“…But within a matter of years, police crackdowns, increased media attention on drug use, and the…
By: Konstantin Gredeskoul
Tags: San Francisco, Rave, Dj, Raving Culture, Electronic Music

“…But within a matter of years, police crackdowns, increased media attention on drug use, and the dot-com collapse at the turn of the millennium all but extinguished raves..”

With all due respect, I beg to differ.

But before I do, I will say that the rest of the article is often “spot-on” and rather accurate. But it lacks a bit of depth and detail.

First, it’s important to make a distinction between large commercial events also known as “massives” for their tendency to draw crowds of 10,000 or more, and have more of a commercial and more widely accessible appeal, and the DJs that charge north of $100K per show.

Contrast this with a “rave” on a much smaller scale — a house rave — is an intimate house or warehouse underground party with 20–50 people, with a DJ lineup that gets more flexible after 6am and even a beginner can squeeze in (I know I did, in my own time). House raves almost always get busted by the cops, but cops entering the property is very rare in San Francisco, they just want the neighours to stop complaining.

A variation on the house rave is an even smaller and even more intimate house after-party that ironically, does not have to be “after-” anything. They often start as early as 4pm on Saturday and don’t end until Monday morning.

— How do you tell that Ravers have been to your house?

— They are all still there.

Past the house rave is the a more substantial production — either a renegade in the city like the infamous “Breakfast of Champions” every 6am on January the 1st. These have a tendency to get busted often.

Or the permitted campout on a private property somewhere a few hours away. Let’s call this a rave campout. These tend to NOT get busted, as they are on a private land, with the permission of the owners, and tend have anywhere between 150 and 800 people.

Your Rave is not Extinct

It’s the “massives” are the ones that are extinct, for the most part. The underground rave culture still exists and it strives, with many communities staying underground to the point of requiring secrecy as part of the membership and the privilege of being informed as to when where and who will be at the next event.

Early Rave scene of the late 90s also created many businesses where folks geeking out on the lights in 1998 would be running a ten-person lighting and visual FX company today.

The quintessential rave camp out hot tub was alternating between being a wreck of high-flying bodies (aka “the Raver Soup”), to a respectful debates on the finer points of TCP/IP tuning in the Apache Web Server (whose founders were often in the hot tub as well). Even today Apache runs nearly half of all internet sites according to https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/web-and-application-servers--425

And then there are the DJs.

The Rave/DJ cultures go hand in hand. A lot of DJs start out for the wrong reasons, and it’s remarkable to how far you can advance as a DJ with enough marketing and social media strategy. Unlike real musicians, DJs are often judged by the energy and groove they bring to the dance floor, but don’t get me wrong: it is a performance, so everything helps. Good looks, interaction with the crowd, dance moves — when done right can elevate an otherwise mediocre DJ to a star status, while passing on a quiet and introverted genius. Given enough time, though, after the dust settles, only the boom shakers and crowed movers remain in business. Being a DJ is terrible for your ego. Conversely, vast majority of really really good old school DJs have given up ego a long time ago, as you must do for any art to be truly authentic.

So yeah, rave culture is still here.

It might just be underground, where they can take a break from their own kids, or grand kids.