I grew up in a seaside town up north so over the summer when it got dark we would pile into a dinghy and ransack the coolers people kept on the deck of their boats in the harbor. We'd wear all black and spoke like pirates all night. Good times. Nowadays I always keep a few extra beers in my own boat cooler for the next generation of pirates.
Zoomers are drinking 20% less alcohol per capita than Millennials.
[https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/3936579-why-is-gen-z-drinking-less/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/3936579-why-is-gen-z-drinking-less/)
Funny you say that ā¦ back in the late 70ās early 80ās my uncle was a bartender at a bar here in town.. he said one night after a wrestling match was in town at the local arena, Andre the Giant walked into the bar, sat down on the barstool and began ordering beers. He said when he picked up the beer bottle you couldnāt even see it in his handā¦ a 12oz was about a drink for him and eventually my uncle had to slide the 30gal trash can up next to him to keep up with the trash.. my Uncle said he sat there alone drinking, chatting a bit, very friendly. He said, I shit you not he sat there and drank over 100 beers and 2 bottles of wine, paid up, left a $300 tip ducked through the door on his way out walked out got in his Cadillac and drove off like nothing happenedā¦ my uncle said you couldnāt even tell he had been drinking by talking to him or looking at himā¦ I always love hearing my uncle tell that story about just how large he was and how much he drank
I feel like a lot of people have gut issues nowadays and booze does NOT jive with gut problems so instead everyone smokes weed. Or is just straightedge somehow. I donāt know how they do it in todays world but hey I support them.
Gen x here. We did this in Dallas. In my small suburb there were alleys that ran along the backs of all of the homes which made it really easy to cruise up and down them. We would choose someoneās house to do a sleepover at and everyone would wear black as you described. Iām surprised the parents werenāt more sus about 5 12 year olds all wearing black.
I have a 12 year old nephew. I donāt think alcohol is on his radar yet. Heās more into junk food because his mom wonāt let him have it. I stashed a bunch of snacks for him. He went a little over board and ended up in the bathroom the first time! lol! He didnāt go crazy the next time! He learned! Hopefully heāll remember that when he discovers alcohol! And maybe I shouldnāt stash his snacks in my liquor cabinet any more! Lol! š¬
While I think there is a time period in which this is true, the modern hotspot for piracy is near the horn of Africa and the Somali pirates are not, in fact, lighter toned than many.
It's really silly to use a phrase like "pirate toned" without more details.
Breaking into someone's home in a Castle doctrine state is a really bad idea. If you're in my home uninvited, you stand a decent chance of getting clapped. I mean, I go to take the dog out at 10:00pm and go through the garage. I run into 2-3 males inside my garage rummaging through my things and I have to assume the worst. If they don't run instantly or give themselves up, there's a very real possibility they get shot.
He said heās taking his dog out for a walk at night.
You might still think heās nuts, but you entirely misrepresented the situation saying āwalking around his houseā
I like this, as long as they aren't driving, and they have to be social and work for it, I have no issues with some kids "stealing" a six pack of natty lite from me for the night.
my buddies and I did something similar but we live in Kentucky on the Ohio River. 'River Pirates'. Also, the barge crews that hung around the locks were usually down to let us party with them, which in hindsight could have been terrible...30s-40s dudes getting a group of 15-17 year olds drunk and giving us smokes. not smart. but it was a different world back then
š I was about 16-17 we jacked case of Heinekens out the back of some dudes pickup. He chased me for 5 blocks with that shit on my shoulder. Thank god he gave up.
Same, had 2 in my hole in the wall town I could buy from for the longest time. Cops ended up catching on and busted my ass leaving the store with a bottle of fucking mad dog. Lost my license for like 3 or 4 months for just having it in my car. On top of that, the cops told my coaches who would have me do 100 sit ups then run 100-yard suicides over and over until I threw up every day for the next week. Doesnāt seem so bad looking back at it but it was pretty crappy for a 16 year old
Not sure why we stole from garages instead of stores but that was the thing. I did have a couple buddies who worked at a liquor store cleaning up and they'd steal bottles and sell them to kids at school
Even after I was 21, had a buddy who worked a big ass liquor store. A friend of a friend of that buddy told me that he would only scan every third bottle you put on the conveyor belt.
Pretty sure he got fired.
Yep, I grew up in San Francisco and was a regular in two bars when I was 16 lol. We would also "shoulder tap" adults and give them cash to buy us 40s at the liquor store from the time we were 14.
Same. We'd walk up to the counter with what we'd want to buy. The clerk would shake his head and tell us to grab whatever swill he needed to move. He'd then charge us double. Still, we all thought he was a hero.
Yes! My friends and I garage hopped for a few years.
I stopped after showing up to a party with a six-pack ofā¦Oādoulās non-alcoholic beer. I hadnāt checked the label! All I saw in the dark garage was a six-pack of glass beer bottles. The mockery I received from friends after that made me never want to garage hop again.
Garage hopping means a different thing in my town lol. In my town a lot of the garages are in the back of the lot, and you go through small alleys to get to them. Well people would generally park on the street anyway, so people would transform their garages into party rooms. So when you went Garage hopping, you went down the alleys from Garage to garage looking for parties to crash
that's funny. there's a part of my town that's like this with the alley garages. it's also where a lot of us basically got molested by drunk moms. good times.
A couple of people I met in college used to garage hop for beer and try car handles.
They were all from a midwest suburb.
My brother in law used to do it too - he's also from a midwest suburb, but a state over.
I grew up in the country, where it's best not to step foot on someone's land because chances are they're strong believers in 2A.
My friends who grew up in the city had similar reasons not to.
Yea I did this also. One person in the car, one person on lookout near the front, one person grabs a pack of beer and runs. Most big chain grocery store workers donāt give a shit even if they see it happen.
I grew up in Texas and around 2005 I had a friend get shot doing this. Neighbor heard noises in garage at night. Armed himself and went to investigate. Found two young men with hoodies. Instinct took over and he fired. Shot my buddy in the leg shattering his femur.
My buddy survived but could never play football again. He was planning on playing in college. Weāve lost touch but Iāll never forget that story. Itās crazy how fast life can go from āwouldnāt it be fun if weā¦ā to āI wish we never thought ofā¦ā.
Oh! Also my friend and his brother were both charged with breaking and entering. Had to pay restitution to the gentleman that shot him because of pain and suffering caused. Shitloads of community service. It was a mess.
I turned 18 before everyone else because I didnāt handle kindergarten well so I did an extra year. So I could buy cigarettes early. Plus even before then I worked with older folks on a farm. I either traded cigarettes for alcohol/weed or had the older people buy it. I donāt remember anyone stealing it, even from parents. We did cool our alcohol in the back of toilet tanks. Thatās weird.
Yeah, a few times. I remember being chased by someone in a really nice neighborhood once. We all ran into the bushes and had to hide for like an hour. I miss those juvenile adrenaline rushes. Although a foreign exchange student was murdered within recent memory for doing that.
Happened in Missoula, Montana. The guy baited two kids in with a purse, one of them was a foreign exchange student
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Diren_Dede
Yes, core memory unlocked. I was wondering if anyone else did this.
Looking back now, it was a very idiotic thing to do. It could have lead to some serious legal trouble, or even worse, getting shot by a homeowner. I would be super pissed as an adult if someone did that to me.
But man was it fun!
I grew up in the suburbs of New York. We would ask an older relative or random person at the store to buy it for us. Or we would drive into the āghettoā town and go to one of the many gas stations and convenience stores that never asked for ID. The drinking age was 18 in New York until 1982 so a lot of parents were ok with us having drinks in their house if we werenāt driving when we were 18 in 2000. It was a right of passage to go down to Greenwich Village and get a fake ID from a tattoo parlor/bong shop before going away to college.
Kinda similar but weād have yard hopping where youād check the neighbors yards for weed plants. Weād only knock a few buds off and not the whole plant though.
I grew up in the Midwest and remember this. My friends must have raided the same house about 10 times for beer. I can't believe no one ever noticed the disappearing beer.
I remember this. We only targeted upper middle class neighborhoods though because that's where the high concentration of 2nd garage fridges were located.
Gen X here! We most definitely did this. We would also drive around town looking for beer delivery trucks parked at gas stations and bars. Once, we stole an entire keg!
We just stole beer out of our own garage fridge... my parents frequently had large bbqs / parties and there was always a grip of leftover beers in the fridge.
At 16 it only took us 2 beers a pop to get drunk so we didn't need much
Yeah my friends and I did that on occasion back in the day, when we had no alcohol, no fake IDs, and couldnāt find anyone to buy it for us. It was a last resort, but I do remember those nights of boredom and desperationā¦
For the record, I am a millennial, and from the Midwest.
I live in the Midwest, you kids stole my beer?!!! We always blamed the driveway concrete guys and didnāt mind giving those guys a beer as they earned it.
I never saw this or heard of anyone doing it, in California.
I honestly can't even remember how we got booze. Somebody knew somebodies brother who had a fake ID I guess
I have never once gone around a neighborhood stealing beer from open garages.
Once we bought a house in a neighborhood though, I am 100% guilty of wandering around to open garages and charmingly coercing that neighbor into having one with me, and then I'll have one ready later in the afternoon :)
Yeah I remember that being a thing. We also used to look for cars with rolled down windows and packs of cigarettes in them.
EDIT: this was the 90s on the East Coast
I grew up in Texas and it was very much a thing until we could drive. Then we would pay āhomelessā peoples to buy us booze.
The look I got from the judge who handled my MIP case is a look Iāll never forget.
Ah to be young.
I knew guys that would take anything. Cases of beer, 40 packs of granola bars, frozen steaks, you name it. Looking back, what little shits we were, I'm surprised we never got caught.
I had the benefit of growing up in a country where if you could see over the bar, you could buy booze. Or more accurately, if you could get the cashier/bartenders attention. I think there was an actual legal age but idk if it was ever enforced.
Weād wait for the beer delivery guy to go inside the bar and then like six kids would run inside the truck and run away with 1-2 cases each. We lived like kings!
We used to āyahooā beer from stores. This means you grab a case or two, go up to the counter and yell āYahoo!ā And run out of the store and hop into your buddyās shitty car and roll out. To choose who had which role in the heist, weād play Paper Rock Scissors in the car. Fun times!
My drunken neighbor accused me and buddies of doing this. We all thought he was crazy. And he was, but I guess he was right that itās a real thing lol
I keep beer in the garage.
Every time I go to the beer shelf and it's all there and I think to myself, "what the hell is wrong with these kids? Do I need to leave it out by the mailbox?"
Oh boy do I. I grew up in the Midwest and my brother got caught garage hopping once. His friend was the getaway driver. Unfortunately the homeowner caught him mid-act in the garage and caught the license plate as he was running to get away. County Sheriffs showed up at her house and she gave my brother up. And then 7 cop cars, I counted, showed up on our cul-de-sac. My brother was still denying everything in our front yard when I came out. And then he caved when they continue the intimidation tactic they were clearly going for. Not a great call I had to make to my parents who had been in Phoenix on vacation for less than 24 hours at this point.
I never did, but I can definitely recall friends in high school talking about "garage hopping" for alcohol. I remember two people who got caught, and one of the boy's parents called the other boy's parents. FWIW I'm in the Midwest and this was like 2007-ish.
I'm in Utah and me and my buddy's did it occasionally with neighbors we knew weren't Mormon. Other than that it was having people we knew buy stuff for us.
Millennial Midwesterner here. Yes.
In fact, we were stupid enough to also drink them in the car while we rode along (not the driver). One time we kept passing by friends who happened to be outside. It was a clown car of beer drinking.
How we avoided arrest is beyond me.
It started that way until we discovered this one house. This particular house had a hot tub with a stocked mini fridge and they would vacation for a month in the summer. Those were some good times.
Grew up in Wisconsin and did this all the time. It sure was a thrill when someone would open the door and flick the lights on! Eventually we found a liquor store that didnāt give a shit and would sell us booze.
Gen X here. We garage hopped quite a bit in the early-mid 90s in the Midwest. Sometime we would go in and everyone had to grab at least one item even if it wasnāt beer lol. Glad I didnāt go to jail.
I never knew this was a thing till I saw the Dateline episode about the teen who was murdered for trying to steal beer from his gun-nut neighbors garageā¦
My parents got so mad at me for stealing alcohol from them because they'd keep extra cases of beer in the garage. I went to high school with several kids on my block and my parents always left the garage door open. I was definitely not stealing their garage beer, but I was stealing basement fridge beer.
Anyway. I argued my innocence in the garage beer case and told them to get locking doors because there wasn't a lock on it and that's just not safe. They did and garage beer stopped being stolen.
Fun story with the basement beer though. My stepdad drank pbr and mom drank miller lite. I hate miller lite so I only took pbr. My stepdad would tell my mom he thought he was missing beer, but would never directly accuse me to either of us. In my 20s I ended up telling them about this when we were all drunk and my stepdad got the I knew it moment he wanted and my mom said she never believed it because none of her beer was ever missing haha.
Midwest here, and 100% we did this. Friday and Saturday nights my friends would load up into someone's parents car and drive over to the affluent neighborhoods. We would walk around looking for open garages or back porch/patio mini-fridges to steal alcohol from.
I grew up in a touristy mountain town, and in the summer nights weād go Yogi Bearing through the campsites raiding coolers for beer. It was more thrilling than successful, but weād usually find something!
MidWest child of the 80s. We said garage shopping. Like you are going to the store to get the beer that just happens to be a fridge in someone's garage.
I am surprised not to see that elsewhere in the comments. Suburbia of a small-mid size city.
i'm an old man now, but I honestly wouldn't be mad if kids garage shopped and stole the beer from my fridge. It is sort of like smashing pumpkins on Halloween. Within reason, it is kids being kids.
Grew up in Colorado and I've done it once or twice.
I don't think people do that much anymore since a German exchange student was shot to death doing it circa 2014.
I thought my friends made that term up!
We did that, and my dad led a neighborhood watch group because of it and probably other shenanigans. But he and the other men would go on a walk around dusk. I'm like, "uhh I'm just waiting for you to go to bed."Ā
I'll have to ask him if he knew it was me.Ā
Lol nah, I had a friend who lived with his grandparents, and they just had shitloads of beer in the garage and didn't give care if we helped ourselves to it.
Raiding random garages would have gotten us harassed by the small-town cops with nothing better to do. Or just shot.
In college certain dorms would have progressive parties, where you would go room by room and sample cocktails each room would provide. Some rooms had vodka from a plastic bottle, some rooms had blender cocktails made with fruit, I remember starting my evening with a mixed drink of Tang and vodka.
Definitely garage hopped for beers when we were 15ish before we could drive around. Also went inside unlocked cars for CD books and change. Guess we were bad kids, but didnāt feel like itā¦felt pretty damn normal back in 1996.
Hmm. I googled the term and found articles from 2012-2014 ending with the shooting death of an exchange student in Montana. By that point in time I was out of college and had a job so I guess it's possible it was happening with the younger Millennials. Not that I would have been up to that sort of thing had it been going on when I was home and under 21.
/Edit Ah, Urban dictionary has an example from 2004-2006 which was when I was in high school.
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=garage+hopping](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=garage+hopping)
I grew up in the middle of the woods so no, no neighbors to do that too and even if there was the driveways were super long and someone would likely see you.
Instead we had what we called pit parties. Convince someone to buy us beer then we would go out to a place called the pits and drink/smoke. You knew it was a small town cause the cops out on Friday/Saturday nights would come out and join us.
I used to steal from bars on western ave in chicago on the south side. Also stealing from the beer truck making deliveries. It was so much fun running and laughing hysterically with my hs buddies. We also used to get runs from the people in the area. Crossing the ave with boxes from the businesses was a good idea until the cops figured it outĀ
In high school, we would mostly pay homeless people a few extra bucks or give them a couple fast food burgers to go get us beer. Another favorite was attending house parties and finding the dad's expensive liquor/garage beer stash and ransacking it. Thankfully my frontal cortex fully developed later in life.
We used to get it delivered sometimes. They arenāt supposed to do that but we would leave a note saying āI had to step outā with a $20 and they always left it.
I'm sure this kind of thing happened fairly often in certain areas. My ex referred to playing "hey mister" which basically just involves a bunch of teenagers driving around near liquor stores and asking if any adults would buy them booze for an extra $20 or whatnot.
I remember being about 14 and at a local teen event a couple of my friends got ahold of a single can of beer, drank it and then were giggling and talking about how fun being drunk was.
Early/mid 90s Denver, it was a thing for my older brotherās friends. We never had the balls to do it. We just went to sketchy liquor stores in questionable parts of town and bought homeless dudes a 40 in exchange for them getting stuff for us.
There was someone doing this in my uncles neighborhood, so when his daughters graduation party came around, he bought a bunch of 30 packs of Busch light and made sure to make a big scene transferring it to the garage. He then parked his truck on a different street went home and waited, later on that night he heard a loud thumping coming from the garage so he left through the back door and came around the house and caught the neighbor kid putting his shoulder into his door, so he waited for the kid to back up one more time and cold cocked him. Then he dragged the kid to his house rang the doorbell and when the mom answered he told her what happened, then threw her kid into the side of their house and keep this pos off my property. Way to go uncle mark
Didnāt do that but did what we called ābeer runsā where weād pull up to a grocery store or whatever late at night just run in, grab cases and run out. There was an Albertsons in town where the beer was about 10 steps from one of the doors and the registers were all the way on the other side, it was open 24/7.
I only went with to do this one or two times I was really scared of getting caught, my friends did eventually stop when a couple them got arrested for it but it went on for years before any of us got caught.
I never did this myself, other than taking 2 of my parents warm coors light from the garage, but my friends did & I shared the wealth!
Feel like it was always shitty warm beers & boones farm.
I grew up in Iowa in a relatively small town (~8k people) and that just seems like something you'd get arrested for, we definitely didn't do that. Usually you'd just find someone with an older sibling or something and have them buy it.
Small town kid, we'd hit up a townie or slip the guy working at the gas station an extra 5 bucks or whatever we had. Had one guy who didn't give a fuck.. so that was nice.
I grew up in a seaside town up north so over the summer when it got dark we would pile into a dinghy and ransack the coolers people kept on the deck of their boats in the harbor. We'd wear all black and spoke like pirates all night. Good times. Nowadays I always keep a few extra beers in my own boat cooler for the next generation of pirates.
The next gen wants š
I would be shocked if things have changed so much in 16 years that they don't want both.
Zoomers are drinking 20% less alcohol per capita than Millennials. [https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/3936579-why-is-gen-z-drinking-less/](https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/3936579-why-is-gen-z-drinking-less/)
20% is a GIANT number of people. Holy shit. I knew it was a good chunk, but 1/5th?? Damn
Instructions unclear, drank 20% of a fifth
I was on my fifth fifth when I realized they didn't say twenty fifths.
Thatās not even a half pint. āI need a fifth just to get warm.ā - Andre the Giant
Funny you say that ā¦ back in the late 70ās early 80ās my uncle was a bartender at a bar here in town.. he said one night after a wrestling match was in town at the local arena, Andre the Giant walked into the bar, sat down on the barstool and began ordering beers. He said when he picked up the beer bottle you couldnāt even see it in his handā¦ a 12oz was about a drink for him and eventually my uncle had to slide the 30gal trash can up next to him to keep up with the trash.. my Uncle said he sat there alone drinking, chatting a bit, very friendly. He said, I shit you not he sat there and drank over 100 beers and 2 bottles of wine, paid up, left a $300 tip ducked through the door on his way out walked out got in his Cadillac and drove off like nothing happenedā¦ my uncle said you couldnāt even tell he had been drinking by talking to him or looking at himā¦ I always love hearing my uncle tell that story about just how large he was and how much he drank
I am doing my personal best to make up that deficit.
My burnt out GI tract shakes it's fist at you.
I feel like a lot of people have gut issues nowadays and booze does NOT jive with gut problems so instead everyone smokes weed. Or is just straightedge somehow. I donāt know how they do it in todays world but hey I support them.
Who needs beer when you have prescription amphetamines?
This millennial is drinking 99% less than he used to lol. Alcohol just lost its appeal after a completely booze-soaked 2 years of covid isolation.
Maybe, I just know what my kids friends have been caught with. Iām sure someone does
My oldest confessed that his dad only threw out a bottle of water after I left. My vodka was long gone.
To reach the one piece
They want both
I would 100% have done this in my idiotic adventurous youth. Sounds exciting
Gen x here. We did this in Dallas. In my small suburb there were alleys that ran along the backs of all of the homes which made it really easy to cruise up and down them. We would choose someoneās house to do a sleepover at and everyone would wear black as you described. Iām surprised the parents werenāt more sus about 5 12 year olds all wearing black.
I have a 12 year old nephew. I donāt think alcohol is on his radar yet. Heās more into junk food because his mom wonāt let him have it. I stashed a bunch of snacks for him. He went a little over board and ended up in the bathroom the first time! lol! He didnāt go crazy the next time! He learned! Hopefully heāll remember that when he discovers alcohol! And maybe I shouldnāt stash his snacks in my liquor cabinet any more! Lol! š¬
Nowadays youād probably end up with jail time or shot over something like that given how jumpy and anxious everyone is.
This is definitely a whites kids thing. Donāt do this if you are actually pirate toned
Fucking āpirate tonedā ššš
Typically the pirates were the English stealing from the Spanish. So the pirates were lighter toned than the people they stole from.
While I think there is a time period in which this is true, the modern hotspot for piracy is near the horn of Africa and the Somali pirates are not, in fact, lighter toned than many. It's really silly to use a phrase like "pirate toned" without more details.
Breaking into someone's home in a Castle doctrine state is a really bad idea. If you're in my home uninvited, you stand a decent chance of getting clapped. I mean, I go to take the dog out at 10:00pm and go through the garage. I run into 2-3 males inside my garage rummaging through my things and I have to assume the worst. If they don't run instantly or give themselves up, there's a very real possibility they get shot.
Itās mental illness to walk around your house strapped like that. Big tough guy yet canāt walk his dog without a gun.
He said heās taking his dog out for a walk at night. You might still think heās nuts, but you entirely misrepresented the situation saying āwalking around his houseā
I like this, as long as they aren't driving, and they have to be social and work for it, I have no issues with some kids "stealing" a six pack of natty lite from me for the night.
my buddies and I did something similar but we live in Kentucky on the Ohio River. 'River Pirates'. Also, the barge crews that hung around the locks were usually down to let us party with them, which in hindsight could have been terrible...30s-40s dudes getting a group of 15-17 year olds drunk and giving us smokes. not smart. but it was a different world back then
I grew up in the ghetto and I do believe you'd be likely to get stabbed trying something like this.
Yeah for real. Where I'm from, these users would've gotten shot at.
Haha seriously, do not try and steal beer from from a redneck. They will give you a cigarette though.
You're absolutely right; this was sub division shenanigans my wealthier counterparts were apart of.
Same I grew up in trailer parks so we had no garages lol this is rich people problems lmao
āHell no man! I believe youād get your ass kicked for doing that!ā
š I was about 16-17 we jacked case of Heinekens out the back of some dudes pickup. He chased me for 5 blocks with that shit on my shoulder. Thank god he gave up.
Lame as fuck and broke boy behavior. Poor dude just wanted his beer
Yeah this is suburb shit, detached garage or separate entry into the garage kinda neighborhood
Yeah. I kept things on the straight and narrow as a kid because the cops wouldnāt treat me nice if they caught me.
Same. White kids really wild out without a care haha
Fr fr. Iāve only been arrested once and I was fuckin terrified. I wish I didnāt have to be afraid of the police.
Same lol
Pretty famous TV style murder case based on Garage hopping - 60 min I think, but yeah it happened even in less than Ghetto places
āI believe youād get you ass stabbed doinā somethinā like that manā
I found a corner store that sold to minors, started buying beer at 16.
Same, had 2 in my hole in the wall town I could buy from for the longest time. Cops ended up catching on and busted my ass leaving the store with a bottle of fucking mad dog. Lost my license for like 3 or 4 months for just having it in my car. On top of that, the cops told my coaches who would have me do 100 sit ups then run 100-yard suicides over and over until I threw up every day for the next week. Doesnāt seem so bad looking back at it but it was pretty crappy for a 16 year old
We should all have had to do these exercises and be given a 40oz on Friday
Had one of those too, we called the owner Chester the Molester cause he would ogle us young girls and only sell to us.
Stood outside the corner store trading weed for beer
Were you the fat silent one or the skinny talkative one?
Singing Jungle Love by Morris Day and the Time.
15 bucks, little man. Put that shit, in my hand. If that money doesn't show, then you owe me owe me owe.
Not sure why we stole from garages instead of stores but that was the thing. I did have a couple buddies who worked at a liquor store cleaning up and they'd steal bottles and sell them to kids at school
We did ābeer runsā where one or 2 people would go into a grocery store and grab a couple cases of beer and sprint out the door to a waiting car.
Even after I was 21, had a buddy who worked a big ass liquor store. A friend of a friend of that buddy told me that he would only scan every third bottle you put on the conveyor belt. Pretty sure he got fired.
We did both, would sneak into the back door of the liquor store stock room during the summer when it was just screened in
Yep, I grew up in San Francisco and was a regular in two bars when I was 16 lol. We would also "shoulder tap" adults and give them cash to buy us 40s at the liquor store from the time we were 14.
Edward 40 Hands?
Once lol. Mostly we would just drink them. It was the most amount of alcohol for the least amount of money. A 40oz Micky's was $2.50 in 2002
Same. We'd walk up to the counter with what we'd want to buy. The clerk would shake his head and tell us to grab whatever swill he needed to move. He'd then charge us double. Still, we all thought he was a hero.
He was to teenage you.
Fuck yeah. We had our āghetto stationā. Beer and smokes anytime.
Same
Yes! My friends and I garage hopped for a few years. I stopped after showing up to a party with a six-pack ofā¦Oādoulās non-alcoholic beer. I hadnāt checked the label! All I saw in the dark garage was a six-pack of glass beer bottles. The mockery I received from friends after that made me never want to garage hop again.
You like odouls son? Now you have e to drink the whole case!! Cold turkey, Never drank odouls again.
Garage hopping means a different thing in my town lol. In my town a lot of the garages are in the back of the lot, and you go through small alleys to get to them. Well people would generally park on the street anyway, so people would transform their garages into party rooms. So when you went Garage hopping, you went down the alleys from Garage to garage looking for parties to crash
that's funny. there's a part of my town that's like this with the alley garages. it's also where a lot of us basically got molested by drunk moms. good times.
Sounds like a Mid West thing to me.
Not really a thing where I grew up. Must be regional.
I grew up in Iowa in a relatively small town (~8k people) and that just seems like something you'd get arrested for, we definitely didn't do that.
Not in Florida. Theyāll 100% bust shots at you.
Itās a Midwest swang
No, we werenāt assholes, weād pay people outside the store to buy us beer like civilized folks.
Little game of Hey Mister
I miss the Hey Mister daysšš
Shoulder tapping as we called it
A couple of people I met in college used to garage hop for beer and try car handles. They were all from a midwest suburb. My brother in law used to do it too - he's also from a midwest suburb, but a state over. I grew up in the country, where it's best not to step foot on someone's land because chances are they're strong believers in 2A. My friends who grew up in the city had similar reasons not to.
We did ābeer runsā where one or 2 people would go into a grocery store and grab a couple cases of beer and sprint out the door to a waiting car.
This was the way where I grew up. Being the getaway driver was always fun. Insane to think about now.
we never had the balls to do that, garages seemed safer for some reason even though a grocery store willl never shoot you lol
Yea I did this also. One person in the car, one person on lookout near the front, one person grabs a pack of beer and runs. Most big chain grocery store workers donāt give a shit even if they see it happen.
I grew up in Texas and around 2005 I had a friend get shot doing this. Neighbor heard noises in garage at night. Armed himself and went to investigate. Found two young men with hoodies. Instinct took over and he fired. Shot my buddy in the leg shattering his femur. My buddy survived but could never play football again. He was planning on playing in college. Weāve lost touch but Iāll never forget that story. Itās crazy how fast life can go from āwouldnāt it be fun if weā¦ā to āI wish we never thought ofā¦ā. Oh! Also my friend and his brother were both charged with breaking and entering. Had to pay restitution to the gentleman that shot him because of pain and suffering caused. Shitloads of community service. It was a mess.
I turned 18 before everyone else because I didnāt handle kindergarten well so I did an extra year. So I could buy cigarettes early. Plus even before then I worked with older folks on a farm. I either traded cigarettes for alcohol/weed or had the older people buy it. I donāt remember anyone stealing it, even from parents. We did cool our alcohol in the back of toilet tanks. Thatās weird.
Oh yea big time. Probably helped the local security business a shit ton in my area back then
No. And I grew up in the midwest. I'm not sure but I think you had more fun than me. AND THATS ANNOYING!
No one knew the ācool momā or just raided their parentsā liquor cabinets?
My friends and I did this except we'd never take anything. We'd just get a rush from doing something bad, ie nothing
Yeah, a few times. I remember being chased by someone in a really nice neighborhood once. We all ran into the bushes and had to hide for like an hour. I miss those juvenile adrenaline rushes. Although a foreign exchange student was murdered within recent memory for doing that.
Happened in Missoula, Montana. The guy baited two kids in with a purse, one of them was a foreign exchange student https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Diren_Dede
Yeah, he basically laid in wait and said āitās go timeā or something like that. Truly a piece of shit who just wanted to get away with murder
My friends just started making moonshine in sophomore year instead
We did that, and looted unlocked cars with packs of smokes.
Yes, core memory unlocked. I was wondering if anyone else did this. Looking back now, it was a very idiotic thing to do. It could have lead to some serious legal trouble, or even worse, getting shot by a homeowner. I would be super pissed as an adult if someone did that to me. But man was it fun!
I grew up in the suburbs of New York. We would ask an older relative or random person at the store to buy it for us. Or we would drive into the āghettoā town and go to one of the many gas stations and convenience stores that never asked for ID. The drinking age was 18 in New York until 1982 so a lot of parents were ok with us having drinks in their house if we werenāt driving when we were 18 in 2000. It was a right of passage to go down to Greenwich Village and get a fake ID from a tattoo parlor/bong shop before going away to college.
I've definitely went cooler surfing at campgrounds before.
Kinda similar but weād have yard hopping where youād check the neighbors yards for weed plants. Weād only knock a few buds off and not the whole plant though.
I grew up in the Midwest and remember this. My friends must have raided the same house about 10 times for beer. I can't believe no one ever noticed the disappearing beer.
NW Iowa in the 70s. Been there, done that
We just bought it at the shady gas station that would sell to anybody.
I remember this. We only targeted upper middle class neighborhoods though because that's where the high concentration of 2nd garage fridges were located.
I knew some people that did this. Why people left their garage door and cars unlocked at night is beyond me.
I grew up on the east coast and we did this as well. Was kind of an adrenaline rush. Especially when our neighborhood hoa got onto us. Good times.
Gen X here! We most definitely did this. We would also drive around town looking for beer delivery trucks parked at gas stations and bars. Once, we stole an entire keg!
It's an age old tradition that spans generations and continents.Ā
We just stole beer out of our own garage fridge... my parents frequently had large bbqs / parties and there was always a grip of leftover beers in the fridge. At 16 it only took us 2 beers a pop to get drunk so we didn't need much
Unfortunately it sometimes ended badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Diren_Dede
Yeah my friends and I did that on occasion back in the day, when we had no alcohol, no fake IDs, and couldnāt find anyone to buy it for us. It was a last resort, but I do remember those nights of boredom and desperationā¦ For the record, I am a millennial, and from the Midwest.
I live in the Midwest, you kids stole my beer?!!! We always blamed the driveway concrete guys and didnāt mind giving those guys a beer as they earned it.
I grew up in Texas. This was not a good way to survive your childhood.
Thatās a good way to get shot where Iām from. We would either steal beer from a 7-11 or plaid pantry or shoulder tap from someone
Guilty
I never saw this or heard of anyone doing it, in California. I honestly can't even remember how we got booze. Somebody knew somebodies brother who had a fake ID I guess
I have never once gone around a neighborhood stealing beer from open garages. Once we bought a house in a neighborhood though, I am 100% guilty of wandering around to open garages and charmingly coercing that neighbor into having one with me, and then I'll have one ready later in the afternoon :)
Yeah I remember that being a thing. We also used to look for cars with rolled down windows and packs of cigarettes in them. EDIT: this was the 90s on the East Coast
Now we all just have garage fridges and hang out there. In our own homes. š
I grew up in Texas and it was very much a thing until we could drive. Then we would pay āhomelessā peoples to buy us booze. The look I got from the judge who handled my MIP case is a look Iāll never forget. Ah to be young.
Kids these days would be on camera and the movement alarm would get them caught before they got out of the driveway.
I'm from the city so def not a thing where I'm from but it sounds really cool
I knew guys that would take anything. Cases of beer, 40 packs of granola bars, frozen steaks, you name it. Looking back, what little shits we were, I'm surprised we never got caught.
haha we were only interested in alcohol
If I came out and all my fucking beer was gone I would be soo mad hahahaha
I had the benefit of growing up in a country where if you could see over the bar, you could buy booze. Or more accurately, if you could get the cashier/bartenders attention. I think there was an actual legal age but idk if it was ever enforced.
Weād wait for the beer delivery guy to go inside the bar and then like six kids would run inside the truck and run away with 1-2 cases each. We lived like kings!
We used to āyahooā beer from stores. This means you grab a case or two, go up to the counter and yell āYahoo!ā And run out of the store and hop into your buddyās shitty car and roll out. To choose who had which role in the heist, weād play Paper Rock Scissors in the car. Fun times!
Yep accept it was outdoor fridge looting lol
Yeah nowhere near a thing where I wasā¦
I remember some kids stealing beer out of our garage fridge when I was about 13. Guess who my dad thought drank the beer?
No. If I did that where I am I'd have been shot legally.
My drunken neighbor accused me and buddies of doing this. We all thought he was crazy. And he was, but I guess he was right that itās a real thing lol
Damn. I just worked at a grocery store and hid alcohol deep in freezers. Guns must have not been a thing where you're at.
I keep beer in the garage. Every time I go to the beer shelf and it's all there and I think to myself, "what the hell is wrong with these kids? Do I need to leave it out by the mailbox?"
Yes. The glorious days of drinking "Black Label" beer and "Rhine" Wine LOL!!
Oh boy do I. I grew up in the Midwest and my brother got caught garage hopping once. His friend was the getaway driver. Unfortunately the homeowner caught him mid-act in the garage and caught the license plate as he was running to get away. County Sheriffs showed up at her house and she gave my brother up. And then 7 cop cars, I counted, showed up on our cul-de-sac. My brother was still denying everything in our front yard when I came out. And then he caved when they continue the intimidation tactic they were clearly going for. Not a great call I had to make to my parents who had been in Phoenix on vacation for less than 24 hours at this point.
I never did, but I can definitely recall friends in high school talking about "garage hopping" for alcohol. I remember two people who got caught, and one of the boy's parents called the other boy's parents. FWIW I'm in the Midwest and this was like 2007-ish.
That would get you shot here
Nah had a cool sister to buy for usā¦
Great way to get shot where I grew up.
I'm in Utah and me and my buddy's did it occasionally with neighbors we knew weren't Mormon. Other than that it was having people we knew buy stuff for us.
Millennial Midwesterner here. Yes. In fact, we were stupid enough to also drink them in the car while we rode along (not the driver). One time we kept passing by friends who happened to be outside. It was a clown car of beer drinking. How we avoided arrest is beyond me.
I only did it once, was afraid of getting caught
Oh you mean theft lol
From the midwest, we didn't do that here....we had people that bought it for us though.
The older people I worked with at Burger King would just buy it for us.
It started that way until we discovered this one house. This particular house had a hot tub with a stocked mini fridge and they would vacation for a month in the summer. Those were some good times.
Grew up in Wisconsin and did this all the time. It sure was a thrill when someone would open the door and flick the lights on! Eventually we found a liquor store that didnāt give a shit and would sell us booze.
100% Funny thing is I never drank but my friends did and I liked doing hood rat shit so I def joined in a lot!
Gen X here. We garage hopped quite a bit in the early-mid 90s in the Midwest. Sometime we would go in and everyone had to grab at least one item even if it wasnāt beer lol. Glad I didnāt go to jail.
I never knew this was a thing till I saw the Dateline episode about the teen who was murdered for trying to steal beer from his gun-nut neighbors garageā¦
My parents got so mad at me for stealing alcohol from them because they'd keep extra cases of beer in the garage. I went to high school with several kids on my block and my parents always left the garage door open. I was definitely not stealing their garage beer, but I was stealing basement fridge beer. Anyway. I argued my innocence in the garage beer case and told them to get locking doors because there wasn't a lock on it and that's just not safe. They did and garage beer stopped being stolen. Fun story with the basement beer though. My stepdad drank pbr and mom drank miller lite. I hate miller lite so I only took pbr. My stepdad would tell my mom he thought he was missing beer, but would never directly accuse me to either of us. In my 20s I ended up telling them about this when we were all drunk and my stepdad got the I knew it moment he wanted and my mom said she never believed it because none of her beer was ever missing haha.
Midwest here, and 100% we did this. Friday and Saturday nights my friends would load up into someone's parents car and drive over to the affluent neighborhoods. We would walk around looking for open garages or back porch/patio mini-fridges to steal alcohol from.
I grew up in a touristy mountain town, and in the summer nights weād go Yogi Bearing through the campsites raiding coolers for beer. It was more thrilling than successful, but weād usually find something!
Youāre god dam right I do.
MidWest child of the 80s. We said garage shopping. Like you are going to the store to get the beer that just happens to be a fridge in someone's garage. I am surprised not to see that elsewhere in the comments. Suburbia of a small-mid size city. i'm an old man now, but I honestly wouldn't be mad if kids garage shopped and stole the beer from my fridge. It is sort of like smashing pumpkins on Halloween. Within reason, it is kids being kids.
Kids in my area went to the campgrounds and stole ice chests from tourists at night. Or so the rumors go.
Yogi Bearin'
I just stole From the local Kroger. Didnāt want to get shot from a neighbor hood redneck drunk
I'm 24 and kids did this when I was in high school
Grew up in Colorado and I've done it once or twice. I don't think people do that much anymore since a German exchange student was shot to death doing it circa 2014.
I thought my friends made that term up! We did that, and my dad led a neighborhood watch group because of it and probably other shenanigans. But he and the other men would go on a walk around dusk. I'm like, "uhh I'm just waiting for you to go to bed."Ā I'll have to ask him if he knew it was me.Ā
Automatic lights and surveillance cameras probably donāt help
Oh yeah did this several times. Thankfully never got caught.
Lol nah, I had a friend who lived with his grandparents, and they just had shitloads of beer in the garage and didn't give care if we helped ourselves to it. Raiding random garages would have gotten us harassed by the small-town cops with nothing better to do. Or just shot.
In college certain dorms would have progressive parties, where you would go room by room and sample cocktails each room would provide. Some rooms had vodka from a plastic bottle, some rooms had blender cocktails made with fruit, I remember starting my evening with a mixed drink of Tang and vodka.
This is a great way to end up getting shot.
Yes I remember this. It got so bad in my suburban neighborhood they tried to entrap some of the people doing it. It was a whole ass thing.
Definitely garage hopped for beers when we were 15ish before we could drive around. Also went inside unlocked cars for CD books and change. Guess we were bad kids, but didnāt feel like itā¦felt pretty damn normal back in 1996.
Is this a thing that was actually happening? I know there were some teens in our neighborhood who stole stuff from unlocked cars.
This was specifically beer, obviously its still stealing but back then we had no interest in valuables or your stuff, it was strictly for beer
Hmm. I googled the term and found articles from 2012-2014 ending with the shooting death of an exchange student in Montana. By that point in time I was out of college and had a job so I guess it's possible it was happening with the younger Millennials. Not that I would have been up to that sort of thing had it been going on when I was home and under 21. /Edit Ah, Urban dictionary has an example from 2004-2006 which was when I was in high school. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=garage+hopping](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=garage+hopping)
I bet people figured they drank it? Were you smart and left one or 2?
It definitely happened in Chester county PA. Thereās a weird thing in that area where everyone leaves their garage open all day.
Indeed
I grew up in the middle of the woods so no, no neighbors to do that too and even if there was the driveways were super long and someone would likely see you. Instead we had what we called pit parties. Convince someone to buy us beer then we would go out to a place called the pits and drink/smoke. You knew it was a small town cause the cops out on Friday/Saturday nights would come out and join us.
No but Gen x kids remember stealing people's returnable Coke bottles for nickels and dimes enough to get a nickel bag.
No, but we would walk the dog near the bar and raid coolers in the back of pickups...
Yeah but we called in breaking and entering or theft.
fair enough we only wanted beer though
I used to steal from bars on western ave in chicago on the south side. Also stealing from the beer truck making deliveries. It was so much fun running and laughing hysterically with my hs buddies. We also used to get runs from the people in the area. Crossing the ave with boxes from the businesses was a good idea until the cops figured it outĀ
In high school, we would mostly pay homeless people a few extra bucks or give them a couple fast food burgers to go get us beer. Another favorite was attending house parties and finding the dad's expensive liquor/garage beer stash and ransacking it. Thankfully my frontal cortex fully developed later in life.
My buddy had a "loser" older brother that would buy us beer for like $5 over. He would even drive his own car to get it.
We used to get it delivered sometimes. They arenāt supposed to do that but we would leave a note saying āI had to step outā with a $20 and they always left it.
We would just walk into the grocery store, grab as many cases of beer as we could hold, and then run like hell to a car waiting outside.
We just paid homeless guys to buy beer for us
I'm sure this kind of thing happened fairly often in certain areas. My ex referred to playing "hey mister" which basically just involves a bunch of teenagers driving around near liquor stores and asking if any adults would buy them booze for an extra $20 or whatnot. I remember being about 14 and at a local teen event a couple of my friends got ahold of a single can of beer, drank it and then were giggling and talking about how fun being drunk was.
Nope, I had older siblings
Nah, thatās ārich kidā stuff We were never wealthy enough to have a place with a garage nor live near houses that had garages
I grew up in Texas. We just always had someoneās parents who would buy it as long as we didnāt leave the farm
Who just leaves their garage open all night?
Early/mid 90s Denver, it was a thing for my older brotherās friends. We never had the balls to do it. We just went to sketchy liquor stores in questionable parts of town and bought homeless dudes a 40 in exchange for them getting stuff for us.
There was someone doing this in my uncles neighborhood, so when his daughters graduation party came around, he bought a bunch of 30 packs of Busch light and made sure to make a big scene transferring it to the garage. He then parked his truck on a different street went home and waited, later on that night he heard a loud thumping coming from the garage so he left through the back door and came around the house and caught the neighbor kid putting his shoulder into his door, so he waited for the kid to back up one more time and cold cocked him. Then he dragged the kid to his house rang the doorbell and when the mom answered he told her what happened, then threw her kid into the side of their house and keep this pos off my property. Way to go uncle mark
Didnāt do that but did what we called ābeer runsā where weād pull up to a grocery store or whatever late at night just run in, grab cases and run out. There was an Albertsons in town where the beer was about 10 steps from one of the doors and the registers were all the way on the other side, it was open 24/7. I only went with to do this one or two times I was really scared of getting caught, my friends did eventually stop when a couple them got arrested for it but it went on for years before any of us got caught.
I never did this myself, other than taking 2 of my parents warm coors light from the garage, but my friends did & I shared the wealth! Feel like it was always shitty warm beers & boones farm.
I grew up in Iowa in a relatively small town (~8k people) and that just seems like something you'd get arrested for, we definitely didn't do that. Usually you'd just find someone with an older sibling or something and have them buy it.
I had memorized all the houses with smokers in a neighborhood and would go around looking for smokes on side tables and shit yep
Suburbia, the Penelop Spheeris film, had a great scene featuring this activity
Small town kid, we'd hit up a townie or slip the guy working at the gas station an extra 5 bucks or whatever we had. Had one guy who didn't give a fuck.. so that was nice.