"He said we should be scared of him," smirks Mike McHugh. "He walked through the door, but after a scuffle, we threw him out." The drunken athlete then threatened to bring on the entire Harvard football team.

"We've been spit on before," McHugh adds. "It's their right to be in the bar--they come at you full force. We don't react to that well at all."

Bouncers also describe a phenomenon that seems difficult to explain. Some underage students, they say, simply present their real driver's licenses or student I.D.s.

"Last week, a guy gives me I.D. that says he won't be 21 until August." Bill, the bouncer at Grendel's, said. When the minor was turned down, "the guy barks, 'I'll take my business elsewhere.' He had a lot of faith in the idea that he was of age."

Of course, since bouncers usually turn people away tactfully, students may forget that this is war, with real consequences for some of the losers.

The manager at the Pro says he takes seriously his legal obligation to confiscate I.D.s he thinks are fake. As proof, he'll show the curious a shoebox-sized tin can filled three quarters to the top with fake I.D.s.

"Head of the Charles weekend we pulled 15 or 20 in one night," says Rick Kocen, a clerk at the Pro.

The people who get their I.D.s taken are always upset. Kocen says he refers them to the police on the corner, which effectively deters them, but some go to extreme lengths to retrieve their sacred fakes.

"One time a mother came in here asking us to give her her daughter's fake I.D. back," Kocen says.