MOUNT POCONO — Rave concerts have been evicted from Mount Airy Lodge, resort owner Emil Wagner pledged Wednesday.

"We never, ever, ever again will have something like that," Wagner said. "I promise, we will never have another one. I will notify every salesperson at Mount Airy, if someone books them, we're going to chase them out with the group."

That's too bad, some of the rave participants said, because the weekend concert was a fun event whose positive aspects have been ignored.

"It was one of the best I've ever been to," said Stroudsburg resident Josh Vega, 18, one of the more than 8,500 people who attended the all-night dance party. "People who don't know anything about it are saying things about it when they don't know what happened. They've never been to one. They just know the bad stuff and assume everyone's doing drugs. They should remember what it was like when they were young."

Vega's friend, Jason Kirkhuff, 17, also attended.

"Ohmigod. It was the best party I ever went to," said Kirkhuff, 17, of Stroudsburg. "They had the best DJs I'd ever seen. Nothing anyone printed said anything good about it."

At Mount Airy, Wagner's comments came three days after the ill-fated, 14-hour rave party at the resort's Sports Palace. One person died from a drug overdose. There were 22 drug arrests.

A similar, though smaller, all-night dance party is scheduled for Saturday at Big Wheel Roller Skating Center on Route 191 in Stroud Township. And a separate rave is scheduled for May 9 and 10 at the Dreams Dance Club on Route 209 near Brodheadsville.

Unfair `to the good kids'

"I'm a nervous wreck about having one again, because you just don't want to have any problems like they had," said Bonnie Coffin, owner of Big Wheel. "I've already signed a contract. I'm definitely going to reconsider having any more after this one."

Big Wheel has hosted at least three previous dance parties in the last three years. Attendance ranged from 300 to 1,500 people. "We don't call them raves," Coffin said. "I don't like the publicity they're getting, and I certainly don't want to do anything bad for the community. I don't think it's fair to the good kids."

Wagner said his resort was misled when it booked the event.

"They claimed they were going to have a peace rally," Wagner said. "I figured it would be a peace rally. The person who booked it was not good. We got rid of him."

The resort leased the Sports Palace to a Philadelphia-based organization called Local 13, said Alfred Heim, managing director at Mount Airy. Repeated calls left on an answering machine at the organization were not returned this week.

Raves are all-night dance parties featuring electronically-created music and light shows. Some of the 14 disc jockeys, including headliners Rabbit in the Moon, performed on synthesizers, drum machines and spun compact discs at last weekend's event, which began 6 p.m. Saturday and ended 8 a.m. Sunday.

"It took us two days to clean up," Wagner said. "I didn't know they were running around at Promised Land."

As many as 2,000 youths and young adults who attended the rave went to Promised Land State Park afterward to party but were chased away by police. The park, 15 miles from Mount Airy, was littered with syringes and beer and liquor bottles.

At Big Wheel, "We are very, very conscientious about security," Coffin said. "It's a nice outing for the kids to have fun. There's no alcohol. The kids are checked on their way in. It's chaperoned, supervised and good clean fun. My children go to it."

Stroud Township police officer Frank Messerle said his officers will be ready to work overtime to keep an eye on the party.

"We just have to beef up patrols and hope for the best,'' Messerle said.

Rave parties abound

Vega, who has attended dozens of rave concerts since 1995, said he believes the all-night parties are getting bad press and the public is getting only one side of the story. He said some informal raves were held in Stroudsburg at gatherings in the Ann Street Outlet, and in another spot he called "The Gate,'' in an alley behind Main Street.

Stroudsburg police Lt. Jack Rundle said he was unaware of any rave parties in the borough.

Vega said one of the things that makes raves special is the fact they are "underground,'' meaning adults and outsiders are not supposed to know about them.

"That's exactly what we don't want,'' he said. "Every other scene has been commercialized.''

The Mount Airy event was probably "too good for its own good,'' Vega said. "A party that good everybody is going to hear about.''

One of the rave participants, Jason R. Williamson, 20, of Virginia Beach, Va., died of a drug overdose.

"I believe that kid died because of what he did, not because of what the rave scene did to him," Vega said. "The rave had nothing to do with it. The kid would have done what he was doing regardless if there was a party or not. I guarantee no other party kid came to him and forced drugs down his throat. He did this on his own."

Vega's mother, Regina Ericson, agreed, saying the drug overdoses and 22 drug arrests should not reflect badly on the thousands of other rave attendees.

"Whatever baggage and drug abuse problem anyone had, they brought with them. Would have had problems anywhere," she said.

Ericson said some of the people who have complained about the rave are hypocrites.

"I think every generation, at any period of time you look at, always had a group outside the norm, a counterculture group," she said. "I find it amazing that the baby boomers, who were the counterculture in the 60s and 70s, are complaining now. Tourists on Fridays cause more problems than these kids at the party. The fact they wear baggy clothes and different haircuts doesn't make them bad."

Variety of musical options

What makes raves notorious with parents and police is not what packs so many young people into these all-night events, ravers say. It's the different kinds of electronic music they can hear — industrial, techno, house, drum and bass, and for those who want to chill, the ambient — all under one roof.

"People don't go to these parties just to do drugs. There's lots of places to do drugs. People go for the whole scene," said Bill Werde, who writes about electronic music for CMJ, a new-music magazine. "It's an all-night place; it's an all-night gig. It's about forgetting about the world and just dancing."

Unlike seven or eight years ago, when the rave scene was limited to parties and advertised by word-of-mouth and sporadically distributed fliers, today's raves are increasingly more commercial, often booked by large promoters featuring well-known disc jockeys, Werde said.

The abandoned buildings and open fields that once housed the often-illegal raves are now being replaced by larger, more mainstream venues — like the Sports Palace in Mount Airy Lodge.

Information about upcoming raves is easily obtainable on the Internet and at large music stores in places like New York City. While raves were once highly secretive because of the illegality of the party sites, the increased commercialization has brought them out from under ground.

Some ravers will go for the drugs, Werde admits, but given the size of many of the raves — anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 participants — the number is usually a minority.

"I think anything that pigeonholes an entire scene is unfair, but there are certainly drugs at raves," he said "I've never been to a rave without that element, without being asked if I wanted to do drugs."

Long searches, no drugs

Dan Shtob, a University of Pennsylvania student who attended the Mount Airy rave, said he was among the majority of drug- and alcohol-free participants.

Shtob said he was searched by security guards for as long as five minutes as they went through every pocket of his pants and checked his pack of cigarettes.

"I was there sober. A number of my friends were there sober," said Shtob, who drove to the rave from Philadelphia. "It's pretty simple — if you put 5,000 teen-agers in a room together, something is bound to happen."

The 8,500 tickets to the Mount Airy rave were sold out, at $25 apiece, before the concert, Vega said. He said another 2,000 people got in on the night of the rave. Tickets at the gate sold for $30.

Coffin, of Big Wheel, said the key to a successful party is limiting the number of participants.

"There's no harm in it," she said. "There is harm in not having it controlled."

Gene Snavely, owner of the Dreams Dance Club, which will host a rave on May 9, said he plans to have ample security.

Snavely, in a letter to the Pocono Record, said it was unfortunate that there were problems at Mount Airy Lodge, "but we should not condemn the 8,480 kids that were not arrested on that day or the following day. The raves to follow will be closely watched and we will work closely with the state police to ensure that any criminal activity is resolved at once."

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Pocono Record reporters Joe McDonald, Kelly Brosnahan and Christine Magnotta contributed to this article.

Copyright © April 30, 1998, Pocono Record
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