Bygone Rinks of Yesterday ...

[Isk8NYC]

Per member request - share your memories of rinks now gone, but not forgotten.

[Isk8NYC]

I'll kick it off with lunchtime skating at Sky Rink, when it was really in the sky!  I used to take a long lunch and skate the mid-day freestyle when the rink was in the Lerner Building (16th floor) in midtown Manhattan.  I had a friend who worked for Lerner's and I worked for J.C. Penney, so it was fun to go visit now and then.  The view was nice and the rink/locker rooms were very small, but nothing fancy.  I bought my first pair of Riedells from Corona & Liebenow when they ran the pro shop.

[Adultsk8r509]

I grew up in the Bay Area and did my childhood skating at Raydine's Ice Rink in Corte Madera.  I took the bus from Terra Linda to get there.  Not sure of the open/close dates, but I skated there from 1968-70.  In the summer I skated early morning patch and freestyle.   Tony Howard was my coach.  I think he is still registered as a coach.  He must be in his late 70's.  (I'm in my 50's).

Nearby in San Francisco we had Leggs Ice Rink.  Someone correct me .. was this rink nearly square?


Diane

www.waltzjump.com

[hopskipjump]

My very first time ice skating was in Oakland, CA at Southland Mall in the late 70's.  A nice young man saw me shuffling and holding the wall and took me around the rink a couple of times.  It felt like flying.  I only skated there once but every time we went to the mall I looked forward to the birds in the main part of the mall and the big windows into the ice rink.

[Bunny Hop]

When I did learn to skate classes as a teenager, I skated at Prince Alfred Park Ice Rink in Sydney, near Central Station. The rink itself was partly under a tent-like structure, and there was a swimming pool next door (the pool is still there). It was a pretty rubbish rink, admittedly, but it was cheap and was next to a major train station. One day we arrived for our class and found the rink was closed. At first this was only meant to be temporary whilst the managers found some money, but it never re-opened (and I never got to take my 'Jump 2' and 'Ballet 2' Aussie Skate tests, which should have taken place the week after the closure!).

And thus my teenage skating career ended, as neither of the other metropolitan rinks were easily accessible by public transport from where I lived (for those who know Sydney - there was no train station at Macquarie Centre/Uni at that time, I was on the wrong train line for Canterbury, and although there was a bus to Campsie there was no way on earth my mother would let me walk around that area on my own). Narabeen and Blacktown rinks were too far away, and there were no others.

Despite it not being a great rink, given how much I struggle now to even regain the skills I once had, I really wish it had stayed open!

[AgnesNitt]

Fort Worth Ice.

The place was a dump and had serious water issues, but it was 10 minutes from my mother's house. When she was out of the hospital and slept all day I did publics, knowing I could be home in minutes if she called. (If I stayed in the house she couldn't sleep. She'd stay awake trying to entertain me.)

[icedancer]

I learned to skate at the Detroit Skating Club back in the day (60s) before they moved into their beautiful facility north of the city - the rink was ANCIENT and had been a riding stable before it was a skating rink.  The rink was placed where the riding arena had been - the corridors were the long shed-rows where the horses lived - of course it was all remodeled into a giant "locker room" off the rink but when we were kids we used to sneak back through the closed doors at the ends of the locker room to find the old horse stables where we would find stalls with bits of ancient straw and old leather straps and things that had been left behind.

I loved the place as a kid - there were lots of little nooks and crannies to explore, corridors to run through, etc.  The rink was small - not even NHL-size I don't think but the club was totally active and had hockey running all night -

I'm sure it was a total dump and a fire-trap.  I saw that it had burned down maybe in 1978 and in doing a google-search of the area I see that there is still nothing built on that site - it was in a terrible part of the city... very sad really.

Oh well, I had fun there and learned to love skating!!

[rosereedy]

Alpine Ice Arena in Birmingham, AL.  I learned to skate there, made many memories.  It closed and we were all very sad.  It became an indoor volleyball facility.  I will always remember those days!