Nightlight News

Recently, a group of Nightlight employees and volunteers ventured to the far-away land of Wake County, NC to a Budweiser distribution facility. Not for funneling beer, but for funneling information about the State of North Carolina's Alcohol Law Enforcement laws and restrictions. See, we at the Nightlight are one of the few remaining all-ages venues in the Triangle. As such, we, from time-to-time, get visited by members of the state's ALE. They want to be sure that we are supporting responsible drinking - and responsible serving does not include serving drinks to individuals who have not yet busted the 21 bubble.
It is a tricky thing because of you, the thirsty under-age show attendee. ALE is leading us to believe that there is a cadre of underage conspirators, hiding at home in dimly lit rooms with scotch tape, exacto knives, baby powder, and other tools of the trade attempting to doctor their IDs in a quest for a plastic card that falsely identifies them as 21 and over. Worse, there is an army of underage lushes impersonating over-age co-conspirators. For shame!! Don't you know you place our club into the risky position of being closed down for serving to you clever kids who seek nothing more than to get drunk, or at least feel slightly loose and slishy in order to ease social interaction and heighten your apparent excitement as you explore new or familiar music forms, as the case may be? We must reach an understanding! While we would love to serve you beer in defiance of this age-based discrimination, we must not place our own operation at risk of losing our license and being shut down.
Hmmmmmmmmmm. This is a razor's edge we tread between our sincere but unlawful wish to serve you a beer as you enjoy your bands AND your sincere desire to be civilly disobedient as you exercise your own auto-legislated right to drink at the age of 9, 12 or perhaps 16. See, if we were to be caught serving you clever minors alcohol, we would most likely lose the right to sell the "adults" beer as well. If we didn't lose the right, we would face hefty fines which might restrict our very fiscal powers to purchase said fizzy/fuzzy beverages or "pay da rent". I am not a fan of "the man" and do not seek to defend what I feel are silly laws. However, short of arming ourselves and creating a Waco-style encampment where we attempt to defend our own self-created rule of law (defined through community standards divorced from those of the dominant political structure) from the end of a barrel (which would suck mightily and probably be "bad for business") there must be some way to come to a compromise. This subject will be examined further in this on-going series I call "Nightlight All-Ages Law Dis-Forcement Chronicles". Stay Tuned.