Having never been to a rave I found it fun to follow the
Renegade Parade & Rave that took place during the long night of
Nuit Blanche. Organised by the Rothko Institute it had fire, art and chaos with a massive mobile sound system (arrghh, full of pirates) - just as advertised. Everyone gathered at the Royal Ontario Museum waiting for 10:02pm and the start of the parade, mixing in with the already large crowds taking part in Nuit Blanche.
Finally some black flags appeared on the street along with the truck and trailer carrying the DJs (ill.gates, freedom danish, memrx and rolls royce - thanks to memrx for the correct DJs). People quickly gathered behind the vehicle, overflowing the street. Police shouted for people to get to the side of the road but when the party started flowing it basically took up half of any road it was on. We heard that the eventual destination might have been Yonge and Dundas but it initially headed south on Queens Park and into the University of Toronto property and parked at the end of Kings College Road and stayed there for awhile.
Besides the DJs and their rope lights there were also a number of people blowing fire and twirling staffs of fire. With the sound system blasting the rave dancing began. It involves a lot of hypnotic hand waving and flowing body dancing, cool to watch.
They stayed there for about a half and hour the headed out onto College Street, later to University Avenue and we finally left the party when they turned onto Dundas Street West.
I heard the mobile rave got shut down a little while later and we saw the pirates on foot heading toward the parking lot beside City Hall (Chestnut and Armoury) at the Chevrolet CRUZE Remix site. Here is a short video of the parade along the streets and the rave in the University.
