September 12, 1997

Some of the color, joy and diversity will be drained from downtown Orlando's nightlife, possibly forever, on Sept. 18 when the city's new "anti-rave" ordinance takes effect. The measure requires any establishment whose revenues mostly come from alcohol to cut off the booze at 2 a.m. and shut its doors at 3. This will effectively end "raves" - (ironically alcohol-free) late-night dance parties - that for the last several years have attracted hordes of young people to downtown nightspots, particularly The Club at Firestone, which will be the hardest hit by the ordinance.

The measure passed the City Council by a 5-2 vote (with Commissioners Ernest Page and Bruce Gordy in the minority). But it's far from certain that the new regulation will accomplish its proponents' stated goal - curbing the use of ecstasy, heroin and other drugs by the 18-27-year-old crowd attracted to raves. Instead, it seems designed to sweep the drug problem under the rug, or rather, outside the city limits, and to further burnish Orlando's carefully cultivated image as a family-friendly and relatively vice-free community.

The ordinance also appears motivated by the unconscious Puritan-like fear of some of the city's more conservative, strait-laced elements that raves must be bad ("sinful" in Puritan-speak), because the "kids" (adults really) have so much damned fun at them.

Drugs undoubtedly are present in the rave scene, just as vodka martinis "make the scene" at the University Club and the Country Club of Orlando, the watering holes of Orlando's civic elite. There are, however, already laws against certain drugs, the ones sometimes used at raves, so why not just step up enforcement of those and also require establishments where raves are held to take steps to prevent drug use on their premises?

Apparently, this approach was too sensible. Instead, city "leaders" seem to prefer that raves be held in remote spots where promoters are less likely to hire off-duty police to provide security, and it will take longer for emergency services to reach those who endanger their lives from overindulging in drugs.

Under the guise of what Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood paternalistically (in the Orlando Sentinel, Sept. 9) calls the city's "responsibility to deal with the health and safety of" its citizens (beware when an official uses a vague word like "deal," for it means he or she wants wide latitude), something else even more sinister has been deemed preferable: that it's better to violate the constitutional rights of ravers and club-owners than to craft policies that accomplish the same goals but respect constitutional rights. (Could this be the result of having only a part-time city attorney who is paid more than the previous full-time city attorney?)

Firestone owner Jon Marsa has already stated that he is unlikely to accept this situation quietly and may, among other steps, take the city to court for violating his rights and for the loss of revenue to his club. (For more details about this, see the Sept. 11 issue of The Orlando Weekly.)

Of course, when a business owner sues a municipality like Orlando for infringing on his freedom, the city seems to feel it's no big "deal" financially if the case drags on for years, through court after court. After all, it's not elected officials who pay the legal tab, but the taxpayers, and officials usually deem their pockets to be bottomless in these instances.

Another unfortunate side-effect of the ordinance is that the city has further aided and abetted the unfair stereotyping of a burgeoning sub-culture solely as a hotbed of seductive hedonism and dangerous, consciousness-altering escapism. That is only part of the picture, though.

The rave scene in theory and often in practice is extremely idealistic. It brings disparate social elements together (all races, ethnicities, economic backgrounds and sexual orientations) and creates a community - one whose only membership requirement seems to be that you must enjoy dancing to frenetic, throbbing music and the atmosphere and camaraderie found where the dancing takes place. This egalitarianism makes raves a threat to traditional values, which often make a virtue of emphasizing differences rather than finding ways to overcome them. The openly gay and bisexual element in the rave community may be part of its undoing, too, since it is practically the last minority group that it's socially acceptable to openly revile, persecute and discriminate against, directly or indirectly.

Traditionally, Orlando's slogan has been the "City Beautiful." It's time that was changed to the "City Intolerant," for Orlando has marred its beauty by showing once again that its civic establishment will not tolerate anything - including youth, diversity, alternate lifestyles, ideas, images or even simple pleasures - that depart from its comfortably insular norms.

--Ben Markeson

Ben Markeson I'm a first-generation Floridian, a second-generation American, a college drop-out and have a strong anti-authoritarian, anti-corporate bent. I edited and published two local "alternative" newspapers - The Orlando Collegian and The Orlando Spectator (three if you count The Orlando Reporter, which had one paper issue before becoming an e-zine), and also free-lanced for The Orlando Weekly. But I don't call myself a journalist because that sounds pretentious. Other Articles I've Written