A Rave Called Sharon

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A Rave Called Sharon was a rave event series organised in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s. Named after its organiser, Sharon Virtue, it became one of the more distinctive and celebrated events of the Bay Area underground dance music scene, attracting notice for its emphasis on communal experience, early technology installations, and inclusive, PLUR-adjacent ethos.

Background and naming

The event took its name directly from Sharon Virtue herself. According to Virtue, the title arose because her DJ and event-producing friends were particularly enthusiastic about watching her dance — the party was, in a sense, a tribute to her presence on the dance floor.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Virtue herself became a visible figure in the Bay Area scene more broadly, later appearing in the 2024 documentary Between the Beats, which chronicled the early 1990s San Francisco rave subculture.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Events and atmosphere

A Rave Called Sharon held events at warehouse venues in and around San Francisco, including locations in Santa Clara.<ref name=newsweek>Template:Cite news</ref> Attendees documented in a 1992 Newsweek feature made their way to events by carpool, reflecting the word-of-mouth, community-organised nature of Bay Area raving at the time.

The events were notable for their theatrical and experiential elements, which set them apart from more straightforward dance nights. These included:

• Laser art installations featuring messages such as "Sharon Finds Destiny"
• Early virtual reality helmets, through which attendees could experience computer-generated art
• Interactive contraptions such as a device billed as "Dr. X-Static's Electro Brain Pulverizer," a humming prop framed as a "mind-improvement" machine
• Live fluorescent painting, with a resident artist painting in real time on the dance floor, using pink when the music peaked<ref name=newsweek/>

This blend of technology and spectacle reflected the particular character of the Bay Area scene, which drew heavily from Silicon Valley's early tech community. The crowd at A Rave Called Sharon was noted to include many tech workers who had, as Newsweek observed, recently discovered that the aesthetics of rave culture suited them.<ref name=newsweek/>

One documented event, Sharon Finds Destiny, took place in June 1992.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Music

The musical palette of A Rave Called Sharon was rooted in the house music and electronic dance music styles dominant in the early Bay Area rave scene. Acts associated with the broader milieu included Happy Mondays, 808 State, and The Shamen — acts whose output was described at the time as synthetic funk heavy on bass lines. Virtue characterised the night's spirit as one of unqualified positivity and togetherness, an ethos that extended to the music programming.<ref name=newsweek/>

Cultural context

A Rave Called Sharon is regarded as one of a cluster of seminal San Francisco Bay Area rave events active in the early 1990s. It is cited alongside parties such as Toon Town, Come Unity, Full Moon Raves, Stompy, Funky Tekno Tribe, and events run by the Wicked crew as having helped define the character of the local scene.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The event received national attention when it was featured in a 1992 Newsweek article, "Through the Looking Glass," one of the mainstream press's early attempts to document and explain American rave culture to a general audience. The article used A Rave Called Sharon as its central case study, framing the San Francisco scene as distinctly optimistic and technologically curious compared to rave cultures developing elsewhere in the United States.<ref name=newsweek/>

Sharon Virtue was among the women who played significant organising roles in the Bay Area scene at a time when its history was often recorded with a primarily male focus. Her inclusion in the documentary Between the Beats (2024) was noted as part of that film's effort to recover a more complete picture of who built the scene.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

• San Francisco rave scene
• Toon Town (rave)
• Between the Beats (2024 documentary)
• Rave culture in the United States
• PLUR

External links

• Synthesizer Flyer Archive — Bay Area rave flyer archive including A Rave Called Sharon materials
• "Through the Looking Glass", Newsweek, April 1992

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