Oakland Drops Ban on Dance Marathons, Just in Time For the EDM Craze
Just in time for the American electronic music craze, so-called "dance marathons" are once again legal in the city of Oakland.
The Oakland City Council last week dispensed with an 82-year-old law banning the events, which were once popular contests offering cash prizes in the gloomy post-Depression years, SF Gate reports. Back in their heyday, participating in a dance marathon could have earned you six months in jail. Today, we wonder if the Electric Daisy Carnival would qualify.
Part of an overall fad interest in endurance contests, dance marathons required participants to move their feet to music for days at a time, offering only short 15 minute breaks every hour, the paper writes:
[Participants] fell asleep on each other, or went "squirrelly" in fits of madness that delighted the gallery. Iron-legged professional "horses" inevitably overcame locals desperate to win the cash.
The move was part of an Oakland effort to get rid of outdated laws. (Cross-dressing is also now legal again in the city, so have at it.)
There was no immediate word Tuesday on whether David Guetta will be holding a marathon 24-hour rave to celebrate the law's repeal.
[SF Gate]
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