Does the “rave” party scene (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rave) still exist nowadays, the way it did in the '90s? If so, what’s the best way for a newcomer to a given city to find a rave club and/or party?
(I’ve never been to an underground, quasi-legal, advertised-only-by-WOM rave party, but I used to go to a couple of perfectly legal rave clubs on Franklin Street Mall in Tampa – until one teenage girl on GHB passed out, cracked her skull on a wall and died. The city council then banned any kind of club from staying open past 3 a.m., and the rave clubs had to shut down. Stupid overreaction, IMO.)
I was pretty active in the Chicago rave scene in the mid-early 90’s.
Back then, besides word of mouth, you’d look at certain record shops
and cafes. Often, there’s be a small stack of flyers by the door.
Also, once you got to a party, there’d be people passing out flyers for
future events. For a while, you might have been able to find some
flyers at punk shows but I doubt this is really true any longer.
Used to be, raves were ‘map point events’ where one called a number and
listened to a recoded message telling where to go to buy tickets
(usually a coffee shop back room or booth set up in a record shop).
The actualy venue would only be known to ticket holders.
Today, I’d try record shops (the type DJs buy actual vinyl), nightclubs
and bars where ‘underground’ DJs spin and possibly skateboard shops.
I use to rave all the time, from early 90s to early 2000s. Best way to find out is either go to a record store, as suggested above or a ‘cool’ clothing store. I don’t mean Old Navy. I have no idea what it would be in Dade county, but a place in the heart of downtown that has funky clothes. You should see a bunch of flyers, pick them up and decide what you want to go to. As for it being a vibrant scene any more I couldn’t say in Dade county, they still happen in Toronto, but I haven’t been in a long time, got sick of seeing 14 year old girls foaming at the mouth.
wow I’m glad I can actually contribute some expertise to a GQ thread…
The free underground party scene is alive and well. The first rule of freetekno is YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FREETEKNO, or atleast most people don’t, its its as big as ever. It is spread out all over the world, from the psytrance beachparties of Cape Town to the massive free festivals in Czech Republic. The decentralized parties are usually thrown by one or more ‘sound systems’, a group of people w/ infrastructure (turntables, speakers, vehicles, yurts etc) & freetime who scout a site (be it hidden revine or abandonded warehouse), pick a date, source djs, then spread word about a mappoint to a select number of people.
http://freetekno.org/ has links to parties all around the world, I’m not personally familiar with any Florida soundsystems but I’m sure they exist and are connected through that hub.
Since it was usually followed by collapses and/or convulsions, or in the less serious cases just stumbling around walking into things, and the inability to hold any sort of conversation I think you could see why I got a little sick of it.
In my experience, I was a regular user of E, I never experienced any foaming at the mouth, nor did any of my friends. I always thought it was a combo of E, crystal, G and/or K that caused this.
