1976 – 1996
“In all of time – in all of the cold vastness of the universe – there will always reside a gem – a jewel – a campfire for the soul – between 1976 and 1996…at (16th) and Taraval – called Avenue Ballroom! Thank you, Joel, for creating that campfire to warm our hearts.” – George Deller
I taught my first jitterbug class in the concrete back yard of the Mission District flat I shared with three roommates in 1974. I played my old 45’s, lit a fire in the trash can, and viola`! – instant atmosphere, not to mention music.
The class was offered under the auspices of Communiversity – one of the alternative universities (along with Orpheus, Life School, and Open Exchange) extant at the time. Communiversity was sponsored by San Francisco State College, and lay teachers taught for the joy of teaching (only), and students took classes free of charge. Among other offerings, you could learn about mushroom hunting, how to build your own casket (or one for a loved one) – or even how to do the jitterbug.
Soon after that class in my back yard, I began offering four-week classes, first in the back of the storefront I rented for my roommate service (shared with Gary Warne’s Circus of the Soul used bookstore, who took over Communiversity and moved it off-campus) in the Inner Sunset neighborhood, then in rented school auditoriums and such at various locations around the city, including Fort Mason, UCSF, etc. I also threw a couple of dances, featuring the 50’s band, The Hubcaps, that Gary and I started together.
Some of my students took my classes over and over, as there was really nowhere else to do this dance. One of my students mentioned to me there was a folkdance hall in the Outer Sunset that was dark on Saturday nights, and she suggested I rent it and have a weekly dance – great idea!
This was 1976 or thereabouts, and I began throwing a record hop at the Mandala Folkdance Center every Saturday night, preceded by a free beginning jitterbug lesson and eventually, an advanced variation. Admission was $2.50 and included the lesson.
One of the innovations I’d stumbled upon was having the dancers rotate every few minutes throughout the lesson, so that the inevitable ‘extra’ women would all get an equal chance to dance. In addition to spreading that ‘burden’ around, this served a number of purposes – for those who came with a partner, it promoted the ability to dance with anyone, rather than each partner learning to accommodate the other in various ways, and also served as a ‘mixer’ to let everyone get to know each other a bit, during the lesson.
This provided big dividends as time went on, as the lesson became a great way to meet members of the opposite sex before the dance. There was no extra charge for the lesson, so it encouraged people to come and take the lesson – no reason not to – you get to meet everyone and it costs virtually nothing!
At the time I began teaching, the dominant business paradigm in dance schools was the provision of a free introductory lesson, which included a hard sell of an expensive package of group and private lessons and dance parties for enrolled students (only). These packages were in the hundreds of dollars.
I changed that paradigm by offering drop-in dance parties, open to anyone for just a couple dollars and no commitment, with the option to sign up for a four-week class if you were more serious about learning the dance. So, very low bar for entry, with increasing levels of optionally renewable commitment available if interested. (A four-week class around that time ranged from $10-$20.)
Through 1979, I continued to teach classes at various locations around town and hold my dances on Saturday nights. I continued to run my roommate service by this time peopled by employees at the desk, and spend most of my time publishing my dance calendar of events, KICKS – Dance Around the Bay. (Mis-heard by some when I mentioned it as, “Kickstands Around the Bay.”)
In December of ’79, as I was preparing for a Christmas vacation in Hawaii, I happened to overhear that the Mandala Folk Dance Center was going to close in January – so when I got back from vacation, I would no longer have a venue for my dances.
I did some research, talked to the Mandala owner, the landlord, and some of the other dance groups that were currently sub-renting space there for their classes, and decided to pick up the lease myself.
So, in a somewhat dramatic turnaround, the guy I had been renting space from for the past three years or so, beginning in January, 1980, was then renting space from me. Ironically, when I’d first moved to San Francisco back in ’70 – ’71, the Mandala Folkdance Center was one of my early stops.
I used to teach folk dancing when I lived in LA, before I moved to the Bay Area, and thought I’d try plugging into the folk dance scene here in SF to make some new friends. I found I just didn’t have the heart to spend the time breaking into a new social scene, however, and, after a brief attempt at socializing, I remember standing on the sidewalk downstairs at street level, listening to the party going on upstairs, and feeling very alienated and alone in a new city. Ten years later, I was the leaseholder on that space.
It was an amazing opportunity for me – in addition to the folk dancers, who would remain as renters a couple nights a week, there were other groups renting space for their classes – children’s ballet, adult jazz and exercise classes that also remained; these groups became my sub-tenants. By the time I moved my classes from various locations around the city to this one location, the schedule was practically full – the space was rented out most nights, weekday afternoons, and Saturday mornings; it was practically a break-even proposition right from the start.
The head of the folk dance group was, by reputation, an excellent teacher and dancer, but did not have a head for business. When he ran the studio, their business phone was the pay phone in the hall; when people called the Mandals Folk Dance Center, that phone rang and whomever happened to be walking by, likely picked it up and answered, “Hello?” – or not.
Walk up the terrazzo stairs from the street and you immediately found yourself in the long, narrow coat closet, that ran the length of the studio; there were three sets of doors that provided access to the dance floor along the East wall of the coat closet. There was a janitor who washed the wood dance floor once a week as if it was linoleum – leaving water to soak into the wood boards, such that the atmosphere in the studio felt like being in the tropics until the water dried – there was virtually no finish on the floor. Not good for dancing, nor for the longevity of the floor.
The dance floor was long and narrow – about 20 ft by 50 ft.; the walls were painted white, purple, and/or red, with Bavarian print curtains on the windows; there was an old, worn, green Indian rug covering the small stage. Refreshments were on the honor system, with sodas in the icebox in the kitchen, and a can on top for the money (a system which I soon had to change to a coke machine, as the voluntary system never, to no-one’s surprise, ever penciled out).
There was an office off the kitchen, which had been used by the previous leaseholder for storage. I put a lock on the door and installed a business phone, so when prospective clients tried to reach us, they received a professional outgoing message – eventually (pre-voicemail) we needed two such phones to accommodate all the incoming calls. I remember one day I was meeting with a prospective space renter – Terry Sand, who taught improv comedy classes; we were chatting in the office and, in the course of our meeting, the phones were just ringing off the hook. She said, “Are you just trying to impress me?”
I put an awning out front, with our new name – The Avenue Ballroom, which called up memories of the Avalon Ballroom from San Francisco history, and also referenced our location in the Sunset District (Taraval Street and 16th Avenue).
I took down the curtains, painted the space beige and cream, and moved the coat closet to the long end of the dance floor in a small effort to square off the long, narrow space a bit. Other efforts toward that end included installing two, 6ft by 6ft mirrors along the wall that separated the dance floor from the former hallway/coat closet, replacing the set of double doors that previously provided egress between the closet and the dance floor with a window and a counter, at which I set four soda fountain chairs on the hallway side, facing the dance floor. On the opposite wall of what was formerly the closet but was now the lounge, I installed a mirror, crafted to the same dimensions of the window. The studio mirrors, the window, and the lounge mirror, all helped provide an illusion of a wider dance floor, to combat the existing dimensions of the long, narrow, space.
With the help of a carpenter friend, we installed a new floor in the lounge, so dancers came up the terrazzo stairs to a small landing and had the option to turn left, through a double-wide opening, onto the dance floor, or to walk forward and up one step, into the lounge. The lounge was carpeted, and there was one more step up to the soda fountain chairs if you wanted to sit and watch the dancing, or chat with someone on the perimeter of the dance floor. It was exciting to see this counter/chair/window arrangement quickly become a popular gathering spot for observation and conversation. I installed strips of gold (“Tivoli”) lights into the steps into the lounge and up to the soda fountain chairs. An art deco, two-section couch, found at a garage sale and recovered in vanilla vinyl and turquoise were placed horizontally at each end of the lounge to provide additional seating – and the feeling of a wider, room, from what was originally a rather narrow hallway (and coat closet!).
It turned out that one of my students, with whom I’d struck up a friendship, along with his twin brother (Ron and Roland Addad) were graphic designers. Ron introduced Roland to me and the Avenue Ballroom, and together they became our graphic artists in residence, responsible for choosing the art deco – style typefaces for all our print media, and designing our fliers advertising our classes and, most notably, our once-a-month live band dances with a different group every month – 100 dancers or more jitterbugged till one in the morning to groups such as Eddie and the Boppers, Mitch Woods and His Rocket 88’s, the Lowell High School Big Band, Mark Hummel and the Blues Survivors, The Toons/Barbary Coasters, Gold Lamay,The Hula Sisters, Tell Mama, The Melotones, the David Hardiman Big Band, the Jimmy Price Combo, and my group – The Hubcaps. Lesson beforehand as always, change partners, meet everyone, live band, lights, sound, typically a costume- and/or dance contest – a good time!
As it happened, Roland was friends with a producer at KPIX-TV – a guy who was in charge of a popular weekly Friday night show on their station – Channel 5’s Evening Magazine (with Richard Hart and Jan Yanihero, for those locals who go back that far). Roland mentioned the Avenue Ballroom to his friend (David Skillikorn), who decided to come and film one of our live band dances. Well, that really put us on the map! Channel 5 actually came a filmed us two or three times, and once the other local TV producers saw us on Channel 5, they all wanted us on their shows, as well – Channel 7’s Front Row Video, Channel 2’s Segment 2 with Elaine Corral and Bob McKenzie, among others.
Around this same time, Macy’s featured me, with my partner, Etta Hallock, on a full page ad on the front of one of the inside sections of the San Francisco Chronicle, promoting us when we spent the day doing periodic dance performances in their store, as well as promoting our live band dance that same Saturday night, that featured a Buddy Holly impersonator. Etta and I also performed in Union Square one afternoon, opening – along with disco dancers, Gary and Gloria Poole – for Independent Presidential candidate, John Anderson. (I imagine the person who was responsible for that event got an earful from someone in the campaign after it was over – I recall a somewhat scantily clad, dog-collared Gary Poole being led around on a leash by his sister, Gloria during their performance – not sure if this was the image the Anderson campaign had envisioned presenting to SF residents. Luckily, Etta and I in our two-tone saddle shoes, she in her poodle skirt, and I, in my cap, vest, bow tie and jeans, presented a bit more clean cut image for balance, at least.)
As a result of these promotional efforts, including our monthly (mailed) newsletter, dancers came to our classes and dances from all over — some from as far away as Sacramento. The Avenue was likely the best-known dance studio in Northern California.
As my business grew, my demand for space/time at the studio increased, and eventually our schedule expanded to include all seven nights of the week with classes in east coast swing, west coast swing, ballroom, salsa, and at one time, even some country western. We had dances Friday (west coast swing), Saturday (east coast swing), and Sunday (ballroom).
We also had monthly weekend workshops with world champion dancers from around the world, including Buddy Schwimmer – “Man of a Thousand Moves,” and father of So You Think You Can Dance Champion Benji Schwimmer; Multiple World Latin Dance Champion and public television ballroom dance host and color commentator, Ron Montez; Champion ballroom dancers and directors of the world-renowned Brigham Young University Dance Company, Lee and Linda Wakefield, and other such lights of the dance world.
When I first started my dances and classes, there was nowhere else in the world I would rather have been on a Saturday night than at the Avenue Ballroom. By 1996, after twenty years of teaching, hosting, performing, and running a business that eventually included twelve dance parties and 64 classes a month, at four different venues (including classes in Emeryville, Berkeley, and Lafayette, as well as monthly dances in Albany), sadly, the last place I wanted to be on a Saturday night was at the Avenue.
While an interested party expressed interest in buying the business, that deal did not ultimately come to fruition, and when my lease expired at the end of ’96, I closed the ballroom.
It was probably the best “j-o-b” I ever had – I got to teach, incorporate a bit of stand up comedy into my classes, perform and compete, do interior design and construction, act as master of ceremonies, photograph the events, do graphic design, write the newsletters and promotional copy, appear on TV, search out and present world-class talented teachers and musicians, and teach a whole new generation to dance, and introduce hundreds of singles to their short- and long-term partners.
One of my disappointments about the dance business, however, was the difficulty in getting to know people on a more than superficial level. While dancing puts you in physical contact with others, the nature of the environment and the activity also make it difficult to transition from dancing to talking – the music is relatively loud, there’s not usually a lot of conversation during the dancing with one’s partner, and then, when the song ends, no matter how wonderful the experience of creating a work of art with one’s partner has been, it’s challenging to make the leap to a conversation at that moment.
Additionally, many people, I think, are attracted to dancing as a social outlet that virtually keeps others “at arm’s length,” (as described by a local videographer who documented the Bay Area partner dance scene in a video, so titled).
That being said, it was ironic that, at our closing dance party, one of the ballroom’s patrons posted on our bulletin board, the comment that began this post – a comment that I felt perfectly encapsulated in just few words, my goal, and my own experience of what I’d created – though I couldn’t have explained it as beautifully as he did.
In his comment, he revealed his depth and sensitivity – someone who had apparently been to many of my dances over the years, but with whom I’d never had an opportunity to connect before that night. We’d never spoken before, and so far, a quarter of a century later, have never run into each other again. Thank you for that, George – wherever you are!
Any comments can be left at the bottom of the Welcome Page. Thanks!
Dance Videos From the Avenue Ballroom
Television Appearances (Video)