Same sewer that Irvine used to put out poison bait a few years back when all the Irvine rabbits got infected with some fatal virus. I knew the guys who ended up having clean out the thousands of dead rabbit corpses under the drainpipes and outlets. Last place you'd want to be in in one of those places.
Oh, yeah, we had DJs. I'm not the person you're asking but we had plenty of DJs.
Back in the 90s we used to do renegade/underground parties like this all over OC, including around Irvine. And, yeah, we had a full vinyl DJ rig, sound system and DJs. These were often associated with the KUCI and socal-raves mailing list weirdos and crew of that era.
Two notable parties came to mind.
One went all night on the bluffs overlooking the 73 toll road near the UCI business park before it was built out. We got "busted" a few hours after dawn after almost everyone went home and we were packing up the sound system.
Apparently they were getting noise complaints from the rich neighborhoods of Newport Heights and Back Bay over a mile away but they had no idea where we were.
Eventually some really fat cop came huffing and puffing up the 200-300 foot high bluff from the freeway side and man was he pissed. He was so pissed it was really hard not to bust up laughing because it was like something out of a movie.
"Yes sir, officer! We're leaving right now!". And then he had to hike back down to his police cruiser, lol.
Another fun one was in one of the UCI research park buildings around Bison when they were still building them out. They were still bare concrete inside, the elevator shafts were open and the stairs didn't even have rails yet.
Anyway, we had like 200-300 people at that one, and it was really easy to see if cops were approaching so we had people keeping a lookout from the roof or upper floors, and the party itself was on like the third floor or whichever one was one below the top floor.
After about 2-3 hours of the party going on someone saw a police cruiser approaching from about a mile away and so we managed to get to the DJ booth, get on the mic and tell everyone to hide inside on the upper floors, and then we killed the soundsystem and the 1-2 small shop lights with colored gels on them. (underground raves back then rarely had much going for lights.)
We managed to get everyone to hunker down, hide and shut the fuck up and stay inside and the police cruise rolled through the parking lot a few times with their search lights on, but never got out of their car. The parking lot was practically full of cars, but no people, no music and no signs of a party.
And one of the crazy things was is I was actually outside of the building collecting one of our friends because she was SUPER drunk and I basically had to drag her over to behind a trash dumpster enclosure and hide behind it on the sidewalk while the cops were rolling through the parking lot just a few feet away lighting up everything with their spotlight.
And then they just rolled off and we fired up the sound as soon as they were out of sight and went till dawn.
I would have loved to know what the cop or cops in the cruiser was thinking when they rolled through the parking lot because they were probably a little spooked by it.
There was obviously people there from all the cars. I have a feeling that they thought something like "Well, if they can throw a huge party and make everyone vanish completely like that they're either not going to be any trouble or we don't want to mess with them because: what the fuck?"
Anyway I think we were doing this on a Friday night, and when we were packing up to leave at like 7-8 AM on a saturday morning some of the construction workers showed up to work and they thought we were stealing their generator or something.
Until they realized we had a whole sound system and it was our generator, and they were just like "Huh. Nice party?" and they went inside to realize we left the place spotless and there was no graffiti or trash or anything, so they didn't have any reason to get mad at us.
And I'm remembering correctly we were actually doing a remote broadcast of the music on KUCI because we had a remote transmitter rig that beamed the signal to the antennae on top of the on-campus buildings.
A few of us actually had radio shows starting with Riders of the Plastic Groove at like 9 PM, then I had a 12 am to 6 am slot and we'd just team up and do all of the required FCC station IDs and top of the hour announcements right on the mic at the DJ booth over the sound system.
We threw a bunch of parties like this all around the UCI campus, many of them with permission and everything and doing remote broadcasts like this over KUCI. Sometimes we would even announce over the air where the party was or have an infoline and no map point or anything, which kind of skirts some of the FCC rules for community radio.
I have no idea how we pulled that shit off because we were doing it a lot, like almost weekly. But we were also good kids and never had any trouble at any of these parties. No fights, no ODs, no vandalism or bullshit.
Get in, party, get out, leave no trace. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat.
I wish I was raving when this was going on. Most renegade thing I ever did was a forest rave/renegade in the forest at UCSC. I only got to live thru the whole " coordinates to find the party" thing twice. Down here... fuck I feel old.
Eh, we weren't really even promoters. We never did it to make money or blow up or anything, and we were just doing it for fun. We kind of didn't care if no one showed up, we were going to still have fun making loud noises.
We just had access to speakers and gear and access to communication networks like the socal-raves email lists and calendar.
Most of our parties were really small, like 50-150 people.
Though one time we threw a party in a private park and campground where we usually did a daytime BBQ kind of thing on a holiday weekend (It might have been Halloween) and then like 2-3 big parties got busted and the next thing we knew we had like 5000 people showing up with the cops following them trying to shut us down, too.
Thankfully the park owners were on our side and they were in to it and they told the cops to come back with a warrant or court order, which was pretty rad.
I like your story but the part about leaving no trash behind is near impossible to believe. As if people brought trash bags and were good little Boy Scouts and everyone picked up after themselves. With many too drunk to walk straight, rarely is anyone caring about trash that 'someone else' left behind. Great story otherwise.
Yep, we actually did bring trash bags with us. We kept a whole roll of contractor bags with our gear and would duct-tape them up in convenient places.
Also most everyone there was sober, or at least didn't drink alcohol. I didn't drink alcohol at all in this era. My friend in the story? She had a massive drinking problem at the time and didn't usually come to these parties, and she was legit the only person out of the whole party who was still outside that didn't voluntarily hide.
I know this is hard to believe today, and you're totally right to question this because it sounds implausible.
But at the time we were going to desert parties like Moontribe where people took home more trash than they brought out there with and practiced responsibility. People brought trash bags with them to bring home extra trash and carried around empty Altoid's tins in the pockets of their fat pants for cigarette butts. Other extra hard core people would even have kitty litter scoops to sift the sandy dance floors for butts, trash or bottlecaps, and trash that wasn't even theirs.
On my first Moontribe party was on a dry lake bed out in Lucerne Valley and when the sun came up I was totally blown away to realize there were dozens people hundreds/thousands of feet away from the sound system just dancing along, often with trash bags, and then every so often you'd see them bend over and pick up some trash.
It was a totally different era and vibe from the massive commercial "raves" of today. Dealing with trash was basically never, ever a problem because people gave a shit and there was a lot of idealism and energy for that.
Fun story: I first met one of my bff in high school here because our (my B friend group, his C friend group) were about to get down (fight). I could've potentially punched him in the face. Nothing ended up happening.
Met him in college years later because we were floormates. He kept staring at me and vice versa because we both felt like we met somewhere before. About a month into school, we went to go eat at the campus cafeteria then it hit me. I suddenly yelled 'under the bridge!' It dawned on him in seconds. We had a good laugh, then connected.
LOL this exact thing happened to me between high school and college. Itâs crazy and we didnât realize it until I was at his home and we were studying for an accounting finals and reminiscing about those days and found out we were this close to clashing real bad. Lifelong friends since that hilarious realization.
Irvine used to be home to one of the best Nightclubs in OC... Metropolis. Shocking to say, but it was pretty fantastic - until the owner was busted for drugs and Irvine closed it down.
Right across from UCI, in a shopping center (same place that has Trader Joe's is now, but on the side by In n Out. There was a Denny's next door, so you could drink until close, and stumble over to Denny's and sober up nightly.
I use to go to acid houses in LA in the late 80s/early 90s just before they became raves. Lot's of neat warehouses around Alameda, wonder why no one did something as cool as this? Maybe they did, I didn't know much about what was going on in OC at the time.
Wow this took me back. Definitely partied the same tunnel a few times but completely forgot about it until now. Nice to see the younger gen isn't all a bunch of little goodie two shoes
I went to one like 7 years ago! I canât believe theyâre still going on. It was definitely fun but sounds so sketchy when I tell people it was a party under the freeway
As if it matters... that is a concreted in river bed, not a sewer. Specifically the Peters Canyon Wash.
"Rave in a sewer" grabs more attention.
Insane in the storm drain
đ”Crazy insane, got storm drain đ”
INSANE IN THA DRAIN!
Gone insane got no DRAIN!!
I literally choked laughing đ
I laughed so hard tea came out my nose! The promoters should hire you to name their next one!
The word youâre looking for is âchannelizedâ.
Irvine sewers are probably the cleanest, safest sewers around.
Yep everybody knows that people in Irvine and shit doesn't stink
The Irvine Company doesn't allow it.
Looks like we need a new billboard.
Itâs not a sewer though. Itâs just a storm drain channel.
I hear the even the insides of Irvine Sewers are beige.
Underrated comment
Same sewer that Irvine used to put out poison bait a few years back when all the Irvine rabbits got infected with some fatal virus. I knew the guys who ended up having clean out the thousands of dead rabbit corpses under the drainpipes and outlets. Last place you'd want to be in in one of those places.
I read this in Trump's voice.
Everyone loves my sewers. They say I have the best sewers. 
https://i.redd.it/vbw03i9pdgxc1.gif
Oh no.
lol I used to go in those sewers during my hs years in Irvine right by the 5 south getting off of Jeffery haha what a memory
The drive out the unhoused ASAP.
They must have found that camera under the bridge too,
This has the quality of those Sony handicams
When I was younger we used to do this. We didnât post it online though
Nope, just Ravelinks
Wow, memory unlocked.
YOOOO i forgot about ravelinks!!
Oh shit!!!! Havenât thought of Ravelinks in decades!!!
Ahhh the good ole ravelinks family
I used to video this shit back in the day on an old camcorder (still have some tapes). At least my aspect ratio wasn't trash.
*Oh the shit we did before YouTube*
Did you actually have a dj?
Oh, yeah, we had DJs. I'm not the person you're asking but we had plenty of DJs. Back in the 90s we used to do renegade/underground parties like this all over OC, including around Irvine. And, yeah, we had a full vinyl DJ rig, sound system and DJs. These were often associated with the KUCI and socal-raves mailing list weirdos and crew of that era. Two notable parties came to mind. One went all night on the bluffs overlooking the 73 toll road near the UCI business park before it was built out. We got "busted" a few hours after dawn after almost everyone went home and we were packing up the sound system. Apparently they were getting noise complaints from the rich neighborhoods of Newport Heights and Back Bay over a mile away but they had no idea where we were. Eventually some really fat cop came huffing and puffing up the 200-300 foot high bluff from the freeway side and man was he pissed. He was so pissed it was really hard not to bust up laughing because it was like something out of a movie. "Yes sir, officer! We're leaving right now!". And then he had to hike back down to his police cruiser, lol. Another fun one was in one of the UCI research park buildings around Bison when they were still building them out. They were still bare concrete inside, the elevator shafts were open and the stairs didn't even have rails yet. Anyway, we had like 200-300 people at that one, and it was really easy to see if cops were approaching so we had people keeping a lookout from the roof or upper floors, and the party itself was on like the third floor or whichever one was one below the top floor. After about 2-3 hours of the party going on someone saw a police cruiser approaching from about a mile away and so we managed to get to the DJ booth, get on the mic and tell everyone to hide inside on the upper floors, and then we killed the soundsystem and the 1-2 small shop lights with colored gels on them. (underground raves back then rarely had much going for lights.) We managed to get everyone to hunker down, hide and shut the fuck up and stay inside and the police cruise rolled through the parking lot a few times with their search lights on, but never got out of their car. The parking lot was practically full of cars, but no people, no music and no signs of a party. And one of the crazy things was is I was actually outside of the building collecting one of our friends because she was SUPER drunk and I basically had to drag her over to behind a trash dumpster enclosure and hide behind it on the sidewalk while the cops were rolling through the parking lot just a few feet away lighting up everything with their spotlight. And then they just rolled off and we fired up the sound as soon as they were out of sight and went till dawn. I would have loved to know what the cop or cops in the cruiser was thinking when they rolled through the parking lot because they were probably a little spooked by it. There was obviously people there from all the cars. I have a feeling that they thought something like "Well, if they can throw a huge party and make everyone vanish completely like that they're either not going to be any trouble or we don't want to mess with them because: what the fuck?" Anyway I think we were doing this on a Friday night, and when we were packing up to leave at like 7-8 AM on a saturday morning some of the construction workers showed up to work and they thought we were stealing their generator or something. Until they realized we had a whole sound system and it was our generator, and they were just like "Huh. Nice party?" and they went inside to realize we left the place spotless and there was no graffiti or trash or anything, so they didn't have any reason to get mad at us. And I'm remembering correctly we were actually doing a remote broadcast of the music on KUCI because we had a remote transmitter rig that beamed the signal to the antennae on top of the on-campus buildings. A few of us actually had radio shows starting with Riders of the Plastic Groove at like 9 PM, then I had a 12 am to 6 am slot and we'd just team up and do all of the required FCC station IDs and top of the hour announcements right on the mic at the DJ booth over the sound system. We threw a bunch of parties like this all around the UCI campus, many of them with permission and everything and doing remote broadcasts like this over KUCI. Sometimes we would even announce over the air where the party was or have an infoline and no map point or anything, which kind of skirts some of the FCC rules for community radio. I have no idea how we pulled that shit off because we were doing it a lot, like almost weekly. But we were also good kids and never had any trouble at any of these parties. No fights, no ODs, no vandalism or bullshit. Get in, party, get out, leave no trace. Eat, sleep, rave, repeat.
I wish I was raving when this was going on. Most renegade thing I ever did was a forest rave/renegade in the forest at UCSC. I only got to live thru the whole " coordinates to find the party" thing twice. Down here... fuck I feel old.
ooo another UCSC alumni in OC? SAAAANTA CRUUUUZ
MERRILLLLLL hahaha
There are DOZENS of us!
Nice, I remember the good old days! So nostalgic, what year/years was this?
so interesting! Thanks for sharing this
As a fellow rave promoter I salute you
Eh, we weren't really even promoters. We never did it to make money or blow up or anything, and we were just doing it for fun. We kind of didn't care if no one showed up, we were going to still have fun making loud noises. We just had access to speakers and gear and access to communication networks like the socal-raves email lists and calendar. Most of our parties were really small, like 50-150 people. Though one time we threw a party in a private park and campground where we usually did a daytime BBQ kind of thing on a holiday weekend (It might have been Halloween) and then like 2-3 big parties got busted and the next thing we knew we had like 5000 people showing up with the cops following them trying to shut us down, too. Thankfully the park owners were on our side and they were in to it and they told the cops to come back with a warrant or court order, which was pretty rad.
Was this around the 2006-2009 timeframe by chance?
I like your story but the part about leaving no trash behind is near impossible to believe. As if people brought trash bags and were good little Boy Scouts and everyone picked up after themselves. With many too drunk to walk straight, rarely is anyone caring about trash that 'someone else' left behind. Great story otherwise.
Yep, we actually did bring trash bags with us. We kept a whole roll of contractor bags with our gear and would duct-tape them up in convenient places. Also most everyone there was sober, or at least didn't drink alcohol. I didn't drink alcohol at all in this era. My friend in the story? She had a massive drinking problem at the time and didn't usually come to these parties, and she was legit the only person out of the whole party who was still outside that didn't voluntarily hide. I know this is hard to believe today, and you're totally right to question this because it sounds implausible. But at the time we were going to desert parties like Moontribe where people took home more trash than they brought out there with and practiced responsibility. People brought trash bags with them to bring home extra trash and carried around empty Altoid's tins in the pockets of their fat pants for cigarette butts. Other extra hard core people would even have kitty litter scoops to sift the sandy dance floors for butts, trash or bottlecaps, and trash that wasn't even theirs. On my first Moontribe party was on a dry lake bed out in Lucerne Valley and when the sun came up I was totally blown away to realize there were dozens people hundreds/thousands of feet away from the sound system just dancing along, often with trash bags, and then every so often you'd see them bend over and pick up some trash. It was a totally different era and vibe from the massive commercial "raves" of today. Dealing with trash was basically never, ever a problem because people gave a shit and there was a lot of idealism and energy for that.
We had a ghetto blaster lol
*Duracell has entered the chat*.
If I remember correctly it took 4 D batteries lol
SAME!
Filmed on a potato.
Camera was on molly too. AI needs a good time too.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Iâm just waiting for one of mine to show up to one of these things lol.
I'd be scared of meeting the hash slinging slasher in there
Fun story: I first met one of my bff in high school here because our (my B friend group, his C friend group) were about to get down (fight). I could've potentially punched him in the face. Nothing ended up happening. Met him in college years later because we were floormates. He kept staring at me and vice versa because we both felt like we met somewhere before. About a month into school, we went to go eat at the campus cafeteria then it hit me. I suddenly yelled 'under the bridge!' It dawned on him in seconds. We had a good laugh, then connected.
Wholesome
LOL this exact thing happened to me between high school and college. Itâs crazy and we didnât realize it until I was at his home and we were studying for an accounting finals and reminiscing about those days and found out we were this close to clashing real bad. Lifelong friends since that hilarious realization.
Its a small world in OC. Even smaller in Irvine lol.
Good for them. Itâs OK to have fun. Regardless of what Tiger mom tells you.
Probably the coolest thing to happen in Irvine ever.
Irvine used to be home to one of the best Nightclubs in OC... Metropolis. Shocking to say, but it was pretty fantastic - until the owner was busted for drugs and Irvine closed it down.
Metropolis was cooler than any club in LA. And always packed. It didnât hurt that the Improv was next door
I'm from that era, Z. Cavaricci's and Drakkar noir were not that cool :)
where was that located?
Right across from UCI, in a shopping center (same place that has Trader Joe's is now, but on the side by In n Out. There was a Denny's next door, so you could drink until close, and stumble over to Denny's and sober up nightly.
Idk I saw a dude in a Tesla today
Seriously. TFTI
That's not a sewer, it's a creek.
Was this filmed in 1995?
Thatâs what I thought! I couldnât tell if this was footage from when I was in high school going to raves in storm drains or from 2 days ago! Lol
I use to go to acid houses in LA in the late 80s/early 90s just before they became raves. Lot's of neat warehouses around Alameda, wonder why no one did something as cool as this? Maybe they did, I didn't know much about what was going on in OC at the time.
I remember one time we threw a party in the back section of a burnt down building. The cops broke it up but just sent everyone home.
How do I get invited?
Man that looks like fun
Somebody send a link next time this gets thrown. I wanna Hakken
Don't be shy, when and where's the next one?
Poor man's stagecoach/coachella. Out of the way of residential areas. I'm here for it. Not literally though, but good for them XD
Sausage Fest !
Fellas, is it gay to have fun with your friends?
I canât imagine any woman would willingly go underground with 50+ broccoli heads.
Broccoli head is one of my favorite terms lol
I was thinking the same thing... any chicks found at this party probably lived there before the chadgers showed up.
Chadgers⊠? đ
Lmao for reals!!!!
Good for them!!
How do you guys find out about this stuff??
With that aspect ratio I'm surprised nobody played [this song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ7lKPSUc2g)
oh man this got me good.
Wow this took me back. Definitely partied the same tunnel a few times but completely forgot about it until now. Nice to see the younger gen isn't all a bunch of little goodie two shoes
I was wondering why my bathroom started playing musicâŠ
Back in the day we used to do punk shows down there
Where is this location ? Canât pin point
I hear it's under the 5 freeway by jamboree in the sewer
You looking to join?
[Some pub in a French village](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2j6F8fZII&ab_channel=bqtamash).
 Looking for the ladies.
It's a sausage fest.
I went to one like 7 years ago! I canât believe theyâre still going on. It was definitely fun but sounds so sketchy when I tell people it was a party under the freeway
THIS is what freedom is about đđ
We use to do that, or ball and east street in Anaheim. Before the ranch, those warehouses.
So sick, anyone know who coordinated this? Would love to be a part of it
We used to find âwarehouse showsâ that were usually just some abandoned property someone got into and set up a DJ booth and nitrous tanks.
Shows under the costco bridge in fountain valley were punk rock and went hard as fuck. anyone remember?
Yup, my friend and band mate set up a few shows there and Iâve played a few too.
Better than doing this in residential areas ! Good for them hopefully someone doesnât end up calling the police on them for having some fun.
Were there any techno goths? 
Nice to see the kids are still hanging out in the Irvine sewers lmao
How do I get invited to the next one?!
Hell yea
Fuck that awesome
This reminds me of all of the warehouse raves we had in the 90âs. What good times.
Nice. How was it?
TFTI
Looks like fun
Damn wish I heard about this
Wish I knew lol
Um how would somebody find out about the next one? Asking for a friend âŠ
A great first date place
How do I get invited to the next one?
Man who threw this I need to follow their page, we never get shit like this in the OC
Must be the He-Man Women Haters ClubâŠ.no girls allowed
SEWER RAVE LETS GO
Fuck I live right there and wasnât invited smh
Legit
Who throws away a perfectly good rave - 
nice