Dick Oakes, a name I remember from the folk dance heyday back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, has a website full of nostalgia (at least for those of us who danced at folk dance coffee houses in Los Angeles): International Folk Dancing and Teaching More specifically: Folk Dance Coffeehouses. He has a lot of material from The Intersection, where I spent many evenings, especially in the early 70’s after I moved to Los Angeles, and a little bit from Zorbas, where I went occasionally, and Gypsy Camp, where I spent quite a bit of time.

However, I started dancing at The Museum in Pasadena, and it remained my primary coffee house until it closed. It was in a lousy area of Pasadena (at the time; the neighborhood is now part of trendy Old Town), but Pasadena was kind of close to Claremont, where I was going to school. The Museum isn’t mentioned much on the web (it’s also hard to search for, given its generic name), but I’ve found a couple of mentions.

Michael Guthrie says:

I also hung out in “Skid Row” Pasadena, (which is now “Old Town”), at the “Museum”, which was a folk dance coffee house…

Paul Sheldon, in a reminiscence about The Intersection, writes:

One summer, while I was still in high school, a friend invited my sister Hunter and me to go to “The Intersection,” the original folk dance coffeehouse in Los Angeles owned by Rudy Dannes and Athan Karras, and after which “The Museum” in Pasadena where we danced had been patterned.

I don’t remember Michael Guthrie, but I do remember Paul (we knew him as Chip) and his sister Hunter (we knew her as Missy).

Here are some other people that I knew from the Museum: Lydee Scudder and Brad Foster. Brad is the Executive Director of the Country Dance and Song Society, so he’s instrumental in the contra and ECD scene. Lydee now calls ECD (mostly) and contras in Northern California.

When I was hanging out at the Museum, I went out with a guy named Wes Dooley; at the time, his work involved recording various school bands and choruses so they could make albums (how quaint) from their performances. I wonder if this is him: WesDooley.com? It’s kind of embarassing that I don’t recognize him from his photo, but he was definitely in Pasadena during the relevant time period, and he’s continued his work in audio. In fact, it sounds like he’s been very successful; his ribbon mikes get very favorable reviews.

Does this have anything to do with square dancing? Not really…except there’s probably a direct connection between my folk dancing back then and my square dancing now.