Just got back from the roller rink with one of my kids and wanted to say how nice they are. I used to go to them once or twice a year when I was in elementary school, but didn’t go to them anymore until my oldest started going because her school started having the occasional night at the roller rink. It’s just a blast skating around on a nice surface while music and lights are blasting away. I’m not the most amazing skater and always have to use roller blades because I’m far more comfortable in those, but it’s still fun. The wild thing is that the one I go to with my kids is the one that I went to as a child and still looks how I remembered it, but still being maintained and all that.
My understanding is that they’ve slowly been closing over the last few decades and aren’t really a thing outside of North America but if you do have one near you, consider visiting. Somehow I live somewhere that has three of them within a 15 minute drive of me, which is nice. I’d love to visit more in the Detroit area sometime. I got to do an outdoor one a couple years ago but that’s it.
If I did have a complaint about my local one, it’s that it’s just top 40 music. Although the DJ was different this time and better so hmmmm, maybe that is getting better. I’m assuming that the music is also better on adult-only nights.
If you would like to know more about roller rinks and African-American roller skating culture, I highly recommend the documentary United Skates.
Glad you still got one, we had one around my area on the Eastside called Skate King that unfortunately closed back in 2015 and is now a Harley-Davidson. Loved that place, i recall it even had a DDR machine.
Here’s some archival footage from KOMO news right before they closed up shop: https://komonews.com/news/local/bellevues-skate-king-rolls-off-into-the-sunset-prepares-to-close
Heck yeah. When we were kids they built a new one not far from us, but then it struggled to have enough business, so our homeschool group was able to negotiate a cheap weekly session early on Wednesday afternoons when most people were in school. Which was great because it was largely the same group of people and they got to trust us and were more tolerant on the rules because they knew we weren’t going to cause problems too much. So we went skating two hours a week for *years*.
That’s great
I just checked to see if the one I went to as a kid still existed. Nope, no mention of it on the website. My sister and I used to go weekly. Mom would send us off with a couple of bucks each and there’d be skating and afterward they’d show an old movie downstairs.
I loved all that.
Heck yes, I would have loved doing that as a kid