My kids like to roller skate and even play roller hockey. Yet sadly it seems, roller skating rinks are becoming increasingly rare. This is sad because they tended to give the youth an affordable and safe outlet to go out and have fun on weekend nights.
Here is a link to a rink closing in LA. Leaving the whole area with just one left.
Now at the same time I’m seeing more ice rinks opening up. These have the revenue sources of not just roller skaters but also hockey teams and figure skaters.
So I’d like to ask, in your area are there still roller skating rinks?
Non-Americans, do you have roller skating rinks?
Finally do you personally or know people who go there?
I think there are a couple left in Sydney. Someone at work mentioned that his son had recently gone to a birthday party at a roller skating rink. There were more of them when I was a child. The one in the next suburb was an occasional ‘treat’ during the school holidays.
The internet tells me there are about 20 rinks in greater Miami. About half are roller, half are ice. Some complexes have both. In St. Louis where I used to live the story was similar.
I agree with the OP’s contention that the net trend is away from roller and towards ice. But at the present rate it’ll be decades before the last roller rink closes. And odds are the present trend won’t last that long; present trends in anything never do.
My local roller rink, in the UK, closed down about 15 years ago due to the owners selling alcohol without a license. There were plans to re-open it but they have come to nothing. There are still road signs up directing people to it
There are a few left around in the Chicago area. Here’s a 2012 guide to them. The ones in the Chicago area are mostly on the South Side and south suburbs, which are predominantly black and the skating culture is much stronger in the African-American community.
Columbia, MO, a city of about 100K people (excluding surrounding areas), has just oneas far as I know. That website takes you right back to 1998, doesn’t it?
I have not been there, but now that you mention it, it might be fun to go there with my son. He got skates for Christmas…
When I first moved to Chillicothe, Oh in 2000, there were two roller rinks. One was bought by a local contractor and turned into a private showroom for his vintage car collection. Cavalier Skaing Rink remains open for business.
There’s one less than 2 miles from my house (in the same building that housed my – now sadly defunct – racquetball club). It’s been open a long time, and still popular. MillCal used to go there with her friends.
There’s one close to me in Belleville Illinois. I’ve been there a couple of times over the decades, but it’s not my type of fun. The place is busy though.
Drive by one on the highway almost every day. It’s like a lot of stuff here: you can see it, but getting to it by finding the right exit and then the right combination of turns to get back to the edge of the highway is tricky.
It’s called “Ron-a-Roll,” gawdelpme. I assume someone named Ron is involved.