How my fake ID led to a baptism of warm beer and rock’n’roll
In this Herald series, we asked prominent artists, comedians, authors and journalists to write about their “summer that changed everything”.
By Callan Boys
Captain’s log, stardate January 2002. I was into science-fiction, Ian Fleming novels and the band Wilco, in that order. High school was finished, film studies at the University of Newcastle would begin sometime around March.
Because I was 17 years old, with lots of free time, I was picking up lots of shifts at McDonald’s. Most of that cash was spent at JB Hi-Fi and the local comic-book shop, the rest on Toohey’s Red longnecks. Life was good.
Ryan Adams at the Metro Theatre, January 2002. Back of author’s head potentially pictured in crowd.Credit: 2002
Being a 17-year-old straight after high school could be annoying, though, particularly on weekends when most of your mates – not to mention, girlfriend – were old enough to hit Newcastle’s myriad pubs (start at the Empire on Hunter Street, finish at the Great Northern), and you were stuck at home watching Licence to Kill for the seventh time.
This age-gap issue would be upgraded from irksome to a bona fide crisis when Drum Media reported singer-songwriter Ryan Adams was coming to Australia.
Adams was fourth on my list of interests that summer, long before The New York Times published accounts of the punk-rock folk hero being a gross creep and manipulator of women. (I skip the bloke on iTunes now.)
The gig would be a two-and-a-bit-hour train trip from Newcastle to Sydney, where Adams would be playing at the Metro Theatre on George Street. The Metro, however, was strictly for alt-country fans aged 18 and over. A dodgy identification would need to be secured.
Due to an appreciation of Red Dwarf and reruns of The Sullivans, I didn’t quite have the connections to buy a fake ID on the skate-park black market.
Mercifully, the Commonwealth government was yet to invest in hologram technology, and with a desktop scanner and outdated copy of Photoshop I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to digitally snip a 3 from my passport’s serial number and paste it over my birth year’s niggling 4. Print the new version on glossy cardboard and hello, Mr Adams.
Minor passport fraud one day, cashing Pan Am pilot cheques the next.Credit:
I have since ordered a martini at Dukes Bar in London and gambled in Macau, but I’ve never felt more like James Bond than sitting in a studio room at the Southern Cross Hotel, wearing Kepper-brand cargo shorts and fixing a doctored copy of my passport over the original document. (Using contact paper, by the way, not sticky tape. This was Catch Me If You Can-level stuff.)
Would this cunning design work? Could my updated travel papers thwart the Metro’s keen-eyed bouncers? Yes, and I used it three nights later to see the White Stripes, too.
What a week in Sydney that was. A baptism of warm dregs and second-hand Stuyvie smoke. Red Eye Records. The Annandale Hotel. Golden goddamn Century. Was that Rose Byrne at Ryan Adams? (Yes.) Abbie Cornish? (Pretty sure.) Australia’s great master of applied poetry, Bruce Dawe? (I mean, it kind of looks like him, but doesn’t he live in Geelong or something?)
The White Stripes at the Metro, the same week as Ryan Adams. Much better than the summer of ’69.Credit: Domino Postiglione
A trip to Bondi, sandy feet on the bus. A vintage Jaws T-shirt, Glebe Markets, $20 cash. Many late-night innings at Bar Ace. “So, let me get this straight. Once the security guard lets you in, you can just order any drink you want, and you don’t have to show proof of age again? Incredible.”
I caught the train home feeling like I had been dumped by a big, sweaty, wonderful wave. Was it too late to transfer my university enrolment to UTS? Absolutely.
But the fake passport granted me access to Hunter Street’s pubs, too, at least until late March when I met Newcastle Security Solutions’ own Columbo on the Empire door. “Mind if I peel back the contact paper, mate? I think the police will be very interested to see the job you’ve done.”
Callan Boys is the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide.
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