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Silence is Golden
Filed under: Etc.
This past weekend, New Yorkers gathered in NYC's boho Union Square park for a SILENT rave.
WTF????
No, it wasn't a party for the E-popping hearing-impaired.
More than 1,000 people showed up, danced in place and grooved to the tunes coming out of their own iPod headphones.
How post-modern!
The "mastermind" behind the silent rave was Jonnie Wesson a British exchange student.
Silent raves are popular in Europe, especially London, where he grew up, Wesson told the NY Times. “The basic premise is that a hundred or a thousand or a few thousand people all turn up in a public place, turn on their own headphones and dance. It’s always fantastic and weird to see thousands of people dancing silently. It’s always in a public space, but it’s not meant to cause disruption, but only because it’s the last place you’d expect that sort of thing.”
One of the largest such silent raves occurred in London in 2006 at Paddington Station, when 3,500 people turned up at the height of rush hour, 7:18 p.m.
Perezcious reader, Amanda, was there and sent us the pic above. She reports, "Some notable moments of the rave were the conga-lines, mosh pits, people climbing on-top of the George Washington statue, the infamous Raveapple that showed up, and even a woman attended the rave wearing only paint to cover her entire body. Cops showed up, but nothing got out of hand and no arrests were made. Another Silent Rave is definitely going to happen though, but the exact dates arent set yet."
Sounds like fun. Hope we'll be in town when that happens again!
We need to go get pop our glock and do some breakdancing moves!
my friend organized this event. for all of you people who this that is stupid or isnt news, you should think of you sad people were doing on friday night. this was about unity and self expression and freedom. so what if we looked like idiots, who cares? if you'd rather sit at home on a weekend, drinking white wine and watching The Soup, or some shit, than let loose and dance with thousands of strangers and having a fucking blast, thats you're problems honey.
I WAS THERE!!!! AND I CAN TELL YOU IT WAS FUCKING INSANE
WE"RE BRINGING IT TO LA
I thought it was going to be lame, but it ended up being a lot of fun. Don't knock it until you rock it.
Leave it to the British to come up with a stupid idea like this.
Leave it to the Americans to fall hook, line, and sinker for it.
Silent Disco at Reading Fesival anyone? Old news…
i actually watched the rave for a while, it was pretty cool.
Re: caroaber –
Ok I can't stay quiet once you start insulting Brits. Pipe down you muppet it's an amazing idea and as you can see everyone who actually went (instead of just hating on it without any basis) had a fantastic time. Plus I know Jonnie very well…and he never claimed to be original once. In fact he admitted to all those that asked that all he had done was set up a Facebook event and hadn't pioneered anything, he just wanted people to have fun, and he achieved that very well!
Stop being so miserable.
I just happened to be in Union square at that time and it was so lame there were more ppl making fun of them then actually dancing
Wasn't there a commercial made with this exact same concept made a few years ago? How unoriginal.
Whatever Chicago did this last year @ Looptopia-an allnight party downtown modeled after the white night parties in France, Spain etc…YAWN
I went to it from 7pm until 2am and it was by far the best night of my life. I admit i was skeptical as to what was going to happen and whether itd be good but it was absolutely awesome. And as to other ppl comparing to it when other sync there iPods to the same station, that is incorrect. The point of this was that everyone was listening to totally different types of music so it looked fantastic to see people dancing to their own beat. I will most definetly be there at the next one
Re: me – Wow, edgy. I'm so sorry for offending you. Are you the Jesse Jackson of deaf people? It's a fucking offensive term and you wouldn't dare throw the "n" word around or any other racist bullshit. I'm Jewish too, why don't you tell me what I should call myself in that respect.
i was there..and honestly i didnt understand. but there was some dudes playing music around them so i guess it wasnt so silent
There definitely needs to be more spontaneous dancing in public. It would relieve so much stress.
I WAS THERE!
well, i didnt participate,
i was across the street watching everything.
i had my own party there.
there is one on Saturday in MONTREAL
We had a similar thing at future music festival in sydney. it was called "silent disco" and you listened to music that the dj's were playing through headphones… it was crazy
I passed there and had no idea what was going on so i went closer and it was a bunch of 12 year olds dancing with there headphones on WHOA LAME I got right on the subway cuz it was soooooo dumb!
Wha! wha! it was super fun.
we do this in england at festivals.
you all get headphones and are plugged into a system and all rave
Proper good fun it is
thomas pynchon called……….
holy ppl need to chill!!! do u really care what everyone else thinks about u so much? all these ppl had a blast and all u can do is complain that they looked lame? what did u do? go home and play world of warcraft and talk to ur "friends" about leveling up or something? like get a life and let ppl enjoy their fun!!!!!!!!!!!
There was a stabbing though.. I think that's what caused the cops to show up in the first place.