The Carousel Ballroom - Make Over

nothing lasts

Yeah, this is pretty old news, just another example of how long it takes for these major deals to get approved (how many beaks need to be wetted?).

It's a shame, but the entire building has been pretty much unused for a long time, and change is always inevitable. If only these modern buildings weren't so ugly.

That ballroom has a great history going much farther back than the Carousel or Fillmore West. My mom loved it when it was called the El Patio Ballroom and said it was the best of the SF ballrooms when she regularly hit them all in the late '40s (she met my father on the steps of the Avalon Ballroom in 1947, I've always wondered if there was some celestial connection to my love of venues from that).

Despite having a few chances I've never stepped into that hallowed space and probably never will, although it looks like they may be keeping the 2nd story ballroom at least partially intact, which was something that was talked about when this all first came up and that from those design images looks possible.

While being too young to have experienced it, the place is a sacred temple to me. Whenever I'm leaving the city I try to head to the freeway down Van Ness specifically to drive past it and feel the tingle of energy that will likely always remain. I've always wondered if the people who live in the apartments where Winterland used to be wake up sometimes to odd, unexplainable echoes. Gotta' be something going on in spaces like that.

I love the movie Last Days at the Fillmore, especially the opening sequence with Bill Graham walking the line all the way around the building (and the next part with him on the phone with Boz Scaggs and then tearing apart the guy from the Charlatans who was whining that his new group wasn't booked. Fucking classic BG footage).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SDWjfsy-GA&t=655s

Oh well. As George Harrison so aptly put it, all things must pass.

They paved paradise and put up an apartment building.