The dance floor bounces because it was built on tires stuffed with horsehair, and Canada's most influential nightclub has been springing under dancers' feet since 1930. The Commodore Ballroom at 868 Granville Street in downtown Vancouver opened on 3 December 1930 as the Commodore Cabaret, an Art Deco supper club built by brewing heir George Conrad Reifel to designs by architect H.H. Gillingham, whose second-floor English-style ballroom - forty by eighty feet of sprung hardwood - gave the room an advantage no competitor could match. The Depression closed it within four months; restaurateurs Nick Kogas and Johnny Dillias reopened it in 1931 with dollar Saturday supper dances, and big bands carried it through the swing decades. The modern legend began in 1969 when manager Drew Burns took over, secured the room's first full liquor licence in 1970 and opened the stage to everything: The Clash made an early North American stop in 1979, and Tina Turner, David Bowie, k.d. lang, Nirvana and Snoop Dogg all worked the sprung floor across a quarter-century in which the Commodore became the essential mid-size room of the Pacific Northwest. Burns's lease ended in 1995 and the ballroom went dark in July 1996 - touring acts simply skipped Vancouver for three years - until a 3.5-million-dollar restoration under the House of Blues banner revived the Art Deco interiors and reopened the room on 12 November 1999. Now operated by Live Nation with a general-admission capacity around 990 between standing floor and table seating, the Commodore runs one of the busiest calendars in Canadian live music - rock, hip-hop, electronic, indie and comedy nearly every night. Billboard named it one of North America's ten most influential clubs in 2011, the only Canadian room on the list, and the city marked its 90th anniversary in 2020. Ninety-five years on, in the heart of the Granville Entertainment District, the Commodore remains what Reifel built - a ballroom first, where the floor itself is part of the show.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 868 Granville Street, Vancouver, Canada, V6Z 1K3

Website: https://www.commodoreballroom.com

Minimum Age: 19

Capacity: 990

Opening Date: 03/12/1930

Serves Food

Accessible