THEY STRANGLE RAVES WITH A BILLION BY-LAWS

Experience Elsewhere Gives A Hint Of What Might Be In Store For Us

You hear the story. You don't know if it's true. You hope it is.

They bought an armoured tank. (You know those wacky ravers, always doing
stuff like that.) They smashed out the sides, put bars up instead, stuffed
a DJ, his decks and the sound system inside and drove it through the
streets of London.

And, quite frankly, the coppers could take their Criminal Justice Act and
put it up their collective bums.

The CJA was a viciously fought-over law passed in the United Kingdom in
1994 that outlawed, among other things, organizing or attending nighttime
outdoor festivals characterized by "repetitive beats."

Raving, as Brits knew it, was dead. And last week Robert Runciman,
Ontario's consumer and commercial relations minister, said he was firing up
a group to map strategies to halt raves here.

"We want to have more influence on curtailing the sales of so-called
designer drugs at these events," he grumbles over the phone.

Took project

He says he took on the project at the behest of police superintendent Ron
Taverner of Special Investigative Services.

The as-yet unformed group, scheduled to convene in the new year, would look
at things like removing liquor and business licences and enforcing existing
fire codes more stringently as methods of shutting the fun down.

"Oh, give me a break," laughs city councillor Olivia Chow. "Pushing them
underground is absolutely the wrong thing to do. They'll find some
warehouse that will not be safe and then we'll have tragedies."

She also points out that Runciman is a wee bit late to the race -- the city
already has the Toronto Dance Safety Committee, which includes the police,
the Toronto Raver Information Project and the Toronto Rave Standards
Association, a group of promoters who want to set out guidelines for parties.

While Runciman's dream of death by bylaw may be less glamorous than the
draconian UK bill, it does echoe what's already happened following moral
panic in other cities.

"There have been a lot of arbitrary shutdowns," says Tobias, a DJ in
Vancouver. "Sometimes you go completely untouched. Other times the SWAT
team shows up and beats the shit out of everybody."

And while crackdowns have been happening in Toronto for years -- like the
infamous line of riot cops who showed up to enforce "fire codes" at the
busted Building Blocks party in 1996 -- there's never before been the kind
of attention that's been focused on raves in the past six months.

"If something happens that riles up the media," says Tobias, " if there's
sort of this public perception that raves are evil, there seems to be a
crackdown immediately."

Most "raves" go down without too much police interference, probably due in
part to their white, middle-class aesthetic, and shutting them down has its
difficulties.

For starters, you get into what exactly a "rave" is. All-night electronic
music events have taken place in tents, on islands, under bridges, in
warehouses and in clubs, to name but a few places.

Different types of parties attract different people, different ages,
different vibes, different music, use different venues and are wildly
different in size. Some are permitted to death and some are totally "illegal."

What kind of creepy uber-bylaws could possibly target all of these at once?

Specifying appropriate partying hours seems to be one weapon.

In 1997, Florida put in a statewide "anti-rave" ordinance that closed clubs
after 2 am. But municipalities were given the option of making their own
bylaws.

In San Francisco, Deepfog, a DJ, claims there's an unofficial moratorium on
issuing new "extended-hours" permits for clubs.

"-- just because they want to be sleeping at 2 am," he says of the
party-poopers. "We don't ask them to come out and dance, so don't ask us to
go home."

Rose Meyer, permit officer at the southern San Francisco police station,
says several all-night dance permits have, in fact, been issued, and some
are pending.

San Francisco partiers also say several current rave-type spaces are being
targeted for shutdown on the grounds of bogus infractions.

In an August article titled The War On Fun, the San Francisco Bay Guardian
reported that the city's largest nightclub, Ten 15 Folsom, was slapped with
hundreds of alleged incidents of improper operation ranging from stolen
items in the neighbourhood to "suspicious persons" wandering the area.

Create problems

"We represent not only nightclub owners and patrons but also the
surrounding communities," says Meyer. "And when nightclubs create problems,
we regulate that."

Noise infractions are another way all-night parties, usually held in
industrial areas, are being shut up.

Last month, Seattle city council tried to pass a new noise ordinance
according to which violators would be fined or even jailed for "excessive
sound," including talking or singing. There were no warnings for anyone who
wasn't a "commercial establishment."

But Seattle mayor Paul Schell vetoed it at the last minute.

"He felt like it inhibits free speech and is detrimental to our music
community," says Yazmin Mehdi, the mayor's special assistant for arts and
culture. "Grunge put us on the map -- we didn't want to lose that."

She says the mayor was also worried that the ordinance would send the wrong
message about the ability to protest (loudly) in Seattle at the upcoming
World Trade Organization conference.

And finally, there is slow death in permit purgatory.

Vancouver has introduced an all-night event application process.

On the one hand, says Tobias, it's good, because there's now a system that
will cut down on arbitrary shutdowns. But the prohibitive cost of getting
the things the permit requires - large numbers of off-duty police officers
hired at triple their usual pay, private security and liability insurance,
not to mention the cost of the permit itself -- makes it impossible for
anyone other than the cheezoids to throw raves.

"If you're a capitalistic entrepreneur throwing a party for 5,000 people,
you can afford the permit, the police officers and the lawyers," says
Tobias. "But if you're an artist, who's interested in the music and doing
it as a community event, supporting the underground, doing it in an
artistic sense, than you can't."

"I don't know where he's getting that from," says Guy Gusdal, Vancouver's
permits and licences coordinator. "We are only allowing these parties in
approved assembly spaces. We're not looking at warehouses or anything, so
for operators who have no intention of running these things safely and have
to pay market price for assembly spaces, that will cut into their profits."

Vancouver police could not be reached to confirm costs.

Panic erupts

As for T.O., every six months or so mild panic erupts that there'll be some
sort of crackdown on party culture.

So far no dice. But Runciman only lists police, the province and municipal
authorities as the parties he plans to consult with on The Plan.

When asked if he's going to include people from the rave community in his
decision making, he says, "It doesn't bother me, as long as these are
legitimate folks and the police have no problems with them in attendance."