On This Day in Art Rock History

A DAILY CHRONICLE

SAN FRANCISCO · THE PSYCHEDELIC ERA · 1960s

The Venues

The rooms where it happened. Some are gone; some still stand. We begin with the places at the heart of the story — the Bay Area ballrooms and the saloon in the Nevada desert where it all started — and widen outward as the archive grows.

Atlanta International Raceway
Hampton, GA
Atlanta International Raceway, a motor-racing speedway in Hampton, Georgia, about twenty miles south of Atlanta, was the site of the Atlanta Internati
Avalon Ballroom
San Francisco, CA
The Avalon stood on the upper floors of a 1911 building at 1268 Sutter Street in Polk Gulch.
California Hall
San Francisco, CA
California Hall, at 625 Polk Street in San Francisco, was built in 1912 as "Das Deutsche Haus" (The German House), designed by Frederick H.
Carousel Ballroom
San Francisco, CA
The Carousel Ballroom at 1545 Market Street had two lives.
Columbia County Fairgrounds, St. Helens, OR
St. Helens, OR
The Columbia County Fairgrounds in St.
Cow Palace
Daly City, CA
The Cow Palace is a large indoor arena on the San Francisco–Daly City line, opened in 1941 and long used for livestock expositions, sports, and large-
Devonshire Downs
Northridge, CA
Devonshire Downs began life in 1946 as a harness-racing track on the northern edge of the San Fernando Valley, at the corner of Devonshire Street and
Electric Theater
Chicago, IL
The Electric Theater opened on April 3, 1968 at 4812 North Clark Street in Chicago's Uptown, in a 1928 building that had housed the Rainbo Gardens dan
Family Dog Denver
Denver, CA
The Family Dog's Denver room was Chet Helms's attempt to export the Avalon Ballroom's model beyond San Francisco.
Family Dog on the Great Highway
San Francisco, CA
Chet Helms's Family Dog operation relocated to a hall at 660 Great Highway, on the ocean side of San Francisco, after losing the Avalon Ballroom's lea
Fillmore Auditorium
San Francisco, CA
The building at 1805 Geary Boulevard long predates the music that made it legendary.
Fillmore West
San Francisco, CA
The room began as a swing-era dance palace — later the Carousel Ballroom — occupying the upstairs floor of a corner building at Market Street and Sout
Forest Hills Tennis Stadium
Queens, NY
The tennis stadium at Forest Hills in Queens was built in 1923 for the West Side Tennis Club and hosted the US National Championships — later the US O
Gate Theatre, Sausalito
Sausalito, CA
The Gate Theatre stood on what is now Bridgeway in Sausalito, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco.
Golden Gate Park
San Francisco, CA
Golden Gate Park is the thousand-acre public park running west from the Haight-Ashbury to the Pacific, and for the San Francisco scene it was the free
Hollywood Bowl
Los Angeles, CA
The Hollywood Bowl has been the outdoor concert home of Los Angeles since 1922 — a natural amphitheatre in Bolton Canyon whose banded concentric shell
Hyde Park
London, England
Hyde Park, in central London, held a series of free concerts from 1968 organised largely by Blackhill Enterprises — Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Blind Fai
Kinetic Playground
Chicago, IL
The Kinetic Playground was Chicago's principal psychedelic ballroom, at 4812 North Clark Street in Uptown — the same room that had opened in April 196
Longshoreman's Hall
San Francisco, CA
Longshoreman's Hall, at 400 North Point Street near Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, was built at the end of the 1950s as the meeting hall of the I
Malibu Beach & Shore Club
Lido Beach, NY
The Malibu Shore Club is a beach club on the south shore of Long Island at Lido Beach, open since 1948.
Matrix
San Francisco, CA
The Matrix was a small club at 3138 Fillmore Street in the Marina, and its origin is unusually tidy for a scene that mostly grew by accident: the sing
Max Yasgur Farm, Bethel, New York
Bethel, NY
Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, New York — near the hamlet of White Lake, in Sullivan County — was the site of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, Augu
Monterey County Fairgrounds
Monterey, CA
The Monterey County Fairgrounds sits on roughly twenty-two acres in Monterey, California, built in 1936.
Municipal Coliseum
Lubbock, TX
The Lubbock Municipal Coliseum opened in 1956 on the campus edge in Lubbock, Texas, a city of about a hundred and thirty thousand on the South Plains,
Nippon Budokan
Tokyo, Japan
The Nippon Budokan in Tokyo was built for the 1964 Olympic Games as a martial-arts hall — the name means roughly 'martial arts hall' — an octagonal bu
Oakland Auditorium
Oakland, CA
Opened April 30, 1915, the Oakland Auditorium (originally the Oakland Civic Auditorium) is a Beaux-Arts civic landmark built 1913–1915 on the shore of
Piedmont Park
Atlanta, GA
Piedmont Park is Atlanta's central public park, 189 acres laid out in the 1900s on the grounds of two former expositions.
Red Dog Saloon
Virginia City, NV
High on the flank of Mount Davidson, in the silver-mining town the Comstock Lode built and then half-abandoned, the Red Dog Saloon occupies a three-st
Saville Theatre
London, England
The Saville Theatre stood at 135 Shaftesbury Avenue in London, opened in 1931 as a West End playhouse.
Straight Theater
San Francisco, CA
The Straight Theater was a former movie house at 1702 Haight Street, in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, that neighborhood residents and artists conve
The Kaleidoscope
Hollywood, CA
The Kaleidoscope operated for roughly six months in 1968 at 6230 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, in a building with an unusually layered history: it op
Wallkill, New York
Wallkill, NY
Wallkill is a town in Ulster County, New York, and it is in this chronicle for something that did NOT happen there.