Skating is Fun? - Part 3

October 1996 - Skating is Fun

It was not until 1996,  that the wifey and I made the decision that the children needed to learn to skate in a real rink. The kids were young enough to run around and have a limitless amount of energy to burn (between eight and twelve years old) but not too old that they didn't want to be seen with their parents. Parents, I might add, who were acting just as crazy as the kids and enjoying every minute of it.  

Luckily for me, the skates that the family all wore had four wheels, unlike the first skates invented in France during the beginning  of the eighteenth century  by M. Petitbled. I've never tried in-line skates before but the similarity to ice skates make me feel uncomfortable just looking at them. Since these type of skates hurt my ankles, I will stick to my quad-skates no matter what the style or how fashionable they look. 

By 1876, Williams Brown and Joseph Henry patented what continues to be known as the adjustable four-wheel skates that I roll and love.

Fast forward to 1996. The place was called Skate Key and it used to be located on 2424 White Plains Road, near Allerton Avenue in the Bronx. The Saturday 9:30 am - 12 Noon crowd was filled with a mixture of excited children and their patient parents. The hardcore skaters usually didn't arrive until the evenings. I guess it was too early in the morning for them to show off their unique moves. Even without the experts rushing by, it was hard for the less experienced crowd not to move to the beat of Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" , "KC & The Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight" , Vaughn Mason & Crew's "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll" or the ever-famous "Rock With You" by Michael Jackson.

The big kid in me quickly got  tired of rental skates and made certain that we all purchased a pair of our own skates. After many Saturdays and much practice, I finally approached something that looked like speed skating. I found that skating in a crowd was similar to driving a car. Right after I weaved between others, I would check to my left or right. I learned to check my blind spots the hard way after the number of times that I smashed into others. The ego tells you that you're the fastest until you make that unchecked swift move and find that someone else is already where you wanted to be and then POW, you both fall to the floor. 

At times, the DJ asked that everyone clear the floor so that only certain people got a chance to show their stuff (boys only, girls only and even fast skaters). It felt great sprinting around the rink and not worrying about the kids. Much to my own amazement, I even learned to skate backwards, which of course tickled my ego to no end.  

Unfortunately, the Saturday morning fun ended as the kids got older and we all got different interests. It was time to hang up the old balled-bearing  platforms. 

Within a year or two the Skate Key Rink then moved to 138th Street in the South Bronx and became known for skating fun and fights. That particular outlet also closed March 2006 because of these same woes. 

 

It's sad to see what the old Skate Key building has become on White Plains Road. It  looks like a cut-rate clothing store has opened in its place. 

Regardless, I'll always remember the the family fun and the pounding beat of the music.



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Skating Is Fun? - Part 2

November 1975 - Roller Rink Black and Blues

I first went to a real roller rink with an old girlfriend, when I was about 20 years old, in 1975. The place used to be called the Empire Roller Skating Center, located in Crown Heights Brooklyn. It's been closed since 2007 which is really a shame with it's long, rich history. Some say that this place was where disco roller skating was born. Inventive speed skating and hard driving moves such as the Brooklyn Bounce was the theme of this place in the seventies.

As we walked in, Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby" was moving everyone along the floor. The 20,000-watt sound system seemed to be driving the skaters to prove that one was better than the other. There were flickering strobe lights and the ever invigorating rush of cool breeze as skaters rushed close to us within the barriers of the rink. Excitement was in the air as we walked over to rent our skates but the thrill of anticipation was about to turn to something else.

After lacing up and then stepping onto the rink, we could not help but feel that we were out of our league. Being novice skaters, my friend and I  wondered if we were even in the right place. Watching the aggressive, fast paced maneuvers of the seemingly expert skaters was fascinating to see but intimidating to to be in the middle of. It was Saturday night and what seemed like a good idea back in Manhattan, now was feeling like a mistake.

The place was so crowded that if you about to fall, you couldn't fall. The one or two times that I fell, I was genuinely scared. The thought of getting fingers run over or being knocked down again was a real fear under the circumstances. The amazing thing was that the aggressive skaters were so good at their art, that they easily avoided or even jumped over me. I'm not kidding. I actually had a guy jump over me when I was down. It was thrilling to see but not a position I preferred to be in.

We stayed for about an hour and then called it a night. Next weekend, we returned to the famous Empire Roller Skating Center one more time (mostly because my friend wanted to and against my better judgment). My skating was not much better and overall it was just too crowded to relax and have fun. This was not the place to leisurely relive my youth and re-learn to skate. By the end of the night, I decided to hang my rental skates up for a while.




To be continued ......


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