February 05, 2026
Michael Tanenbaum/Dirty Franks
Dirty Franks, the Center City dive bar at 13th and Pine streets, now has an age limit of 25 and older to enter the bar. Co-owner Jody Sweitzer says the new house rule is meant to address a recent uptick in apparent fake IDs that are difficult to detect using scanners and physical inspections.
When a bouncer at Dirty Franks was presented with a fake ID featuring a photo of Benjamin Franklin two weeks ago — and it scanned as legitimate — the Center City dive bar knew it was time to turn away the throngs of college-aged patrons who have been flocking there in recent months.
"It literally had Benjamin Franklin's face on it. It scanned. It hologrammed. The age was 24," Dirty Franks co-owner Jody Sweitzer said. "We kept it, and that's when I got together with my staff and decided that 25 and above — for right now — is the number that we have to adhere to for our house rule."
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The bar at 13th and Pine streets, a neighborhood institution since 1933, now has a sign on its front door to let customers know they can't come in unless they're at least 25 and have a valid ID. The decision wasn't made lightly, but Sweitzer said the bar's problems with young people had been snowballing for months.
A few weeks before Dirty Franks got the Ben Franklin ID, Sweitzer said someone had called police claiming the bar was serving people underage. When officers showed up, the bartender and staff walked police through their process for validating IDs.
"The police looked at what we were doing and said, 'We totally understand.' And then walked away," Sweitzer said.
In late January, a bouncer at Dirty Franks was presented with a fake ID that had a picture of Benjamin Franklin on the front. Even though it was obviously fake, the bar's scanner recognized the ID as legitimate. That prompted the new age limit, which will remain in effect until Dirty Franks finds a more reliable system to detect fake IDs.
Dirty Franks is a lively place to grab drinks, but late last year the bar started getting rushed with young people on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. They would show up in Ubers and form lines outside the entrance. Some of them would bring their own alcohol, even though Dirty Franks isn't a BYOB, and many would vape inside in defiance of the bar's rules.
The doorman and bouncer noticed nearly all of the IDs they were getting from this crowd were for 21-year-olds.
"My problem is not that I knew they were fake IDs," Sweitzer said. "We were suspecting, and when the IDs were constantly scanning valid, it was baby steps to try to figure out what other tests we can do. We started understanding, slowly, and then quickly, that there's a mass amount of fake IDs."
Sometimes, the bouncer would ask simple questions of the customers who raised suspicion. Many of them couldn't even say where they lived or give their Zodiac signs.
"We are just trying show due diligence, save the bar and be legal," Sweitzer said. "Anyone knows that if you get caught serving an underage person, you get fined. You get closed down, and then that is points on your liquor license. It's hard to get liquor liability insurance to begin with."
Dirty Franks initially tried restricting the number of people the bar let inside, but that often left crowds standing at the corner. Regular patrons complained that they had nowhere to sit, and some took their frustrations to Reddit to vent about the changing atmosphere. Sweitzer said she suspects Dirty Franks became a sudden obsession on social media in recent months, prompting young people to flock there to take pictures and score status points.
"We have always been a dive bar. We're not a college bar," Sweitzer said. "We have lawyers, doctors, artists, street people. Anybody is welcome to come in here. What was not welcome was the onslaught of people coming just because they were told to go here on social media. It was just a different mentality we've never seen and we're not used to. It was inappropriate and just not what Dirty Frank's is."
Dirty Franks, at 13th and Pine streets, is only allowing customers 25 and older until further notice. The new house rule is posted on the bar's front door.
Sweitzer consulted with her attorney and a representative from the Pennsylvania Tavern Association, a trade group in Harrisburg, to make sure the 25-and-up age limit was legal. Even though 21 is the legal drinking age under federal law, most states, including Pennsylvania, allow bars to create house rules that may include an age limit.
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which is tasked with enforcing state laws on discrimination, notes on its website that age discrimination only applies to people 40 and older.
Sweitzer said she researched the proliferation of fake IDs and found that it's relatively easy to get a high-tech, scannable and seemingly legitimate license online for about $100. The technology used to imitate IDs has gotten so sophisticated that it's difficult for bars to keep up with devices and methods to detect them.
Dirty Franks has had an ID scanner for decades, Sweitzer said, and the bar has followed guidance from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to both scan and physically inspect IDs. One type of scanner on the market reads both sides of a license and compares it with real licenses from a subscription database, but Pennsylvania is not one of the 44 states in the system, Sweitzer said.
"When and if I am able to find a piece of machinery, a scanner, that legitimately determines whether an ID is fake or not, I will gladly purchase it and we will go back to 21 and older," she said.
Since creating the new rule about two weeks ago, Sweitzer said things have normalized at Dirty Franks. When she received a card from a woman who wanted to celebrate her 23rd birthday at the bar, she explained that the policy isn't personal.
"She totally understood," Sweitzer said. "The few people that I've talked to under 25 totally get it. We're working really hard to solve this problem as quickly as possible."
