Rave Music Fan Girl

Rave promotion crews began achieving notoriety not only for their choices in musical entertainment, but for the entire experience as a whole (sometimes referred to colloquially as "the vibe"). Unlike concert promotion, rave promotion adds another dimension of creativity: the decorations, visualizations, theme and demographics of a party. This extra requirement that must be satisfied had small underground raves were just starting out and expanding beyond SF to include the East Bay, the South Bay Area including San Jose and Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz beaches (where the notorious 'full moon raves' took place at Bonny Doon beach every month).
One of the first regular rave nights in San Francisco was DJ Pete Avila's Osmosis. Held on Thursday nights on the top floor of the DV8 club, this event got started with a bang in the Fall of 1989. The original regular DJs included Pete Avila, Markie Mark (Wicked), Neon Leon, and DJ Ghost, now of Renegade Productions. When Markie went back to the U.K in 1990, another U.K. DJ took over as a regular, Jëno (Wicked). DJ Doc Martin was a frequent guest, and many other notable DJs of the day played there, including DJ Dimitri (Dee-lite) and Keoki (Limelight).
Another notable early San Francisco rave dance was the Smartie Party, which took place on March 23, 1991 at 1052 Geary near Van Ness. Admission was $5 and the featured DJ was Markie Mark of London, UK. Several hundred people attended this event. In late 1991 raves started to explode across Northern California into cities like Sacramento, and other parts of the San Francisco Bay Area besides San Francisco such as Oakland and Silicon Valley were taking off every weekend. This proved to be the turning point in Northern California's rave history. No longer were raves a secret, where one had to know the right people to gain access to map points. Now rave flyers were to be found up and down Haight Street at stores like "Anubis Warpus", "Amoeba" clothes, "Behind The Post Office", and newly opened "Housewares". Raves were exploding at an enormous rate and no longer were hundreds of revellers heading out, now there were thousands of ravers living for every weekend. The second generation of raves were just starting to be realized.
The Toontown Club New Year's Eve of 1991 rave which took place in the basement of the Fashion Center in SF was the first 'true' massive in the bay area. Over 8,000 people helped welcome in the new year and at the same time put SF as a must visit city for the burgeoning world wide rave scene. This was the first of many subsequent "Toontown Club" rave dances over the next few years (all organized by rave dance promoters Dianna Jacobs, Mark Heley, and Lawrence Sutten, along with a host of dedicated partners and volunteers). The Toontown Club was notable for having the best light shows—five different light shows, each of a different type, the most beautiful and largest psychedelic black light murals, and the best go-go dancers (both female and male). The superb excellence of the production standards of the Toontown Club became a touchstone for all future promoters to follow. Similarly, a year later, The Gathering held New Year's Eve of 1992 in Vallejo had over 12,000 people in attendance. The massive parties were taking place every weekend now from such disparate locations as outdoor fields to the aeroplane hangars and hilltops that surround the San Francisco Bay.