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Concert venue and dance hall in Newport Beach, California; launching pad for surf music innovator Dick Dale, and point of origin for the no-finesse-required "surfer stomp" dance step. The block-long two-story beachfront Rendezvous Ballroom, located just west of Balboa Pier, opened in 1928, and quickly became known as the "West Coast Home of the Big Band Sound," featuring acts like Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and Woody Herman. It had a massive 12,000- square-foot wooden dance floor, and could accommodate 4,000 people. It burned nearly to the ground in 1935, but was rebuilt

The Rendezvous faded along with the big band era. In 1957, the Newport Beach city officials shut the Ballroom down for two months after police officers claimed the place was a haven for “immoral” dancing, drug use and racy rock ’n’ roll music, and it was still all but shuttered in 1959 when guitarist Dick Dale, one year after recording his debut single, played his first show there—to an audience of 17. Dale persisted, the authorities loosened up a bit, and the following year word spread among local high school students that his Rendezvous shows were hot. "It was a place you could go to be a surfer," said Righteous Brothers drummer Tracy Longstreth, who played the Rendezvous in the early 1960s and remembered it as being loud, sweaty, and rowdy.

Other surf bands took up the slack after 1961, when Dale left his semiregular Rendezvous gig to tour the country, but by 1965 the ballroom, along with surf music in general, was fading fast. The Rendezvous burned again in 1966, and never reopened. Condominiums now fill the lot, although a bronze plaque, unveiled in 1986 at what was once the Rendezvous's southeast corner, notes the location as Orange County Historical site #35. "The music and dancing have ended," the plaque's inscription reads, "but the memories linger on."

Rendezvous Ballroom

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