After almost two wonderful years, it is with sadness that I have to inform you that we will be permanently closing The Rent Party on August 13th. It has been a great ride, and I am always happy to hear about how many people have learned and found their love for Blues and Lindy while dancing at The Rent Party. We had an amazing party on our last night with over 300 people attending:

What: TRP - Closing Party!
When: August 13th, 2011
Bands: Fil Lorenz, Dave Workman, Big Bones and special guests

There are so many people that deserve thanks for all the mountain of work that is The Rent Party. For the last year, my co-organizer Chelsea Lessard has done an incredible job of holding up half of the venue and doing all the work that I wasn't available for. Before that, the previous co-organizer Kyle Barbour was a tireless machine who helped define all that TRP is. A huge thanks to both of you from myself and from the entire community. Also invaluable was the TRP staff, which consisted of Susan Bertuleit (Blues Manager), Rose Connally with help from Rudy Resch (Volunteer Manager), Daniel Greenhouse, Karen Bell and Victor Dods (Lindy DJs, Teardown), Kent Soule (Music Advisor), Robert Strong (Promotions), recent additions Nabi Whitmore and Jeanine Wurzel and finally Haley Smith, who was there for the very beginning of this crazy idea I had of running a new kind of venue. Each and every one of you is The Rent Party, as TRP never would have existed without you.

Furthermore, TRP had the largest creative staff of any venue in the Bay Area, and each of our teachers and DJs deserves huge praise. We opened TRP with many ideals, one of which was to give opportunities to so much of the creative talent we have in this fantastic city, and they did a fantastic job of filling those shoes - rather big shoes considering that TRP was the only venue around that had three consecutive classes and two rooms of dancing.

And finally, our volunteers, those people who saw that setting up and tearing down a venue each week is an enormous amount of effort, from our regular volunteers who were there almost every week (you know who you are) all the way down to people who just happened to be around and asked if they could lend a hand. Thank you all.

Since we are closing in mid-August (we're not closed yet!), we will not be starting an August Lindy series, but we will still have classes for all levels until we close, and we have some great teachers lined up for you, so come and have a few more dances at TRP while you still can.

If you have bought any monthly passes (such as via Yelp/Groupon) then please contact us - we will be refunding you out of our pocket so that you don't lose any money for passes you can't use. And for myself, David Madison, I would like to thank this fantastic community for these last two years. I have plans to move on to organizing a number of other events such as xBlues which you will be hearing more about, and most of all, I hope to see you on the dance floor!