived. We all sat down and joined our group of friends that were already there and had been drinking for a while. One of my friends went to the bar to order himself a drink. The bartender refused to serve him and said she needed to see all 4 of our IDs so he could get his own SINGLE drink. He came and asked us for our IDs (me thinking he was buying a pitcher or something). 1 minute later he came back and was pissed because the bartender still wouldnt serve him! She said we all had to go show her our faces so she could compare them to the IDs so he could order his own single drink. At this point, pissed off, all 4 of us and 3 friends that had been there all walked out.

What is this bitch/avenue pub's problem? We are all 26 or older. He was ordering his own drink for himself. He got our IDs. This place has been cut off my list of places to drink. And they sure need the business! It had maybe 15 people in the bar at 10 pm on a saturday night. I dont care how many beers they have...the only way I am going back to that place is to get food from Janitas and only for take out!

This is a bit of a problem there. Beth, the bartender, would card her own mother. I am sure there is a little more to the story, I mean how hard is it to show your id? Everyone over 16 should carry their license with them at all times. But I was carded my first time there, and was somewhat shocked as well.

I do not carry my id with me all the time. I am 50 years old. I have two children over 21. I would be pissed as hell if this happened to me and I would not likely go back. In a city where my 17 year old has been in bars for at least two years, this is crazy.

Turbodog wrote:I do not carry my id with me all the time. I am 50 years old. I have two children over 21. I would be pissed as hell if this happened to me and I would not likely go back. In a city where my 17 year old has been in bars for at least two years, this is crazy.

From what I got out of the story, she wanted all of them to get up and come to the bar so she could compare IDs to faces. She should have took her ass over to them.

I just wanted to thank you for posting this in a public forum and sharing your experiences at the our bar. We love hearing good things from our customers but we also learn from the negative comments and hopefully find ways to do a better job. I wanted to share the management perspective on this issue. Many of these things you may already be aware of so forgive me if I restate the obvious. The law states that you must be 21 to be IN a bar AND have ID to prove it. Just being 21 is not enough. And it doesnt matter if you are drinking alcohol or just ordering food. Thats the law.
Three things minors do to enter and drink in a bar:
1) The under ‘21’ set hangs back behind their over 21 friends when they enter the bar.. They then get their friends to buy their drinks in the hopes that they will not be noticed. This was actually the set up for the stings that Vice ran in July when the police busted several bars in the city for serving minors. This is why so many bars card at the door and not the bar. We do not want to add a bouncer for many reasons and we do not have the staff for table service so we must card at the bar. Our cameras positioned above the bar that catch us carding people and give us back up evidence in case we ever get raided.
2)The under 21 set frequently use their friends or older siblings ID to get into a bar. We do not have good enough eyes or bright enough lights to see if the person sitting at the table 10 feet away is the same as the person on the ID. Both of these situations happen frequently and with the colleges back in session we always see a rise in this sort of issue. On a busy night this happens multiple times during the night.
3) fake ids are very common now and many are quite good. When a bar gets raided everyone is asked to show an id. The minors who fooled the bar with their good fake IDs will tell the police that they weren’t carded because they don’t want to show the police their fake id…or their siblings id. Because we card at the bar, under the cameras we have proof that we did our job to the best of our ability.
Asking for id serves other purposes also. It tells the bartender how drunk a person is before they are served, people who come in to try to sell drugs to our customers do not like showing their IDs, people who come in to rob us, steal purses, break into the video poker machines do not like to show their IDs. I’m not suggesting that you ‘looked ‘ like someone who would do any of these things. We are equal opportunity ID checkers.
We take carding very seriously, probably more seriously than many places in town. The fines are tremendous if you are caught serving minors and a raid where several minors were found in the bar could put us out of business. Bartenders go to jail when they are caught serving minors and in this bar they lose their jobs. Beth and Alfred are professional bartenders. They make their living on tips. They like having lots of people in the bar drinking good beer and enjoying themselves. We do not approach any of these issues with a careless or haphazard attitude. If we serve minors and then they go out and get in a wreck and hurt themselves or another person we are liable. Every bar has different carding standards and procedures this is how we choose to handle it and most of our customers appreciate the safe, low drama result it produces.
We practice the same level of care in carding that we pratice in our beer selection. We are not a rowdy bourbon street bourbon street bar or a college kid hangout. This approach may seem unusual for a bar in New Orleans but so is draft line cleaning and we are pretty anal about that also. If you were carded when you arrived then I apologize that you were asked for your ID a second time. Please understand that we see hundreds of customers a night and we are human …sometimes we forget.
That’s the legal perspective…now the ‘old lady” perspective from the owner is that once you reach a certain age all young people look the same. I hope I don’t offend you when I say that most 26 year olds don’t look appreciably different than 20 year olds and there are many 19yr olds that I would swear are way over that age. Just keep this in mind: should my bartender pay a fine in the thousands, go to jail and lose his job because someone didn’t feel like showing their id? We would love the chance to see you again. Come in the bar during the day to see me and I’ll buy you a beer. Just remember to bring your ID.- Polly

I'm on both boards. Mind if I copy this over?

I want to make a few points.

While the owner didn't exactly come out and say it, I suspect this new mandatory, aggressive carding policy is for two basic reasons:
One, previously this joint was crawling with riffraff--drunks, bums, sleeping vagrants, drug dealers, prostitutes. Basically, my kind of place. The aforementioned folks either don't have ID or prefer not to show it. So, after refusing to produce one, Voila, they can't stay. Problem solved. If the bar started profiling patrons and only carded certain people, they could run into legal trouble. Therefore, everyone gets carded.

Secondly, I think the policy simply reflects the attitude of the owner. I've had previous business dealings with Polly. I found them similar to her current carding policy. I'll leave it at that.

On another front, I want to take issue with the pricing structure at the Avenue. This is one of those places that should be right in my wheelhouse, except for the fact that the beers are too expensive. The pints are a dollar to a dollar and a half higher than they are elsewhere. This may not sound like much of an issue, but this kind of thing really adds up. If they were more in keeping with other bars, the Avenue would be in my regular rotation. As it stands, I rarely go there at all.

They used to post the prices on the board above the bar. Last time I was there, they removed the prices. Makes me wonder what they've got next up their sleeve. $8 pints, anyone?

$8 pints? Of what?

That is absurd. There are few beers int he world worth $8/pint.

Doctor_Technical wrote:I'm on both boards. Mind if I copy this over?

Thats fine, thanks!

Turbodog wrote:$8 pints? Of what?

That is absurd. There are few beers int he world worth $8/pint.

Crescent City Brewhouse, 8 bucks what a rip off.