Noise. Drinking. Parties. So it goes on a typical Friday or Saturday night on many blocks in the Park Avenue neighborhood.

It's an area known for its beautiful older homes, tree-lined streets, and bustling main drag. While there are plenty of homeowners and families, the neighborhood is also home to a large number of young-adult apartment dwellers. Many of them are college students living for the first time in a place of their own. And they're accustomed to raucous parties lasting late into the night - or early into the morning, depending on how you want to look at it. The parties are frequent, although fall and late spring seem to be peak times.

"There's an ebb and flow," says Lt. Frank Churnetski of the southeast area NET office.

But each year, during the Park Avenue Festival, the partying is taken to an extreme. The younger residents use the event as an excuse to invite friends over. And after the festival closes each night, some hangers-on spill out into the neighborhood. Armed with a 12-pack, they wander the streets hoping the beer will either get them into a party or allow them to blend into a crowd.

This year, for one street at least, the partying became an extreme of extremes. Hundreds of people, perhaps more than 1,000, flooded one block of Vassar Street on Saturday night, August 4. People were packed in "wall to wall" and most, if not all, were "stone drunk," says Vassar Street resident Alan Jones. Partiers invaded residents' porches and lawns, urinated in their yards, rocked parked cars, and set fires.

Jones and his wife Lois say that one young woman sat in their front yard for over an hour throwing up, but she refused medical help.

Festival organizers, police, and neighborhood residents brace for the parties every year. But the gathering on Vassar Street this year caught everyone off guard. Next year, the police department plans to make more officers available to cope with post-festival crowds, says department spokesperson Deidre Taccone. City Council President Lois Giess is urging police, neighbors, business groups, and festival organizers to get together and talk about the parties.

Festival organizers plan to meet with neighbors next month to discuss how to rein in the partying, says Jimmy Catalano, secretary of the Park Avenue Neighborhood Coalition and a member of the Park Avenue Revitalization Committee, which sponsors the festival.

The parties have become an annual part of the festival weekend, though they are far from being an official part. The Revitalization Committee discusses them at its monthly meetings. The festival sponsors know they are going to happen, and the focus has been on making sure that the drinking doesn't interfere with the festival itself. Organizers want to make sure revelers don't damage the artists' work, something that has been a problem in the past. (This year, only one vendor reported any problems, says Jeff Springut, the festival's organizer.)

Private security and off-duty police are hired for the festival. And the Rochester Police Department assigns a special patrol to the neighborhood. The officers are on duty for the whole weekend, not just the festival hours.

But this year, there weren't enough officers on the detail -12 were assigned to the area - to maintain the kind of presence that was needed, says Taccone. One reason for the shortage of officers: the annual Puerto Rican Festival was the same weekend. Historically, both events have had after-hours problems.

Shortly after the Park Avenue Festival shut down at 6 o'clock on Saturday, police began breaking up parties, says Taccone. But the parties started back up once officers left. It was tough for the police to keep up.

"This year it just simply got way out of hand," says Catalano.

The partiers wouldn't cooperate with police, Alan and Lois Jones say. So sometime after 11 p.m., police officers locked arms and marched down the street, pushing the crowd off of the street, says Catalano.

"I thought, for being so outnumbered, the cops did a remarkable job," says Lois Jones.

By 12:30 a.m., the street itself was mostly clear, but the parties continued in homes, on porches, and in yards. Empty cups, cans, bottles, and litter were strewn down Vassar. After the crowds dispersed, property owners were left to clean up the mess with rakes and shovels. (The recyclable containers were a windfall for bottle collectors, who canvassed the area later that night.)

Why the partiers converged on Vassar Street is a matter of speculation. But the consensus seems to be that nice weather, record festival attendance, the presence of live music at one party, and sheer opportunity all played a part. People already there were using cell phones to call more of their friends down, says Alan Jones. And as the crowd grew, it probably became more attractive to passers-by, says Catalano.

In past years, officers have spent time in the neighborhood before the festival, looking for people hauling kegs into homes, Catalano says. The officers handed those people information about the city's noise ordinance.

This year, officers looked for party advertisements - printed flyers along with Web postings on public sites such as MySpace, says Lt. Churnetski of the NET office. In particular, they looked for advertisements for parties with a cover charge. Those parties have been targeted citywide as part of a broader effort focusing on illegal house parties.

Police say there was one noise-violation citation on Vassar Street on August 4, issued around 2 a.m. for a loud stereo. Police also made two disorderly-conduct arrests on Vassar, one around 9:30 p.m., the other at about 11:30.

Neighbors, organizers, and city officials say more can probably be done to tone down the partying after future festivals. The city's noise ordinance can be used to help keep parties from becoming a disturbance. The city also requires any party hosting a band to get an entertainment license, says Giess. And residents and party hosts should understand the consequences of violating those laws, she says.

Alan Jones thinks the city already has the needed rules in place. It just needs to enforce things like the noise ordinance and open-container laws, he says. And parking a police van in the neighborhood could help discourage rowdiness.

Landlords also need to be more careful about who they are renting to, says Jones. And they should know their own legal liability, since they could be sued if somebody is hurt during a party.

The Joneses and others in the neighborhood say they'll push those ideas over the next year, as preparations for next year's festival get underway.

"It's only been a few days, so we're just beginning," Lois Jones said last week.

Party rules

Rochester officials have been stepping up their efforts to keep residential parties from getting out of hand. The following are regulations that party hosts and their neighbors should be aware of.

• The city's noise ordinance prohibits amplified sound -including live bands and stereos - that can be heard from 50 feet beyond the property line between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. After 10 p.m., noise that can be heard beyond the property line is prohibited. The fines: $200 for the first offense, $400 for the second, $600 for the third and beyond.

• If you plan to have a band at your party, you have to have an entertainment license. Events that have licenses or permits are exempt from the noise ordinance.

• You can also be cited for causing unreasonable noise, such as yelling in the street.

• Party hosts who provide alcohol to underage guests can face criminal charges. Selling alcohol to minors is a violation of the state liquor law; that can result in jail time. And, as often happens during the Park Avenue Festival, people wandering the streets with alcoholic drinks can be cited for violating the open-container law.

• Charging admission to a party is a zoning violation; it's viewed as having a commercial operation in a residential area. If the party hosts are tenants, the city issues the citation to the property owner.

• And ultimately, if city officials deem any property to be a nuisance - if there've been repeated noise violations or drug, gambling, or prostitution activity - the city can temporarily or permanently revoke the owner's right to use it. And that applies not only to bars and other commercial establishments but also to residential properties.