bucky

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/rave14.html

Mayor targets rave parties

March 14, 2001

BY FRAN SPIELMAN CITY HALL REPORTER


Before it was shut down last year, Club XL on the West Side allegedly kept an emergency medical technician on the premises in case a teenager attending one of its notorious "rave" parties overdosed on drugs.

Surgical masks were available for people using inhalants so they could get a better high. And baby pacifiers were given out to counter the involuntary teeth-clenching that comes with using Ecstasy, police said.

On Tuesday, Daley used the shuttered club at 766 W. Jackson as a backdrop for a crackdown he called long overdue. The mayor said it's time to jail the owners of buildings where raves are held, instead of fining them or allowing them to slip through the regulatory cracks because they sell bottled water and juices, not liquor.

"The people who run rave parties or own the rooms where they take place know exactly what's going on, but the city does not have sufficient powers to hold them responsible."

For years, Chicago teenagers and pre-teens have been paying anywhere from $15 to $25 to attend underground raves, which usually start in the wee hours and can last until 10 a.m.

In 1999, Chicago Police started finding kids unconscious at such parties as designer drugs like Ecstasy gained in popularity across the city. Ecstasy, GHB and nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, are the drugs of choice at the parties.

Ecstasy is "starting to overtake cocaine and heroin" as the drug of choice among young people, with sometimes deadly consequences, particularly when mixed with the sedating drug GHB, said Dr. Tim Erickson, emergency room physician at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center.

In all of 1998, Chicago police seized just 11 Ecstasy tablets. One year later, 72,237 tablets were seized.

"Ecstasy has now overtaken heroin as the No. 1 drug in Europe, so this is not going to go away. It's easier to make. "It's cheaper to buy, and we're going to see a lot of it." Erickson said. "A lot of these kids don't know what they're taking. It's peer-group pressure, so they're taking whatever they're given.

"They think they're taking Ecstasy at times," he said, "and they may actually be taking a more potent amphetamine, resulting in high temperatures and seizures. We're not talking 102, 103, but 107, 108, 109 [degrees.]"

Keith Ware, a Chicago DJ who used to play at raves, said drugs are indeed part of the rave culture, just as LSD and marijuana were part of the 1960s and '70s rock 'n' roll culture.

"It's not something you can avoid, and it's not going to go away because of an ordinance." He said many raves now take place outside of the city, and the previous anti-rave ordinance accelerated that trend.

Ware said the walk-in cooler and EMT at Club XL were signs the venue had improved since the time he used to spin records there.

"Two years ago when somebody OD'd they'd just put him out in the parking lot."

Last year, the City Council decided to license raves and slap $10,000 fines on everyone from the owner, lessee and manager to the party producer, presenter and disc jockey of unlicensed parties. The ordinance has been used four times since then. Two of the cases resulted in default judgments, one in a finding of liability. The fourth case--against Club XL--is now on trial.

Daley's ordinance would tighten the regulatory noose.

Patterned after the so-called drug-and gang-house ordinance that has been used to jail just one landlord since 1996, it would hold building owners, lessors, managers, agents and employees criminally responsible for "knowingly maintaining a place where controlled substances are used, distributed, manufactured or stored." Mandatory jail terms would range from two weeks to six months.

Daley said he's prepared to do whatever it takes to protect young people even if it means seizing the cars parked outside raves at all hours of the day and night.

But the mayor said parents need to step up and take responsibility for their children's actions.

"You wonder where the parents are. . . . It's a sad comment. They should really come forward and save another child's life," he said.

"If they don't come forward and help us, maybe a younger child or the neighbor's child will go to one of these rave parties and end up in the emergency room."

Contributing: Art Golab

***

PARTY BASICS

WHAT'S A RAVE? A party, usually held all night long, at which loud "techno" or "house" music is played. At some raves, ravers take different chemicals.


WHERE DID RAVES START? Raves were thought to have began in the late 1980s in England. Enthusiast of Acid House music began gathering in fields, playing music all night long and partying. When fields became too obvious, they began breaking into abandoned warehouses and began indoor raves.


WHERE THEY'RE HELD: They're usually held in a rented warehouse or other large, nondescript building.


WHO'S INVITED: Often, they're by invitation only, but a large number are open to the public. There's usually a cover charge.


WHAT THEY'RE LIKE: Visuals have a big role. Typically, a strobe light will be used. Some raves put up big screens all over, with different colors.


WHAT'S SERVED: Everything from "smart drinks" (made with nutrients said to help the body manufacture neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers that carry impulses to the brain) to Ecstasy and LSD can be found at some raves.


HOW TO FIND A RAVE: There are Internet sites--like http://www.raves.org--that provide message boards and listserves to let people know about raves.

Lucio Guerrero

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bucky

of all comments in the article, i can't believe this one..

imagine that... illegal to even park outside of a building where a rave is taking place!! we know they could never do that, we hope, but still...

Markavelli

There is absolutely NO way that the city could justify their towing of cars parked at raves, so long as the cars were parked in legal parking spaces. To do so would be deemed illegal search and seizure, or illegal confiscation, for sure. If these anti-rave laws were appealed to the Supreme Court level it seems highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would allow continuation of these unconstitutional laws.
I hope before this whole situation gets too out of hand that President Bush or Attorney General Ashcroft step in to defend our Constitutional rights and place the responsiblity of stopping kids from raving back into the parents hands, where it belongs. With a Republican controlled government I think the defense us ravers should be focousing on is Individual Rights, the Government has NO RIGHT to tell us as individuals what we can and cannot do! They have to right to say we can't stay out late and dance, or that a bar can't stay open until 8 am if they want to! To do so would be downright UNCONSTITUTIONAL!

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I hope that when I die I reincarnate as an MDMA test rat.

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