Buses are how promoters can transport people to out of town venues. You have to pay for the bus because bus rentals are amazingly expensive. It's not too bad considering that you get two bus rides for $5, and OC Transpo doesn't have wide enough coverage in the national capital region to count on for events far away from the city. Buses cost around a thousand dollars to rent for a night, so for an event far enough away that two buses are needed, the promoters are risking two grand in the hope that the existence of a shuttle service will get people to come out. Not enough people attend events for us to offer free shuttle service without including the cost of the shuttle in the ticket price, and that's unfair to guest with cars and guests from out of town.

You can party in town but not all night. The rave by-law is prohibitive, and from a promotion standpoint, it's not worth it to spend approximately $2000 in order to apply for a license, only to have it rejected and lose all your money. As sad as it is, out-of-town parties are a safer bet for all-night events. This is a bad state of affairs, because a lot of promoters would throw events in the city if they could. Currently, Maverick's is the only venue in Ottawa that can regularly get an all-night dance permit.

-----

Because of city by-laws and the limited availability of venues, sometimes the only venues a promoter can find to do all night events is one outside city limits. Promoters realize that not everyone has a car or way to get out to these far away venues, so the offer a shuttle bus service to make sure everyone is able to go! Offering a shuttle bus also ensures that partiers have a safe and reliable way to get home (less drinking and driving!). Unfortunately shuttles buses are very expensive and that's why promoters charge for their use. If we offered them for free, it would mean increased ticket prices for everyone and that wouldn't be fair to those who don't need the bus!

That depends on what you mean by "real" headliners. Not every party can book Tiesto. I can't speak definitively on behalf of other promotion companies, but Project D hasn't thrown many events with budgets large enough to book artists from across the Atlantic. On the other hand, many of the artists we have booked, especially our Live PA artists, have released full-length albums on prestigious labels, own their own lablels, or have published releases on major labels. Importantly, they all put on great shows. Since its inception in February 2006, Project D has put on seventeen events, which averages out to about one a month. For us, it's not feasible to spend three thousand dollars to fly someone down from the UK for an event that ends at 2am at a venue with a capacity of three hundred. Well, not without charging $30 in advance, anyways. For us, because we do regular events, we have decided that we'd rather throw cheap parties more often than expensive parties intermittently. We still book big acts, and we do it just as often as the other major promoters in town, which is to say, once or twice a year.

As an aside to this, I often hear of local DJs spoken of in a dismissive tone, and I don't get that at all. Simply put, local DJs keep the scene alive. Not only does Ottawa have an amazingly deep pool of talent, but with the price of gas these days, it's not really financially reasonable to book an entire lineup from out of town. Local DJs, especially the ones who help hype local events, are the heart and soul of the scene. They're the ones who believe in themselves so much that they go to every event, give out demo CDs, make brand new tracks that nobody's ever heard before, and keep trying to get new people to come out to events, and if you don't support them, you're doing them a great disservice.

-----

Booking big headliners is expensive and risky for the size of Ottawa parties. Promoters can lose a lot of money if things don't work out and they don't want to take the risk. Booking headliners also makes tickets a lot more expensive. On average a headliner will increase the price of a ticket by $10-$25. Partiers can't always afford or will want to pay the increase in price!

*Why aren't unopened non-alcholic beverages allowed into events?*

While an unopened beverage doesn't cause any problems per se, it's important to be egalitarian in our enforcement of policies. Also, some venues dislike it when we allow such items, as they run the bar, and want to make money as well. Ottawa has already lost a couple of venues because bar staff found containers belonging to beverages they didn't sell, and we don't want that to keep happening. We have a hard enough time convincing places to let us book them as it is.

------

GHB and date rape drugs are a serious concern in the club and party world. In order to provide the safest environment possible, promoters want to make sure that the only drinks available are the ones they know are clean. it's also to prevent people for trying to smuggle in alcohol or drugs in regular drink containers. Promoters and clubs are responsible for everything that goes on in their venue, so they have to be careful.

-----

Unless they are sold by the venue or by the promoters, there is no way of proving someone didn't put something into the bottle before hand with a needle. It has happened many many many times in the past.

Again, I can only speak for Project D, but we have offered food at all of our all night events. In general, however, licensing for entertainment and licensing for food are two completely separate processes, and no promoter wants to have to tell a party to go home because they thought that bringing a barbecue was a good idea. It *is* a good idea, but gives police another way to shut down what would otherwise be a perfectly legal event. Sometimes, it's just not worth the risk.

------

No Answer... not really considered, people don't generally ask for it.

------

The demand for food isn't really high enough to warrent having someone setup a place to sell it let alone get into the technical issues of having a food vendors liscenes. If the venue already had something like a snack bar that they were willing to staff at their own expence, I wouldn't say no to it because it wouldn't be my loss.

There are two answers to this question. Firstly, when the venue is a bar or similar establishment, the promoter has no say in the cost of concessions. When the promotion company is selling their own concessions, water sales can make the difference between losing money and breaking even, and often the cost of water reflects that. This cost is rarely prohibitive ($4+), and promoters expect that ravers will be refilling their own water bottles. In Ontario, it is illegal to throw a rave at a venue that does not have cold running water, so there's always a free option.  

-----

Ottawa raves generally have water available for $2-$3/bottle which is actually cheap in comparison to clubs and bars who'll charge you $3.50-$4.00 for a bottle! Go to a megaparty in another city and you can easily find yourself paying $5-$7 for a bottle!

-----

Like coat check, water sales are a very important revenue source at raves and can make the difference between loosing money and not being able to pay all the djs and breaking even/making money to through another event in the future. Also, in the past, I have never charged more than $2 for water but most of the time, the venue itself will sell the water whatever price they want and we have no control over that. Venues are almost always a business that is trying to make some money. $2-3 is also a very common price across the bored in terms of afterhours events. Go to any large club and you will be paying much more. Supply and demand is a bitch.

When it comes down to it, a lot of promoters don't think that raves and alcohol go together well. People who are drunk sometimes get violent, break things, vomit, or to drive home while intoxicated. This is a liability. Moreover, serving alcohol at an event often means that the bar will take up valuable dancing/chill space, and that the promoter must hire extra security guards to ensure that only people of age are consuming alcohol. It's a lot of hassle that a lot of us don't see the need for.

-----

Having a drinking area requires that the promoter obtain the necessary alcohol permits, which are not always obtainable. Drinking also creates a lot of risk for the promoter as it brings increase chances of police attention, violence, damage to property, injury, etc... all things a promoter is liable for!

-----

Not all venues will rent out to events that will have booze at them because of the increased liabilty and risk of not being covered by their insurence. Temporary alchool permits and one-nights worth of insurence can cost in the thousands of dollars making it simply not worth for a promoter to deal with.

There's a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer is that Ottawa City Hall has decided that the city ought to retain a certain image, and has decided to be the fun police. The long answer involves a comprehensive history of the late '90s - early 00's scene, many of the details of which I am not privy to, and am thus unable to supply. Since the inception of the bylaw, there has only been ONE EVENT organized by a stand-alone promotion company that has ever gotten a permit. All other permits have only been given to venues that have their own insurance, and have the time and energy to deal with all of the red tape the permit process entails.

-----

The permit process requires that a venue have inspections done by city health, safety, fire, and police officials, The first challenge is finding a venue willing to have their place inspected so thoroughly, the second challenge is actually passing the inspection! Since the city doesn't want raves happening, most places fail their inspections.

-----

As someone who through the first all night event in Ottawa WITHOUT a permit (Movement, Canada Day 2003), the city issued us a fine for over $50 000 which we were lucky enough to have dismissed in court (just barely) but suffice to say, it was not worth the trouble.

See the answer above. Now reread the cost of shuttle buses. It's really expensive. REALLY expensive. Also, the number of people one can expect to attend an all night event isn't very large. Finding a venue is hassle enough, but finding one that's not in the city, and then dealing with all of the additional costs of transporting gear and deco, as well as the cost of shuttles, really make it prohibitive to do this regularly. Add to this the problems of raver burnout, venue overuse, ravers complaining about perfectly good venues, and the fact that nobody drives anymore, and you end up with all night events sometimes being more hassle than they're worth. Unfortunately, a lot of these problems tie in to the permit issue. Were it feasible to organize all-night events within city limits, I'm sure that we'd be seeing a lot more of them.

-----

Its simply a matter of availability of venues. Its hard to find a place willing to let you party all night. It's even harder to get a permit when you find a place that does! The reason you find promoters re-using venues all the time is because often it's the only one available!