Evanston's liquor board considers closing down The Keg

Evanston Mayor Elizabeth Tisdahl may close The Keg of Evanston because of repeated charges of underage drinking, she said at a Liquor Control Review Board hearing Friday.

Police cited more than a dozen people for underage consumption of alcohol at The Keg, 810 Grove St., on Jan. 6, the most recent incident in what Evanston Chief of Police Richard Eddington called a long history of problems. The city shut the bar for two days in 2010 when an underage patron was injured in a fight, and for seven days in 2005 when a 19-year-old shot and killed another patron in the bar.

The Keg has a reputation around the North Shore for letting in underage drinkers, Eddington said at the hearing.

"To me, the solution is no license," he said. "It's easy. The problem goes away."

Tisdahl said she will announce her decision by Tuesday. She will consider the advice of the board, which consists of four volunteer members, as well as arguments and evidence from lawyers representing the city and The Keg.

At the hearing, city attorney Grant Farrar presented a record of police calls at The Keg dating back to 2005, reviews from the website Yelp and screenshots from what Farrar described as a Twitter account belonging to The Keg.

Farrar said messages from the account included "Tuesday equals booze day. IDs are optional. Kidding!" and "Underage townies comparing fake IDs: ‘Oh my God, I can't believe we got in.'"

The Keg's owner, Tom Migon, said he was not behind the account and had not been aware of its existence until the day of the hearing. He does not use social media, he said.

"I just bought a phone and sent my first email not that long ago," Migon said.

Tisdahl said whether or not The Keg ran the account, she was concerned by the number of underage drinking incidents at the bar. No other establishment in Evanston has had a similar volume of violations, she said.

Since his last meeting with the liquor board in May 2010, Migon has required each patron to provide two forms of identification, he said.

But Eddington said some of the accepted forms of ID lack relevant information like photos and birth dates. Keg bouncer Shannon Fanning testified that he accepts university IDs and debit cards in addition to state IDs.

Migon's lawyer, Todd Stephens, blamed increasingly sophisticated fake IDs for the bar's failure to stop underage drinkers. Stephens gave board members copies of a recent Chicago Tribune article about minors purchasing highly realistic IDs on Chinese websites.

"It's no different than trying to police a good counterfeit hundred-dollar bill," Stephens said. "These things are perfect now."

Liquor board member Byron Wilson said more than 50 years of running a liquor store in Skokie showed him the impossibility of catching every person with a fake ID. The Keg is under severe pressure, he said.

"I do not think The Keg goes out of its way in any shape or fashion to say, ‘You are underage, and we will serve you liquor,'" Wilson said.

But Patrick Hughes, another liquor board member, said teens from neighboring suburbs like Lake Bluff drive into Evanston because they know they can get into The Keg. He suggested the bar is not doing enough to combat this reputation.

"I feel like you're saying, ‘We need help,'" Hughes told Migon. "You said that the last time we met."

Tisdahl echoed Hughes' skepticism, saying she finds it "troubling" that after owning The Keg for 19 years, Migon still does not have a solution to underage drinking. She does not want to close an Evanston business, she said, but she needs assurance that Migon will address the problem.

Migon said he would do anything the board suggested, from hiring more security to requiring three IDs.

"I'm sweating right now," Migon said. "It's like waking up with a cancer in my brain every morning… This is my livelihood, it's my job, it's what I do. I'm taking it very seriously."

rebeccacohen2013@u.northwestern.edu