A “pop up” rave left a trail of destruction on the seafront in Ovingdean where a family have been working to open a new café.
The rave appeared to be attended mainly by 16 to 21-year-olds near the café on the Undercliff Walk, starting late on the evening of Saturday 29 March.
Lukas Atesli, from the Ovingdean Café on the Undercliff Walk, wrote on Facebook about the “danger for locals, dogs and children”.
He said: “I am more than happy for people to come down and have a good time. I am aware of an older generation of ravers from the 90s who also come down to the beach.
“However, they have always cleared up after themselves and are no bother at all.
“This group, however, have completed vandalised not only the Undercliff Walk but also the newly renovated council toilets, our café as well as the local beach huts down on the front.
“While this is by no means something that affects only ourselves, what makes it even more frustrating is that we and the council have just very recently completely renovated the entire café building and toilets. This is how we as a café make a living.
“I spent the best part of three hours cleaning endless broken glasses, piles of sick, open packets of drugs, needles, etc, from along the beach, the Undercliff Walk and the stairway.
“Unfortunately, with the graffiti, we are unable to do anything as of yet. Again, this was on the sea wall which painstakingly took two days to clear and has been ruined again.
“The window in the newly renovated toilet has also been smashed, further delaying the opening.
“This is even tougher on the council as they are extremely limited in terms of budget.
“The police were there to dissipate the crowd … The remaining crowd of ravers watched on while I was left to deal with all the mess.
“It is hard to really translate the sheer amount of glass, left-over needles (and) drugs, sprawled out across the Undercliff Walk as well as the stairs where plenty of dogs, runners and children could not avoid stepping on.
“I also have a great sympathy for those with beach huts as there are locals who use them come rain or shine and I have been informed have repainted their entire building four times already.
“I wanted to bring this to the attention of everyone across the Deans who use the beach and the Undercliff Walk and hopefully can spread some awareness to prevent things like this happening again.
“Everyone has done silly and regrettable things in their youth and, as frustrating as it is, I don’t hold any major grudge against those young ravers.
“I am not naive enough to think these things won’t happen or that young drunk/high kids always make the right decisions.
“I just hope that next time, if there is one, they can enjoy themselves and not leave any trace behind them.”
Bad parenting and lack of juvenile court delivering suitable sentencing. These kids do as they want, when they want and how they want because there is no deterrent, and they have never experiences any discipline.
16-21…conscription? To learn positive values ? Their contempt and destructive behaviour is scary. The drugs! Needles…graffiti. Why?
We used to party down there all the time with up to 3000 ‘revellers’ and there was open communication between police and organisers. We never once left the place looking anything other than spotless, to the degree that this very publication tried to dog whistle locals but couldn’t find anything more disturbing than a sofa, a bottle of water and a neatly folded napkin to publish in the front cover. As is typical of the argus it tries to have it’s cake and eat it. On the one hand jubilant and proud of brighton’s storied creative status, on the other archly opposed to any countercultural movement that doesn’t chime with its predominantly conservative and victorian attitudes.
So ok one time we left a sofa, but definitely no needles and no broken glass everywhere. The Leave No Trace ethos seems to have died over COVID.
Anyone suggesting conscription as a first resort to address the issue is clearly emotionally inadequate.
Chav life; everywhere you go, it happening…. Near you…..
Ravers do not inject drugs and they certainly do not carry spray paint and do graffiti, they sometimes do a few Es and dance all night.
Whatever went on here was not a damn Rave!!!
Indeed!!!!
Well said, I was trying to find those words.
Rave culture is LOVE,PEACE& UNITY!
Needles at a rave? Never heard of that before
Indeed!!!!
Doesn’t sound very Rave does it?
That’s not a rave that’s teenagers getting drunk
I suspect many people including AI content creation bots would call any unofficial gathering of young people having fun a “rave”.
People who know what a rave is would not call it that. However they are now at a certain age where they get annoyed at the misappropriation of a word hijacked by their generation. Welcome to middle age ! Lols..
I’m sorry I just don’t believe any needles are down to the 16-25 yr olds u talk about. It’s a outdoor rave not new jack city. 90’s ravers(myself included)have grown up ABIT so are far less likely to litter and vandalise(some will want it cleaner than ever) U know how it goes. Kids being kids and need a bloody good roasting but let’s not tarnish them with needles as clearly not them. Cheers
Vandalism has been a big problem here for over a decade and never gets cleaned up by the council. There’s been the same “no cycling” tag on the cycle path for years.
Most of the above comments are just making excuses, rave or not it needs dealing with. Yes the council and the police could do more. Even more could the parents do. To blame it on COVID is being emotionally inadequate, to say it wasn’t a rave doesn’t address the issue. Severe punishment is needed, the best way would be for them to be forced to clean the mess up. However that needs proactive police action, which doesn’t happen in this so called progressive society. Result? The situation will just get worse.