Ravers

Ravers Degeneration X: The Artifacts and Lexicon of the Rave Subculture The dizzying laser lights flashed in synchronicity with the pulsating bass of the music that bounced off the psychedelic warehouse walls. As my boyfriend and I mentally attempted to organize the chaos surrounding us, we pushed our way through the crowd of spasmodic lunatics who contorted their bodies in time with the music and lights. We located a couch in a room covered with cartoonesque, hyper-graphic graffiti. An androgynous man sat himself at my feet and began massaging my thighs, while a girl with her eyes rolled back into her head demanded that my boyfriend give her a massage. Just then the deejay laid his head in my lap, told me he was in love with me, and placed a bitter pill on my tongue. This certainly was the most bizarre method of earning three graduate credit hours I could imagine. So began my two-year ethnography on the American rave subculture. The scene described above was my initiation into the underground subculture where rave kids, typically under twenty-one years old, are given secret invitations to attend private warehouse parties with dancing, drugs, and thousands of their closest friends. Because of rave, ravers, 1992, raves, music, kids, subculture, 1994, typically, supplies, one, need, mckusick, herbal, drug, because, rituals, drugs, wear, toys, scene, people, look, lexicon, include, hand, garcia, effects, due, being, bag, artifacts, acid, according, young, trip