TranceAddict Forums (www.tranceaddict.com/forums)
- Canada - Toronto & Southern Ont.
-- The Docks Nightclub - A health hazard?
Pages (3): « 1 2 [3]
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Jayx1 this is no different than they type of attitudes behind smoking bans.... Our society whines, our society gets... and since the city gets all its money from condo taxes, they win. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by ncgroov808 Though I'm not a TO resident, or even a Canadian, The Docks I am sure pays their fair share of taxes. Everything from property (they have a lot) to alcohol, etc, the Docks must pump a lot of taxes to the city of Tornto. If they didn't, I'm sure the club would already be shut down. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by amb_ Yup. And the islanders don't pay property taxes and have a sweetheart $1 lease on their properties... hopefully council does not bow in to their incessant whining and renew them yet again past the non-renewable date. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by ncgroov808 Though I'm not a TO resident, or even a Canadian, The Docks I am sure pays their fair share of taxes. Everything from property (they have a lot) to alcohol, etc, the Docks must pump a lot of taxes to the city of Tornto. If they didn't, I'm sure the club would already be shut down. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by amb_ Yup. And the islanders don't pay property taxes and have a sweetheart $1 lease on their properties... hopefully council does not bow in to their incessant whining and renew them yet again past the non-renewable date. |
my neighbours have been complaining for years about the high volume, they call the cops, we turn it down, been going on for years..... almost been kicked out a few times because of it......
wait.....this sounds a lot like the docks situation......
but at least i didnt pussy out (and still get writen up in the star)....... what a waste of a multi million dollar sound system...... bring back the ruckus!!!!
THE BIGGEST NOICE COMPLAINT @ the DOCKS. (Wasn't inside the club)
FREAKIN' 99
featuring Grooverider, EPMD, Rabbit in the Moon, Fabio, Jumpin' Jack Frost, DJ Sneak, many more. Saturday, Oct. 30. Toronto Congress Centre, 650 Dixon. $25/$35.
Dose & Syrous lost their venue at the Toronto Congress Centre, after a letter from the city of Toronto to the venue owners. With 3 days to go, the biggest Rave in Toronto was on the line. They used the Drive in theater area from the Docks ... so many ppl couldn't get tickets and were pissed off from the venue setup. They setted up 4 massive tents. Each tent could hold 9000 ppl! Picture an outdoor big top tent, but with 25 - 30 of them, connected to make the length. The width was 6 tents wide. They also used the length of the driving in for the line up (2 city block approx) and made the gates to fit 20 ppl wide.
The sound systems installed in each room was insane. Picture GUV & BOA sound system ... that's only equal two sections. They setted up 10 sections away from the stage, on the stage was even more. Each section had huge projection screens to display the stage and visual fx. Here is alittle layout what it looked liked. Remember .. this was only 1 room.
B T
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[][] [][]
[][] [][]
[][] [][]
[][] [][]
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
[][] [][]
[][] [][]
[][] [][]
[] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] []
Stage
b = Bottom
t = top
Every single condo unit owner on lakeshore was rumbling from the bass. From what I heard, you can hear & feel the bass crystal clear ... all the way to Keele & Lakeshore. Since it was tents, there was no ways to filter and keep the sound in like a nite club. The Island ppl were going insane! The Jungle room was turned down 20x, b/c of the low crazy bass. At 4:30am, the cops forced Dose and Syrous to end this rave, and over 17,000ppl were kicked out into the rain.
That's the worest noice complaint the Docks ever got. After this shit, they added a new protocal to the Rave Protocal ... all events must be in a building.
"But no checklist can help you when your venue cancels three days before an event, as happened with Dose and Syrous' Freakin' Halloween megajam. Lisi suggests the cancellation was influenced by negative media coverage; the fact that their construction of an outdoor venue on the Docks property led to sound complaints, police visits and damning media reports is unfortunate."
Rob Lisi
LifeForce
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_...t/extended.html
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_...at/freakin.html
CN ON: Raving Mad
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1208/a02.html
Newshawk: CMAP
Votes: 1
Pubdate: Sun, 07 Nov 1999
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 1999, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/
Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/newsgroups.html
Author: Jean Sonmor
RAVING MAD
Rants About T.O. Raves Are Reaching A Crescendo
People are raging about raves.
First came police concern over growing drug use at the all-night parties.
Then came neighbourhood anger at the thunderous racket.
Then came the politicians.
Last weekend, it was the Beaches neighbourhood that noticed Freakin', the big Halloween rave at the Docks. In fact, residents couldn't help but notice.
The high-decibel beat went on -- at 140 beats per minute -- all night long and resulted in hundreds of angry calls to police and politicians.
One of those politicians, Councillor Tom Jakobek, was himself awakened by the noise at his home several kilometres away and is now pushing for a crackdown on the dance parties. He's also demanding the city cancel the permit for a huge New Year's Eve rave at Exhibition Place.
Police later explained they were reluctant to pull the plug on the Docks party because the estimated 15,000 young people -- many using drugs -- might have been hard to manage if the music had suddenly stopped.
What a perfect opening for politicians bent on bringing order to the rave scene! There'd been three deaths since July and they were worried about these marathon dance parties where kids, some as young as 14, dance all night long, often with a chemical assist from a designer drug like Ecstasy or Crystal Meth.
The crackdown rumblings had already started months ago in the major-drugs section at police headquarters. Designer drugs heading for the rave markets were becoming big business. The word had filtered up from undercover street cops that this scene was much bigger than anyone imagined.
About nine months ago, Det.-Sgt. David Brownell of major drugs got funding to set up a clandestine-labs division right alongside the heroin and cocaine outfits. The purpose was to target the labs where the drugs were made, since Brownell and his men believed the traffickers were "stepping up" to become the manufacturers as well as the distributors.
Two months ago they arrested a ring run by a former kingpin in the cocaine trade. Among the drugs and money confiscated were presses or stamps used to put the identifying imprints on the little capsules. Tiny imprints of a butterfly, a turtle -- even a Canadian flag -- are commonly used as brand logos to suggest the capsules are safe and benign.
"We have conclusive evidence that it ( Ecstasy ) is being manufactured here," Brownell told The Sunday Sun.
Brownell's group looks at the problem of drug trafficking from the business side. They go after those who organize the importation or manufacture of drugs. They see the million-dollar houses and expensive imported cars, the perqs of the trade.
At the apex of the business, the criminals "look just like us, with suits and cellphones," says Brownell. "Chasing them is an elaborate game of strategy that doesn't often concentrate on drug tragedies."
But this summer it was impossible to escape the connection between designer drugs and tragedy. Three young men died in drug incidents at raves. Not much is known about the young man who died in the parking lot of The Guvernment, a popular dance club. But the two others were both promising university students nearing the end of their educations. Neither was known to be an habitue of the rave scene and both may have been victims of their own inexperience with designer drugs.
These deaths have reverberated with the public. Here was a danger they didn't know existed and one that had suddenly landed very close to home. The police decided something should be done before there was more trouble.
Three weeks ago, Brownell's boss, Supt. Ron Taverner, went to see Consumer Minister Bob Runciman. "I hadn't thought or heard much about raves," Runciman told The Sunday Sun, "but it was clear the police were worried about the very, very large ones. Taverner told me it was difficult for the police to cope with crowds of that size, especially when they are rife with the sales and use of illegal drugs."
In the week leading up to Halloween, Runciman made some oblique rumblings about taking a look at raves. There's speculation that Runciman's comments touched a nerve at the Toronto Congress Centre, which had been rented months before for the biggest rave of the year, the Halloween bash, Freakin'.
Rob Lisi, co-owner of Lifeforce Industries, promoter of the event, won't comment but for some reason the Congress Centre got cold feet and demanded the party be limited to 10,000. Thirteen thousand tickets had already been sold ( at $25 a head ).
So three days before the event, Lifeforce was without a location. It switched to the parking lots south of the Docks and worked "14-hour days" says Lisi, putting up tents, getting the ventilator fans, oiling the gravel and arranging more paid-duty cops to manage the traffic on Lakeshore Blvd.
It was a very difficult week for Lisi, 24. He and his partner had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested, had already paid expenses and advances to the more than a dozen DJs who were scheduled to mix music for the event. In honour of the special night they'd even booked a hip-hop group to broaden the range of the usual techno/house and drum and bass music.
But, finally, when the cool windy night arrived they were ready. Police were everywhere and everyone lining up to get in was patted down and asked to open purses and bags. The event was advertised to last from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m., but at midnight thousands of kids were still streaming into the four tents -- three each with a different type of music and a fourth where glow sticks, condoms and beads were available for sale.
On stage in the first tent, the big-name hip-hop group Public Enemy had unexpectedly joined E.P.M.D. for a little freestyle rap. This had the makings of a night to remember.
By 2 a.m. the scene was typical rave. In some places, kids were in lines 10 deep around the sides of the tents in piles that reminded you of litters of kittens. Many sucked on baby pacifiers. Others danced by themselves in the kind of jerky marionette movements that Pearl Isaac, a pharmacist and addiction counsellor with the Addiction and Mental Health Centre, says go along with the use of amphetamine-like drugs like Ecstasy.
But there was no hostility, no aggression, just a lot of hugging, rocking and yes, some "bruxism" ( the word the doctors use for grinding your teeth. This and the stiff jaws Ecstasy users report having the next day explain why pacifiers and Popsicles have become the emblem du jour of raves ).
The most dangerous moment in the nearly five hours I spent there came when the scaffolding under one of the speakers collapsed under the weight of some dancers. The speaker was suspended by wires but a piece of the scaffolding hit a couple who were sitting against it. Police and ambulance attendants converged and they were whisked away. The man was treated with extreme care and rolled onto a board as if he had a spinal-cord injury. However, by yesterday Lisi had heard nothing about his condition or the extent of his injuries.
Derek McNaughton, 24, has been a devotee of the rave scene for years, but now he's started to mix music and hopes to make a career in the field. He remembers his days of partying vividly and fondly. He's a strong-looking, muscular young man and knows the dangers that can be present in certain drinking establishments.
"I always felt safe at raves. I didn't have to worry about an alcohol-crazed testosterone nutcase taking a swing at me."
"With all these people we won't have one fight," one organizer told me. "Where else would that happen? The ambience is wonderful."
Even for me, a lone, drug-free interloper prowling the party disguised in a rubber horror mask, there was gentle acceptance. At least 20 people caught my arm or just my eye and gave me the thumbs-up sign approving of my costume. Others tried to tell me things but my ears weren't up to the challenge of distinguishing words above the music. Music so powerful, incidentally, I could feel my chest cavity vibrating. I've listened without comprehension to the techno music favoured by my 18-year-old son, but in this space, with these people, you could begin to glimpse its appeal. One raver told me that when he first walked into a rave it was as if everyone was speaking Japanese, but 12 hours and a cap of Ecstasy later he had learned the language and he never again returned to his rock 'n' roll roots.
Yes, there were obvious signs of drug use. "Absolutely rampant" is the description the police used. Some ravers were nauseous, some trembled, some in the kitten piles were clearly zoned out and grinding their teeth. The undercover police made six drug-related arrests. As for the uniformed paid-duty cops -- 34 of them altogether --they had a fairly calm time of it.
According to Lisi and another promoter, who didn't want his name used, the duty cops will arrest people if they see any blatant illegal activity. Their presence is obviously meant as a deterrent. But you have to wonder what mixed messages the kids get seeing uniformed police at a rave where the effects of drug use are obvious even if no one is popping pills in public.
Between the tents, with a light rain falling and the wind howling, people stood in lines 50 or 60 deep to buy water at $3 a bottle. Sometimes a pair would plunk down $30 and scoop up 10 bottles.
This, according to organizers, is the most lucrative business at a rave. The combination of designer drugs and frenetic dancing makes ravers deeply thirsty. It's also dangerous not to drink frequently because the drugs interfere with the body's natural thermostat and it's easy for body temperature to spike up.
So ample water supplies are a health issue as well as business issue. But at raves, organizers claim landlords often retain the right to sell water. And even at the city-owned Exhibition Place sites, the water concession is fiercely negotiated with the company that holds the concession contract.
Sometimes the landlord even turns off the tap water so ravers are forced to buy the expensive bottled water. "It's a health issue," one rave organizer told me. "These kids go to the washroom and fill up their bottle from the toilet. Not the bowl, but where it comes in."
That was not an issue at Freakin'. There was no running water, only hundreds of Portolets.
It wasn't obvious as the night wore on, but the promoters were under fire big-time. The regulars would have noticed, of course, that what was advertised as "insane wattage" wasn't quite as insane any more. The Beaches was vibrating to a muffled techno that prevented many from sleeping. The police came back three times asking that the music be turned down, Lisi says, and each time it was.
"I made a mistake," Lisi admits. "The closest residents were on the Toronto Island and I figured if we faced the speakers east we wouldn't wake them up. But it was a clear night and the sound carried far farther than we expected. I take full ownership for a bad decision. I made a public apology but it wasn't accepted."
One of the people awakened was Councillor Jakobek's wife. The telephone also started to ring. It also rang in Councillor Sandra Bussin's home with irate voters demanding something be done.
The party ended at 6 a.m., three hours ahead of schedule, "because it started to rain," Lisi told The Sunday Sun.
On Monday morning, the city was shocked to learn the police felt they didn't have power to do much more than they did to shut down the rave.
"They purposely don't serve liquor so it won't affect their liquor licence and hence their operating licence," said Insp. Randall Munroe when the police were criticized.
By Wednesday, the political fallout was beginning to take shape. Runciman had announced "a summit" of police, fire and health authorities to develop a strategy to crackdown on raves.
By Friday, when he talked to The Sunday Sun he had expanded his focus to include bars and other licensed establishments where drugs might be sold and organized crime involved. He'd also adjusted the timetable. The summit wouldn't be convened until next month and possibly not until the new year.
That will not be good enough for Jakobek who sounded angrier on Friday than he had earlier. "Those raves are notorious for dozens of our kids being hauled off to hospital," he said. He had written a letter to Councillor Joe Pantalone, chairman of Exhibition Place, demanding the rave scheduled for New Year's Eve and promoted by Lisi's Lifeforce Industries be cancelled.
Lisi was upset by the attack. "Obviously there are some raves that need to be shut down," he said. "But our events are safe. It's only us doing large events over 10,000. They're going after the responsible promoter. All closing us down is going to do is drive ravers underground where it isn't safe. Safety is not being considered. I think some people are being vengeful in this situation."
No deaths have occurred at the large events Lisi has organized, although he admits kids are taken to hospital with drug problems. That's going to happen in any situation like this. I do whatever I can to restrict drug use."
He says the New Year's event will cost $500,000 and they've already spent $150,000 of that.
"It's the millennium, there's going to be revelry," says Tony, a promoter who asked that his last name not be used. "We're adults. We should not have our heads in the sand. There are drugs in Toronto. I've been offered cocaine in the bathroom at a Jays game."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP posted-by: Derek Rea
| quote: |
| Originally posted by E2EK1EL FREAKIN' 99 featuring Grooverider, EPMD, Rabbit in the Moon, Fabio, Jumpin' Jack Frost, DJ Sneak, many more. Saturday, Oct. 30. Toronto Congress Centre, 650 Dixon. $25/$35. They used the Drive in theater area from the Docks ... so many ppl couldn't get tickets and were pissed off from the venue setup. They setted up 4 massive tents. Each tent could hold 9000 ppl! |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by amb_ Heh. I was there... It was craziness. And yeah, the rain sucked. No doubt this sparked the whole debate... |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by E2EK1EL Fucking crazy!!!! ALl I gotta say is, the noise complaints they're getting from the islanders recently ... as ICE CUBE would say "NIGGA PLEASE! THAT SHIT AIN'T SHIT COMPAIRED TO BACK IN THE DAYS!" |
Too bad they only had one rave at the Toronto Congress Centre ...
Dose & Syrous Hyperactive - Labour Day.
With over 500,000 square feet of prime exhibit space (accommodating 2,000 10' x 10' booths) and 60,000 square feet of 5-star technologically enhanced convention space including an exquisite ballroom with adjacent courtyard, Toronto Congress Centre is the perfect venue for events of all sizes.
LOOK AT THE FLOOR PLANS
http://www.torontocongresscentre.co...s/Floorplan.pdf
CN ON: Raving Mad
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1208/a02.html
Newshawk: CMAP
Votes: 1
Pubdate: Sun, 07 Nov 1999
Source: Toronto Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 1999, Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact: [email protected]
Website: http://www.canoe.ca/TorontoSun/
Forum: http://www.canoe.ca/Chat/newsgroups.html
Author: Jean Sonmor
RAVING MAD
Rants About T.O. Raves Are Reaching A Crescendo
People are raging about raves.
First came police concern over growing drug use at the all-night parties.
Then came neighbourhood anger at the thunderous racket.
Then came the politicians.
Last weekend, it was the Beaches neighbourhood that noticed Freakin', the big Halloween rave at the Docks. In fact, residents couldn't help but notice.
The high-decibel beat went on -- at 140 beats per minute -- all night long and resulted in hundreds of angry calls to police and politicians.
One of those politicians, Councillor Tom Jakobek, was himself awakened by the noise at his home several kilometres away and is now pushing for a crackdown on the dance parties. He's also demanding the city cancel the permit for a huge New Year's Eve rave at Exhibition Place.
Police later explained they were reluctant to pull the plug on the Docks party because the estimated 15,000 young people -- many using drugs -- might have been hard to manage if the music had suddenly stopped.
What a perfect opening for politicians bent on bringing order to the rave scene! There'd been three deaths since July and they were worried about these marathon dance parties where kids, some as young as 14, dance all night long, often with a chemical assist from a designer drug like Ecstasy or Crystal Meth.
The crackdown rumblings had already started months ago in the major-drugs section at police headquarters. Designer drugs heading for the rave markets were becoming big business. The word had filtered up from undercover street cops that this scene was much bigger than anyone imagined.
About nine months ago, Det.-Sgt. David Brownell of major drugs got funding to set up a clandestine-labs division right alongside the heroin and cocaine outfits. The purpose was to target the labs where the drugs were made, since Brownell and his men believed the traffickers were "stepping up" to become the manufacturers as well as the distributors.
Two months ago they arrested a ring run by a former kingpin in the cocaine trade. Among the drugs and money confiscated were presses or stamps used to put the identifying imprints on the little capsules. Tiny imprints of a butterfly, a turtle -- even a Canadian flag -- are commonly used as brand logos to suggest the capsules are safe and benign.
"We have conclusive evidence that it ( Ecstasy ) is being manufactured here," Brownell told The Sunday Sun.
Brownell's group looks at the problem of drug trafficking from the business side. They go after those who organize the importation or manufacture of drugs. They see the million-dollar houses and expensive imported cars, the perqs of the trade.
At the apex of the business, the criminals "look just like us, with suits and cellphones," says Brownell. "Chasing them is an elaborate game of strategy that doesn't often concentrate on drug tragedies."
But this summer it was impossible to escape the connection between designer drugs and tragedy. Three young men died in drug incidents at raves. Not much is known about the young man who died in the parking lot of The Guvernment, a popular dance club. But the two others were both promising university students nearing the end of their educations. Neither was known to be an habitue of the rave scene and both may have been victims of their own inexperience with designer drugs.
These deaths have reverberated with the public. Here was a danger they didn't know existed and one that had suddenly landed very close to home. The police decided something should be done before there was more trouble.
Three weeks ago, Brownell's boss, Supt. Ron Taverner, went to see Consumer Minister Bob Runciman. "I hadn't thought or heard much about raves," Runciman told The Sunday Sun, "but it was clear the police were worried about the very, very large ones. Taverner told me it was difficult for the police to cope with crowds of that size, especially when they are rife with the sales and use of illegal drugs."
In the week leading up to Halloween, Runciman made some oblique rumblings about taking a look at raves. There's speculation that Runciman's comments touched a nerve at the Toronto Congress Centre, which had been rented months before for the biggest rave of the year, the Halloween bash, Freakin'.
Rob Lisi, co-owner of Lifeforce Industries, promoter of the event, won't comment but for some reason the Congress Centre got cold feet and demanded the party be limited to 10,000. Thirteen thousand tickets had already been sold ( at $25 a head ).
So three days before the event, Lifeforce was without a location. It switched to the parking lots south of the Docks and worked "14-hour days" says Lisi, putting up tents, getting the ventilator fans, oiling the gravel and arranging more paid-duty cops to manage the traffic on Lakeshore Blvd.
It was a very difficult week for Lisi, 24. He and his partner had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested, had already paid expenses and advances to the more than a dozen DJs who were scheduled to mix music for the event. In honour of the special night they'd even booked a hip-hop group to broaden the range of the usual techno/house and drum and bass music.
But, finally, when the cool windy night arrived they were ready. Police were everywhere and everyone lining up to get in was patted down and asked to open purses and bags. The event was advertised to last from 8 p.m. to 9 a.m., but at midnight thousands of kids were still streaming into the four tents -- three each with a different type of music and a fourth where glow sticks, condoms and beads were available for sale.
On stage in the first tent, the big-name hip-hop group Public Enemy had unexpectedly joined E.P.M.D. for a little freestyle rap. This had the makings of a night to remember.
By 2 a.m. the scene was typical rave. In some places, kids were in lines 10 deep around the sides of the tents in piles that reminded you of litters of kittens. Many sucked on baby pacifiers. Others danced by themselves in the kind of jerky marionette movements that Pearl Isaac, a pharmacist and addiction counsellor with the Addiction and Mental Health Centre, says go along with the use of amphetamine-like drugs like Ecstasy.
But there was no hostility, no aggression, just a lot of hugging, rocking and yes, some "bruxism" ( the word the doctors use for grinding your teeth. This and the stiff jaws Ecstasy users report having the next day explain why pacifiers and Popsicles have become the emblem du jour of raves ).
The most dangerous moment in the nearly five hours I spent there came when the scaffolding under one of the speakers collapsed under the weight of some dancers. The speaker was suspended by wires but a piece of the scaffolding hit a couple who were sitting against it. Police and ambulance attendants converged and they were whisked away. The man was treated with extreme care and rolled onto a board as if he had a spinal-cord injury. However, by yesterday Lisi had heard nothing about his condition or the extent of his injuries.
Derek McNaughton, 24, has been a devotee of the rave scene for years, but now he's started to mix music and hopes to make a career in the field. He remembers his days of partying vividly and fondly. He's a strong-looking, muscular young man and knows the dangers that can be present in certain drinking establishments.
"I always felt safe at raves. I didn't have to worry about an alcohol-crazed testosterone nutcase taking a swing at me."
"With all these people we won't have one fight," one organizer told me. "Where else would that happen? The ambience is wonderful."
Even for me, a lone, drug-free interloper prowling the party disguised in a rubber horror mask, there was gentle acceptance. At least 20 people caught my arm or just my eye and gave me the thumbs-up sign approving of my costume. Others tried to tell me things but my ears weren't up to the challenge of distinguishing words above the music. Music so powerful, incidentally, I could feel my chest cavity vibrating. I've listened without comprehension to the techno music favoured by my 18-year-old son, but in this space, with these people, you could begin to glimpse its appeal. One raver told me that when he first walked into a rave it was as if everyone was speaking Japanese, but 12 hours and a cap of Ecstasy later he had learned the language and he never again returned to his rock 'n' roll roots.
Yes, there were obvious signs of drug use. "Absolutely rampant" is the description the police used. Some ravers were nauseous, some trembled, some in the kitten piles were clearly zoned out and grinding their teeth. The undercover police made six drug-related arrests. As for the uniformed paid-duty cops -- 34 of them altogether --they had a fairly calm time of it.
According to Lisi and another promoter, who didn't want his name used, the duty cops will arrest people if they see any blatant illegal activity. Their presence is obviously meant as a deterrent. But you have to wonder what mixed messages the kids get seeing uniformed police at a rave where the effects of drug use are obvious even if no one is popping pills in public.
Between the tents, with a light rain falling and the wind howling, people stood in lines 50 or 60 deep to buy water at $3 a bottle. Sometimes a pair would plunk down $30 and scoop up 10 bottles.
This, according to organizers, is the most lucrative business at a rave. The combination of designer drugs and frenetic dancing makes ravers deeply thirsty. It's also dangerous not to drink frequently because the drugs interfere with the body's natural thermostat and it's easy for body temperature to spike up.
So ample water supplies are a health issue as well as business issue. But at raves, organizers claim landlords often retain the right to sell water. And even at the city-owned Exhibition Place sites, the water concession is fiercely negotiated with the company that holds the concession contract.
Sometimes the landlord even turns off the tap water so ravers are forced to buy the expensive bottled water. "It's a health issue," one rave organizer told me. "These kids go to the washroom and fill up their bottle from the toilet. Not the bowl, but where it comes in."
That was not an issue at Freakin'. There was no running water, only hundreds of Portolets.
It wasn't obvious as the night wore on, but the promoters were under fire big-time. The regulars would have noticed, of course, that what was advertised as "insane wattage" wasn't quite as insane any more. The Beaches was vibrating to a muffled techno that prevented many from sleeping. The police came back three times asking that the music be turned down, Lisi says, and each time it was.
"I made a mistake," Lisi admits. "The closest residents were on the Toronto Island and I figured if we faced the speakers east we wouldn't wake them up. But it was a clear night and the sound carried far farther than we expected. I take full ownership for a bad decision. I made a public apology but it wasn't accepted."
One of the people awakened was Councillor Jakobek's wife. The telephone also started to ring. It also rang in Councillor Sandra Bussin's home with irate voters demanding something be done.
The party ended at 6 a.m., three hours ahead of schedule, "because it started to rain," Lisi told The Sunday Sun.
On Monday morning, the city was shocked to learn the police felt they didn't have power to do much more than they did to shut down the rave.
"They purposely don't serve liquor so it won't affect their liquor licence and hence their operating licence," said Insp. Randall Munroe when the police were criticized.
By Wednesday, the political fallout was beginning to take shape. Runciman had announced "a summit" of police, fire and health authorities to develop a strategy to crackdown on raves.
By Friday, when he talked to The Sunday Sun he had expanded his focus to include bars and other licensed establishments where drugs might be sold and organized crime involved. He'd also adjusted the timetable. The summit wouldn't be convened until next month and possibly not until the new year.
That will not be good enough for Jakobek who sounded angrier on Friday than he had earlier. "Those raves are notorious for dozens of our kids being hauled off to hospital," he said. He had written a letter to Councillor Joe Pantalone, chairman of Exhibition Place, demanding the rave scheduled for New Year's Eve and promoted by Lisi's Lifeforce Industries be cancelled.
Lisi was upset by the attack. "Obviously there are some raves that need to be shut down," he said. "But our events are safe. It's only us doing large events over 10,000. They're going after the responsible promoter. All closing us down is going to do is drive ravers underground where it isn't safe. Safety is not being considered. I think some people are being vengeful in this situation."
No deaths have occurred at the large events Lisi has organized, although he admits kids are taken to hospital with drug problems. That's going to happen in any situation like this. I do whatever I can to restrict drug use."
He says the New Year's event will cost $500,000 and they've already spent $150,000 of that.
"It's the millennium, there's going to be revelry," says Tony, a promoter who asked that his last name not be used. "We're adults. We should not have our heads in the sand. There are drugs in Toronto. I've been offered cocaine in the bathroom at a Jays game."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP posted-by: Derek Rea
ah the days .. no more pussy'n out !
No doubt there is an attack on the nightclub industry happening that could end up being on the same scale as the rave situation 5 years ago. This city is getting more and more uptight. Like i said, soon we will be nothing but condos and big box outlets.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
| quote: |
| Originally posted by amb_ Or they should comply with the applicable regulations, yes. |
| quote: |
| Originally posted by Irishaddict .....then MOVE You want to be 'one with nature' on an island? Move up north. You want to live in a city? Live in Toronto. |
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