Rendezvous Ballroom

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, ...