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Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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  • rekoil

    It’s “OONTZ”! At least it was on the east coast.

  • SomeGuyNamedMark

    Looks like an aerobics class.

  • http://profiles.google.com/wordtrey Trey Muhlhauser

    “The music is changing my life.  And don’t even get me started on this gum!”

  • kartwaffles

    Ukraine, 2012.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      It is premium party! Where is Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.?

  • Steve White

    Moms Jeans girl almost broke protocol and smiled.  

    • kartwaffles

       If this video really did happen in the mid 90′s, and if it happened in DC or Baltimore… I kind of recognize Mom Jeans Girl.

    • http://www.spockosbrain.com spocko

      At 40.4 seconds in she smiled for one frame and then stopped.
      It was probably just gas.

    • Wild Rumpus

      Dropped by to comment on Mom Jeans woman too…  If this is the Ukraine then maybe it makes sense, but I don’t think anyone in North America or UK wore pants like that for a night on the town in 1997…

  • http://twitter.com/MrJSnod James Snodgrass

    1997? Clothing and genre would say this is a lot earlier … 1991 or 1992.

  • http://www.spockosbrain.com spocko

    Is it just me, or does the close up still look like Ayn Rand?

    • Bob Webb

      That’s not Ayn Rand?!

  • Frank W

    Must be Rotterdam. 

    • Pobol Pobotrol

       Agreed. the adam’s apples point to it.
      How we did it UK style: http://youtu.be/jsd0GraJv7E

    • Aaron H

      I agree. I was raving back in 1997 in the NYC area and people were NOT dressing like this (or dancing like that, for that matter)

  • RightReverendRex

    <3

  • Timothy Krause

    You forgot the ORBITAL ORBITAL ORBITAL, but maybe that’s from earlier.

  • http://www.facebook.com/charles.lenchner Charles Lenchner

    I miss that scene so much. Bring it back!

  • paddle2paddle

    More fun can not be had.

  • blindidiotgod

    That’s gotta be earlier like others have said, ’90-91′. Although the uniformity of attire might make it a little later since, as far as I remember (my first rave was ‘Soltice’ in MTL), early raves were almost like costume parties.

  • blindidiotgod

    Forgot to mention that our raves in Montreal sounded more like:
    sboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, into perpetuity or, boomboomboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, boomboomboom, sboom, sboom, sboom, etc…

  • Drabula

    too many dicks on the dance floor

    • heligo

      Yeah my first thought was sausage fest!

      I can’t believe we’re all looking back on 1997 like it was such a long time ago – it was only yesterday! And yet it is a nice bit of nostalgia :)

      • ocker3

         I don’t understand why the cameraperson didn’t spend more time on the tall woman with the glasses and sports bra, she looked like she was ready to show off for the camera

  • mrtut

    Judging by outfit and self-confidence, definitely Rotterdam Gabber before 1995. The dance style was called hakkûh. No wooden shoes were harmed.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wSr7h_pjxs

    • Ashen Victor

       This video made my day. Thanks. ;D

    • oasisob1

      The first thing you’ll want to do is let your hair grow out a bit.

  • agrovista

    This makes it even more fun
    http://bennyhillifier.com/?id=C8G8cdbPmp8

    • bersy

      First real laugh in days! Thanks!

  • michael heap

    meanwhile 8 years earlier - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU4F706VsMA&feature=related

    • mrtut

      and then four years before that:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EarSRa19sZc

      And a decade before that…

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxQ6olQjebg

      Each time, a different crowd

      • darladoon

        dude, SNL 1986? best year of all time!

    • darladoon

      God, the tempos back then were soooo much more amenable to dancing

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Possibly why those people look like they’re having fun.

        • CSBD

          That is “The New Dance Show” from Detroit (not to be confused with other incarnations such as The Dance Show and The New New Dance Show.

          Viewers could call and talk to the dancers on 900ish phone numbers for $1.99 per minute.

          Other highlights were commercials for “The Watts Club Mozambique”  (yeah search it out on youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq0aLtTjT14

          And Piquet market where you could get 90 pounds of mixed meat for ridiculously low prices.

  • http://www.cruft-private-janitorial.com/ Michael Johnson

    Love the blown pupils and obsessive gum chewing.

    • I_of_Horus

      I don’t think that’s gum. Take enough speed (or related stimultants) and you get the involuntary chewing and tooth grinding. 

  • Paul Bowen

    People were still going to raves in 97?

    • BlackPanda

       Still doing it in 2012 if you know where to look.

    • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

      Hey. It took a while for 1991 to reach some parts of the country, okay? 

      • darladoon

        i went to a rave in iowa city in 1992.
        that’s pretty “advanced” for iowa, but then again, iowa city is way “advanced” for iowa.

        • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

          That’s nice to know. It seemed like it just became a big deal overnight in Kansas City in, like, 1998. 

    • niktemadur

      People are still going to raves in 97?
      FTFY!!!

  • http://www.geekforce.com Hugh Johnson

    Ahhh…back when the X wasn’t all crap…I remember those days…sort of.

  • rob_cornelius

    E’s and wizz… making white people dance since the late 80s

  • http://twitter.com/_Engineer666 _Engineer

    THUNDERDOME! 

  • Cowicide

    As music genre bandwidth expired in the 90′s, we saw desperation set in.  Sad, sad desperation to find something “novel” where there was none available.  There are no new music genres, only sub-genres.  Get over it and instead focus on and refine the genres that exist… because there will never be any new ones.  Music genre has limited bandwidth and we reached the saturation point well over a decade ago.

  • V
  • http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

    What boringly dressed ravers. I feel like late-1990s Kansas City put a lot more effort into the costumes. But, then, my memory of that time might not be the most reliable record. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1230706273 Ernesto Beckeringh

    Spent a large chunk of my youth going to these parties. I was straightedge then, but these parties were awesome, the nicest people ever, all be it ‘helped’ by chemistry. If the year the video mentions is correct, the scene had by then moved on from X to the much cheaper speed. It had its effect and not in a good way. The dress: it was colorful training suits, usually by Australian or Carvello, they would set you back some 300 dollars, but hey they were reversible! And Nike Air Max. Outside, they’d wear blue bomber jackets, with orange lining. 
    Oh this definitely Holland, or maybe Belgium at the Antwerp docks.

    • OoerictoO

      heh.  we had a crew of straight-edge party-goers in NYC too.  damn i did a lot of dangerous stuff back then, just not the drugs.  NYC party scene was affected by the influx of meth and coke too.  bunch of pent-up angry crashing people are no fun.

  • http://soundcloud.com/pocketsquare grumble-bum

    Ow, my jaw.

  • darladoon

    that is why i always preferred the chill room

    mixmaster morris, the orb, spacetime continuum, et al

  • Mister44

    Love rave music – but I never attended one. I don’t have round glasses or gum, so I may not have fit in well.

  • niktemadur

    In Mexico we say PONCHIS PONCHIS PONCHIS PONCHIS PONCHIS PONCHIS…
    If I’m gonna listen to techno, I much, much prefer the type that’s good for deep listening with headphones or for driving, so give me Underworld any time.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEMcjVsc5cg

  • Antinous / Moderator

    Bloodhound Gang has a song called Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss.  Warning:  Jimmy Pop gets a blowjob from a dog in the video.

    • ocker3

       You say that like it’s a Bad Thing!

  • Guest

    Let’s lobby CBS to do a prime-time rerun of that episode!

  • http://twitter.com/chriscoreline chris coreline

     Jesus, this is awesome, remember when rave had a sence of humor and wasn’t all dour intellectual think-techno.

  • Jeremy Wilson

    When I tell people I was a raver in the mid-90s they are flabbergasted since I seem so anti-social and nerdy.  What can I say, X is a hell of a drug.

  • http://voidstar.com/ jbond

    Meanwhile, in an abandoned warehouse in Lewisham, or Wembley, or Handsworth or some other UK light-industrial wasteland, 3-Nov-2012. Psy-Trance!

    Now why does this stuff remind me of the Hitler Youth?

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/YPPHVWB2FTCIORQLY2H6D5WKW4 Gee

    Gabber, pretty tame Gabber at that… This is from Thunderdome somewhere in NL. Nederlands is the best country on earth gotverdomme kut!!!