Rave Music Fan Girl

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.
San Francisco has long been a Mecca for ravers from all over the world and true to form a lot of the early promoters and DJs were from the UK and Europe. For almost ten years after the initial raves took place, one could find up to 2 to 4 parties happening a weekend and sometimes on the same night. There was no curfew in place, which allowed the SF scene to explode by the late '90s when venues would have up to 20,000 people every weekend; Homebase, and the 85th & Baldwin Warehouse (both in Oakland near the Oakland Airport) were the largest venues to be used in the Bay Area. Many amazing venues were used by crews that held clout or members that were tied to the city or knew the appropriate ways to navigate the permit maze. Thus, in the late 1990s some of the most memorable raves took place in locations such as the SOMA art museum, 'Where the wild things are' museum on top of the Sony Metreon, and in the venerable Maritime hall that was used for many parties from 1998 to 2002. Some old locations appeared again brand new, such as the Concourse that saw thousands of ravers in '92, now saw the same amount in late 99. The Galleria that once held a 'concert' in '92 with artists such as Moby, Aphex Twin, The Prodigy, and Space Time Continuum was now used for a few one-off events that utilized all 5 floors of the building with a different music style on each floor.
The mid part of the 1990s saw a general loss of the first generation of ravers, causing the scene to take a short dive. In this time, however, and into the late '90s, a new West coast sound was formed and developed by DJs such as Tony Hewitt, Jeno, Spun, DJ Carlos, Galen, Solar, Harry Who?, and Rick Preston to name but a few. Venues and parties such as Stompy, Harmony, CloudFactory, the Cyborganic lounge, Mr. Floppy's Flophouse (in Oakland), the Acme warehouse among many others started to fuse the Breakbeat sound from hardcore trax with the more melodic pace of house. West coast funky break-beat was born from this and stormed the dance scene. By the end of '94 all the people that had left a gap in the rave scene in '93 were long forgotten as twice as many people now found the new sounds completely and utterly funky.