The Starland Ballroom is a concert venue located in Sayreville, Middlesex County, New Jersey, United States. Opening night was December 7, 2003 and featured a performance by Van Halen lead singer David Lee Roth. The venue was formerly known as the Hunka Bunka Ballroom, which operated as a dance music club in the 1980s and 1990s, though throughout the 1990s it often hosted concerts, specifically punk and ska lineups. And even before that the building was known as the Jernee Mill Inn, a local bar with a banquet hall that sometimes had bands and was used for rehearsal by John Bongiovi and the Wild Ones and Richie Sambora's band. The building is believed to be the place where hometown stars Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora (lead singer and guitarist of Bon Jovi) met in the early 1980s.HistoryIn its first year of operation, over 150,000 tickets were sold to Starland events, enough to make the venue as one of the 10 largest concert nightclubs in the world, according to Pollstar magazine. In its second year of operation, Starland sold over 205,000 tickets, qualifying it as the fourth-best ticket-selling concert nightclub in the world, according to Pollstar magazine. Within five years, Starland sold close to three-quarters of a million tickets, while constantly ranking as one of the best-selling concert nightclubs in the United States and beyond. Celebrities and musicians alike have been spotted at Starland, including New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, Cameron Diaz, Howard Stern Show star Artie Lang, comedians Jim Florentine and Bob Levy, Hilary Duff, baseball star Mike Piazza, Peter Fonda and others.
