Talk:Avalon Ballroom

Photograph wrong?
We received an email stating that the venue photograph is wrong - according to the person the image depicts The Regency Ballroom, not the Avalon Ballroom. Can someone possibly verify if this is the case? § FreeRangeFrog croak 16:32, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Apparently it is the same place. Used to be called the Avalon Ballroom, later became (part of) the Regency - Wikidemon (talk) 10:16, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't know how to use this talk page but here I will try. The photo is not the avalon ballroom. I am the GM of the Regency Ballroom and I can tell you for a fact the Avalon Ballroom is next door to us on Sutter St. The Avalon Ballroom is not on the corner. The company using it is called: Wantful. Also the link to the Regency Events page at the bottom is wrong as we are not the Avalon Ballroom. The Real World SF is filming in bottom floor of the Avalon Ballroom building as correctly reported by this web article:  and another:   That grey/greenish building on those websites is the Avalon Ballroom building. This false wikipedia article is creating confusion for our clients that think we are the Avalon when they utilize our venue so I would really appreciate if wikipedia would take these false references down. Here is another picture of the Avalon Ballroom on the inside:    That is not what The Regency Ballroom looks like. 99.128.13.158 (talk) 21:38, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Paul Billings - Goldenvoice

Also, the address you have is the correct address. The Regency Building Sutter Addresses are 1270 Sutter and 1290 Sutter. 1268 is the next building down AKA Avalon Ballroom. You can verify this on the San Francisco Assessor Property Search Map and type in 1268 Sutter and you will see its one building in on Sutter, not the corner which is Regency. 99.128.13.158 (talk) 21:50, 17 October 2013 (UTC)Paul Billings - Goldenvoice

To tie up some loose ends here:
 * The wrong photo had been added on March 10, 2011 by User:Cinosaur (who might have made the honest mistake of trusting claims in an OTRS email by the person who claimed to be the original photographer).
 * It was removed from this article in 2013 and has not been used in it since as far as I can see.
 * However, as of today the image description on Commons has not been corrected (despite another user bringing up the issue again there in 2019).
 * Also, the image is still being used as a purported illustration of the Avalon Ballroom building in the article Mantra-Rock Dance (since before it was awarded featured article status in 2011) and in the Avalon Ballroom articles of several other Wikipedias (e.g. French).
 * One reason for the confusion might be that the 1967 Mantra-Rock Dance poster only described the address vaguely as "Sutter & Van Ness". However, there can be no doubt that even at that time, the Avalon Ballroom was located in the 1244/1268 Sutter building, see e.g. this 1967 photo at SFGATE (viewed upwards along Sutter). This blog post contains a photo from 1948/49 showing the building with the same Avalon sign.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:29, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

Name change
Its obvious that The Regency has nothing to do with The Avalon, so no reason to keep the name of the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valverde.pr (talk • contribs) 04:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not immediately obvious, but a number of people who seem to have some personal knowledge of this have sounded in here. Could anyone find some actual verifiable sources regarding the Regency, the Avalon, and the relationship or lack thereof? The only sources I have found say they are one and the same, that one is now open in a part of the other. If the sources are wrong, can we get some objective confirmation of that? - Wikidemon (talk) 07:32, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Go check the Regency website, there isn't a single reference to Avalon Ballroom, the place actually was a Masonic temple, dance studio, movie theater, but never the Avalon Ballroom. If you don't think thats an actual source, then I don't think you will ever find one. In this talk page you can even read what the Regency GM said: a lot of people are going to Regency thinking they are attending the old Avalon Ballroom. Also in SF press this year you will find a lot of articles about the old Avalon, because it was used as a location for the reality show "Real World". The person who changed this page name to "The Regency Ballroom" made a terrible mistake. Wikipedia is not a place to spread misinformation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valverde.pr (talk • contribs) 20:36, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Those kinds of sources and reasoning are useful for figuring out what's going on, but the article itself has to be based on direct third party independent sources, rather than piecing together two different sources to infer a result — that's known as WP:SYNTH. Anyway, I think I know what's happening here. There are indeed two different ballrooms, the Avalon from the 1960s and the Regency of the 2000s. They are in separate adjacent buildings. However, when the Avalon was restored and briefly re-opened in the 2000s it was under the name Regency Center, which also included the Regency Ballroom. Different sources describe them as part of the same complex, or "sister" venues under similar ownership or management. So for a while there was the Avalon Ballroom at the Regency Center, the Regency Ballroom at the Regency Center, and perhaps some smaller places, offices, what have you. As of now the Avalon is the site of the Real World set and the Regency still operates for occasional shows, but not really branded as the Regency Center anymore. So we have one article about two venues that were briefly part of the same overall business. I've renamed the article accordingly but we should consider either: (1) dividing this into two articles, or (2) renaming it back to the Avalon Ballroom and focusing attention there, mentioning the Regency as an aside — although bigger, it hasn't had nearly the same cultural importance and impact as the Avalon so it's less notable. - Wikidemon (talk) 21:20, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate your attention, and in my opinion the best option is to rename it to Avalon Ballroom and create another one to The Regency center. Note that The Avalon ballroom was not a sister venue of the Regency. They are two completely different animals, and you should find dome sources that say they are sisters venues. The Regency Center is the Ballroom, Lodge and Sutter. Nothing to do with the next door building, the former ballroom. There is no reason at all to keep the Avalon page with 'The Regency Center", '"Regency Ballroom". I edited myself a lot of pages of old psychedelic SF bands as a guest when those pages were really short and had poor information. People should know about the amazing SF 60s scene, but misinformation doesn't help.

Also note thats not an "original research". We have sources with a specific location for the old Avalon Ballroom, and that location is different from the building where The Regency is, so we don't need a source saying that The Avalon was in location Y and not in location X. If you say Mandela was from South African, you don't need a source saying he was from South Africa but not from Soviet Union. No reason to remove the Regency/Avalon confusion section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valverde.pr (talk • contribs) 21:49, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

What you did was an "original research", because you pieced together no sources to infer a result: "When the Avalon was restored and briefly re-opened in the 2000s it was under the name Regency Center, which also included the Regency Ballroom. Different sources describe them as part of the same complex, or "sister" venues under similar ownership or management. So for a while there was the Avalon Ballroom at the Regency Center, the Regency Ballroom at the Regency Center, and perhaps some smaller places". 1- Where are the sources who said Avalon opened in 2000s under the name "Regency Center"? 2- Where are those different sources describing them as part of the same complex or sister "venues"? 3- That might be true, but until we don't have sources the only fact is that Avalon Ballroom was in a different building than the current Regency Center. We need sources saying Avalon was a part of The Regency center. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valverde.pr (talk • contribs) 22:09, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

[edit conflict] Original research is fine for the talk page, sometimes that kind of detective work is necessary to untangle conflicting or missing sources. But the resulting article has to be based on secondary sources that directly verify facts. Looking up places by address to establish their identity is indeed considered WP:SYNTH, a form of WP:OR. If a particular building is the site of, say, the headquarters of Microsoft, you can't establish that in an article by looking up Microsoft's address, looking up the building address, and then noting they are the same. That is indeed putting two or more facts together from different sources. Incidentally, just looking up an address is considered primary sourcing, which has its own problems. The Avalon / Regency confusion section was entirely original research, without any secondary sourcing of facts. If you wanted to say in an article that there is confusion over the two you would need a source that says there is confusion over the two, and that establishes that the confusion is a noteworthy and relevant fact concerning the business. And then you would need a source to say that the confusion arises because they are next to each other and have similar addresses, etc. Otherwise it's just opinion. If the confusion is just what's happening here on Wikipedia, or what the rest of the world thinks after reading Wikipedia, that's unimportant per WP:NAVEL. Anyway, the sourcing on the relationship is slight, you'd have to dig through the history. The apparent owner of the Regency describes Avalon Ballroom as a sister venue. I'm inclined to agree we should rename the article to be the Avalon and then remove everything about the Regency entirely, other than to note that it's next door to a newer venue known as the Regency Center. - Wikidemon (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I have to admit you are right about the Avalon/Regency confusion. If the "confusion" is actually a wikipedia confusion, or a confusion created by wikipedia, a source saying there was this "confusion" was needed. So we agree at this point. About the LinkedIn link, Im not sure if thats a reliable source. The official Regency Center website does not mention the Avalon Ballroom as part of the complex. We know that Avalon housed Regency II, so you might be right when you said that right after the theater ceased operations and housed some concertes in early 2000s, the former Avalon was part of the Regency Center, what caused the "confusion". But as I said before, we still are just speculating here. Im trying to find some sources to clarify this specific subject, but we still don't have them, so we don't know for sure if the Avalon was part of the Regency Center in the past. Right now its not. I appreciate your attention and your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Valverde.pr (talk • contribs) 02:31, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for helping sort this all out. I'm around to help, if not always active. Best, — Wikidemon (talk) 10:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 7 December 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved (non-admin closure) Mahveotm (talk) 23:54, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

The Avalon → Avalon Ballroom – This is the name used by most (all?) of the cited sources. Apparently this page was moved back in 2013 to the current name after a discussion, but I can't figure out from that discussion why it's not called Avalon Ballroom. Kendall-K1 (talk) 20:05, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Strong support, thank you Kendall-K1, there is no reason to not name the page Avalon Ballroom. Janis Joplin, bless her whiskey filled heart, would approve. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:48, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Support common name. Excelse (talk) 08:05, 12 December 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.