Look, I haven’t even gotten used to the idea of San Francisco raves! Ten years ago, they used to be this thing people I knew did at old warehouses in the South of Market in San Francisco. I think I went to see an indy flick at the Angelica Theatre in New York about these things, I recall it was pretty good, but cripes, it was about taking drugs! I never went to a rave itself on my own. But I had a roomate, Melinda, who always did. She was one of the cool people, and I adored her. She — coincidence! — worked at SFWeekly and was quite an interior designer – she had weird things like burnt Barbie dolls hanging from her bedroom ceiling and said the lead singer of Faith No More once wrote a song about her. I loaned her my blowdryer which she never returned, and I always admired the way she could break up fights between the guys in our Old Victorian house household. Anyway, that was then.

Now Iranians are having raves! Clad in their usual ayatollah-enforced bedrobes, they’re out having their own forbidden (really forbidden) fun! Can you believe this? The young peoples’ impulse toward the forbidden, the mind-altering and the hip is alive and well in Mullahcratic Iran, and right under the mullahs’ noses. It calls to mind Rob’s earlier question about the feel of a tyranny and what goes on in a tyranny.

In their case, I can see the reason why – there’s nothing to do there, there’s no such thing as legal fun, there’s little future under the ayatollahs, the young are treated like annoyances to the gerontocrats, and it’s not easy to get out of that place, both because of geography (Iran is huge) and Iranian money tends to be both exchange-controlled, and worth very little. I can understand the appeal.

Via Glenn at Instapundit, Jim at GatewayPundit has a ton of pictures showing just this Iranian phenomenon here. (Or scroll up one post to here, I think Stefania has some of the same pictures posted just above mine, with some additional and different commentary. In fact, I think Jim might have got them from her!)

Meanwhile, the fearless Borzou Daragahi, now of the Los Angeles Times, who’s always on the cutting edge, was reporting about these Iranian youth social scenes about five years ago. He writes:

It’ s near midnight on a Wednesday. I’m riding shotgun as my two friends and I inch along traffic on Tehran’s famous Jordan Street. It’s swarming. Cars full of men and women in their twenties drive up and down the street using headlights and directional signal in an elaborate pick-up ritual.

Typically a car full of guys will wink their headlights at a car full of gals, who’ll signal with their turn signals whether they’re interested. If they find each other agreeable, the parties will direct each other to a side street. They’ll get out, quickly chat and swap phone numbers. Usually, the guy will give the girl his number (some parents may object to boys calling up their single daughters). She’ll call a few days later if she’s interested.

The sight of carloads of twenty-something women in hijab and looking for action is surreal. Both of my friends grew up on Jordan Street, which is now officially renamed Africa Expressway, but called Jordan Street – after the American founder of a l local college – by almost everyone. “You see,” one of my guides tells me, “on the surface you look at Iran and it’s this modest, Islamic society. But look beneath the surface and you’ll find everything. You want alcohol, it’s here. You want gambling, it’s here. You want drugs, it’s here. You want prostitution, it’s here. You just have to know where to look.”

…

You can read the whole firsthand account of what it’s like to go to raves and other Iranian youth social scenes in Tehran on his blog here.