Your 22-year-old friends are headed to the bars. Your 21st birthday isn’t until next August. However, the escape from a lonely Saturday night rests in your wallet.

When it comes to checking for fake IDs in DeKalb, bar employees generally have specific things for which they look.

Andrew Hrubec, a manager at Fatty’s Pub and Grille, 1312 W. Lincoln Highway, said bouncers have a book of all state IDs and driver’s licenses that they must be familiar with or can reference if an out-of-state ID is in question. Things like holograms cannot actually be duplicated on fakes, he said.

Hrubec also takes height and weight into account and pays attention to the mannerisms of the person presenting the ID.

If a person is caught with a fake, it is taken away and kept in the office at Fatty’s.

“We have a whole drawer full of IDs that no one has come back to claim,” Hrubec said.

The first thing Megan Ream, a bartender at Fatty’s, checks for is to make sure the license has a blue bar and not a red one. Since not everyone gets a new license immediately after their birthday, if the license has a red bar, Ream double-checks the date.

The next thing she checks is hair color and eye color and the actual quality of the ID. A fake ID generally is not as thick as a real license and doesn’t have the organ donor information or bar code on the back of the license, she said.

At Molly’s Eatery & Drinkery, 1022 W. Lincoln Highway, Dan Lang, a bouncer, has some tricks he uses to judge if an ID is fake. If the picture, height or weight is questionable, Lang asks the person some of the information on the ID, like the address or birthday.

Lang notes a difference in checking the IDs of men and women. He says it is tougher to check girls’ IDs because they have more of an opportunity to alter their appearances with make-up and accessories.