Or alternatively, be a man, suck it up, and wait until you turn 21. That's what I did, and it builds character.

When you turn 21, you will understand why we do not want to be around little 14 year olds while being completely sober. You will also understand why you will want to buy a drink at the concert.

Or you can just do what #1 said.

And for the record, I wouldn't mind trying a vodka and children's tears.

Your taste in music sucks. Get bent.

If your favorite bands don't play there, get involved. The people who participate in Vera influence what gets booked.

they have a game, counting the dirty words

I am so taken back to those years when I discovered the taste of jizz

Alternately, call it a "Pedophile".

Being a kid sucks, but at least you don't have to get a job or pay rent.

Besides, I already deal with 18+ shows where I'm forcefully separated from the main floor because I want a beer. If you really want to get pissy, take out your anger on our Puritan mommy-state culture. You wouldn't deal with this shit so much in Europe.

Direct your efforts against this whole "think of the children!" crap, and maybe we can have a beer together someday.

Why stop there? Just call it sex with children. That would be interesting to hear people order at a bar.

I'd love to hear that at a bar with some truly jaded bartender:

"I'll have a 'Sex on the Beach'"
Yeah, sure...
"Can you give me a 'Screaming Orgasm'?"
Unh hunh, haven't heard that before.
"Can I have 'Sex With Your Teenaged Daughter'?"
WHAT?!

The brain's center of reasoning and problem solving is among the last to mature, a new study graphically reveals. The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood.

A time-lapse 3-D movie that compresses 15 years of human brain maturation, ages 5 to 20, into seconds shows gray matter - the working tissue of the brain's cortex - diminishing in a back-to-front wave, likely reflecting the pruning of unused neuronal connections during the teen years.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/8410.php

The rest of you people: yes, I prefer going to 21+ shows because I've left my teen years far, far behind me and I want to spend my time with my peers, drunk or no. But don't get up on your high horses about Preston's taste in music or his perceived whining. I bet you've listened to shittier tunes than those in your time and, frankly, you're whining right now. It's pathetic that you "adults" can't behave at least as well as this fourteen-year-old.

I grew up in a town in the literal middle of nowhere, 200 miles from every major urban center, and so pathetic we considered Lubbock, fucking Texas to be a major urban center. I had to travel to Albuquerque and El Paso if I wanted to see a concert and every one of those concerts was a goddamn stadium show with $60 tickets and thousands of people who didn't actually like the band, but were just happy some band had deigned to grace us with their presence.

Suck it up, go to all ages shows, and be fucking grateful for what you've got.

Back when I was your age , we had to start our own bands, get fucked up on our own, play in basements and VFW halls, learn to wipe our own asses and didn't expect grown ups to do SHIT for us. Now you've got rock and roll camps to teach you how be a "rock star", myspace for networking all over the world and tidy kid safe places like Vera.

In other words, shut the hell up little man with your sense of entitlement.

Rant off.

So you should be pretty happy that you get to go to shows at all, and accept the fact that when you go to shows PERIOD, you may have to deal with some drunks.

Most adults like to drink, some of us can do it without getting stupid and annoying, but some can't. The guy who was bugging you at your show would probably bug me just as much, even though I'd have a drink in my hand, too.

Oh, and btw kid? Annoying people come in many varieties, and only some of them are the drunk kind. Putting up with people who suck is just part of life, so you better get used to it now, or you're going to spend a loooong time being even more miserable than you would be anyway.

Preston, I know it's hard, man. I grew up during the days of the Teen Dance Ordinance and RKCNDY. I know how you feel, I do.

But you should know how us 21+ feel about going to an all-ages show. It is NOT FUN. AT ALL. The mere presence of you impressionable minors relegates me to the "bar area" since apparently I'm going to hand you my $11 drink if I try and go upfront with it. Do I get drunk at 21+ shows? Sometimes. Not always. But it's ever so satisfying to move freely, drink in hand.

One day I hope you understand.

Love, Grandma Meags

When the fuck did an under-21 person do something lame at a show in Seattle?

My experience is that under-drinking-age kids at rock shows in Seattle are far more behaved and polite than yappy shrilling 21+ fucks who talk upfront during a band's performance.

Remember the days when Graceland used to do double shows? i.e. the all ages show, then the 21+ show? Anyone remember how much quieter the all ages show was?

So, please. Someone who can't stand all ages shows explain to me how an all ages show detracts from the concert experience aside from the fact that you may not be able to carry your drink over to the front of the stage (for which you can blame the Liquor Board.)

From where I came from (a much bigger city), people were happy to attend all ages shows because of the diversity in the crowd. More to the point, "all ages" was exactly that there.

Here, "all ages" shows are really "under 21 types because people above 21 in Seattle have some inexplicable issues with youngsters" shows.

I'm not saying that "suck it up and wait 'til you're as old, creaky, and consumed by hate as we are" isn't a legitimate answer; indeed, I'm chomping at the bit to use that very line in casual conversation. But doesn't the little runt's complaint dovetail just a little with many of our own concerns about night life, the nanny state, and access to the arts?

There needs to be a better solution than denying access to music in order to accommodate drinking, or denying access to drink in order to accommodate youth.

Oh, and the salt of a child's tears would make a terrible mixer for vodka. My first thought was that gin would be better, but really, tears go best with brown liquor . . . Jameson's, maybe?

This is something I definitely didn't understand when I was a teenager whining about the lack of under 21 things to do.

It's mostly because they do not want to risk losing their liquor license.

That being said, when Preston is 21, he will appreciate not being around teenagers. But until you reach that point, the concept of why you would have a problem with all ages shows is utterly baffling. And unlike, apparently, most of the commenters here, I am young enough to actually remember what it was like to be under 21.

Sod off.

You get this sense of these losers futile efforts to find in a beer glass the ephemeral unfulfilled energy and passion of their now over teen years. It's all down hill for you now...

Give up music and take up sports. It's cheaper, you'll get in shape and you'll enjoy it more.

And come on. "Children's tears"? That was pretty good. Better than "Well, fuck your mom!"

A 14yo kid asks a question, and all the "much older and more mature" readers jump all over his ass, call him names and generally treat him like garbage. Y'all should be fucking ashamed.

Now shut the fuck up when grown folks are talking.

Besides, even if the CYHSY show was all-ages, would your parents have actually let you go? Mine were firmly convinced that if I ever went to a show at RCKNDY or Green River CC, I was going to end the night raped and drugged. But hey, you can certainly blame your miserable teen years on 21+ shows if that's the story you want in your life.

Get involved with the local music scene-- you'll be happier with yourself in the long run.

and though it makes us sound older than we are, the "back when i was young" line works here, as the end of the TDO and beginning of the Vera and all that really have made a difference in the last six or seven years or whatever it's been. there are a lot of us who know the difference it made, having become of age right around that time.

that said, if one is still using the "but it's my birthday!" line, it's a baby thing no matter how surprisingly coherent one's plea is, and is icky poo. Tough it out, little buddy, and in the mean time, take advantage of the rad all-ages stuff we have in the city (if eric doesn't kill it first.....jk jk)

Enjoy what you get now, I guarantee the all ages shows have more music fans in attendance and the experience is better.

Dingdingding! we have a winner!

your time will come, preston.

It's not the drinking that's important to me in all-ages show avoidance - it's the kid avoidance. Believe me, if I could go to an over-30s (but under-retirement-age) New Year's party, I would - drunken 22-year-olds puking on their expensive shoes doesn't really do it for me, either.

That being said, you had most of us with you until the birthday part of the whine.

I understand your plight. When I was about sixteen, I wrote an e-mail to Of Montreal and gave them all sorts of reasons as to why they should host an all-ages shows. Not surprisingly, I never received a response to my plea, and I am now happy that I was met with silence instead of some glib from an intern.

While I didn't get to see every band that I liked, I certainly went to a whole butt load of shows when I was in high school. I probably went to more shows at normally 21+ venues than any of the strictly all-ages club. Furthermore , a lot of good indie bands will play all ages shows. The band you wanted just happened to not do that this time around. It's a bummer, but, you probably won't even remember that this happened five years down the line. I certainly can't remember all of the bands I missed.

Also, it sucks that you can't do what you want on your birthday, but try imagining what your birthday would've been like if your boyfriend made you get an AIDS test at Harborview STD Center because, according to him, "all of the Planned Parenthoods were booked" and, when you get there, you find out that it takes a week to get the test results so you're thinking on prom night and the last day of school that you have AIDS and then, upon finding out a week later that you don't have AIDS, your boyfriend ditches you on your birthday so that he can go to a strip club. Now that's a disappointing birthday

There'll be other shows and there'll be other birthdays. Maybe next year will be better.

I remember one of my favorite bands came to town and played a 21+ show -- the week before my 21st birthday. (I didn't even drink! I just wanted to see the band, so it seemed really unjust.) So yeah, it can suck. And when you get into going to shows as young as you did, it seems like a terrible wait for 21. But you'll get through it.

Just promise you won't turn into one of these "when I was your age I walked both ways uphill! In the snow!" jerks someday.

buahaha

"Oh Preston, don't listen to these crusty old people, you sweet intelligent little articulate man! You're time will come! One day you'll be able to cum...I mean rock too!"

Vomit. Since you feel so entitled to shit Preston, can't you just ask your rich mommy and daddy to rent Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for your very own privite wank party?

Oh, here's we go, getting all mean and crusty...forgeting how it was when you were 14 and so deprived.....