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Oakland Repeals 82-Year Old Ban On Dance Marathons

OAKLAND (CBS/AP) -- Oakland residents can literally dance all night to celebrate the end of a law dating back to the Great Depression.

Oakland's City Council voted last week to get rid of an 82-year-old law banning dance marathons. The events would last for weeks with people dancing nonstop for days with a 15 minute break every hour.

The dance marathons were among several endurance fads popular after the Stock Market Crash of 1929, including pole sitting and cross-country racing. But lawmakers intervened after the marathons went beyond just dancing—and into sex and drugs.

Oakland's move comes more than twenty years after California purged a similar law from state books in 1990.

Dance marathons are now a popular fundraising tool at colleges across the country.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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