Summer Skates at Vintage Rinks

In 1985 it cost $3.25 for an afternoon of roller skating bliss 🛼

Photo by Jessica Christian on Unsplash

By Elizabeth Poland Shugg

It’s a summer Saturday afternoon in 1985. My sister, cousin, and I have 1–4 p.m. cleared for a session at Skate Inn in Athens, Georgia. We’ve been waiting all week for this.

Cold air gushes through the ticket window as we step up to pay for admission: $3.25 for three hours of roller skating bliss—nearly a month’s allowance for my sister and me, but worth every penny. We enter the large rectangular building and feast our eyes on its sparkly, 15,000-square-foot concrete rink.

“You Dropped the Bomb on Me” by The Gap Band welcomes us into the rink’s cathartic atmosphere. Multicolored disco ball reflections flicker across the smooth floor. Laughter and joy await as we lace up our skates.

Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” fires up just as we roll out.

Photo by Regina Valetova on Unsplash

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Summer Giveaway

Before we continue our look back at the glory days of roller skating, check out our second summer giveaway. If you like barbecue, be sure to enter the giveaway for a chance to win tickets to the Pinehurst Barbecue Festival August 30-September 1.

Congratulations to our High on the Hog dinner ticket winner, Pam Wilson!

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Weekly Poll

Last Week’s Poll Results

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Trivia

What Billboard ’80s hit is considered the No. 1 roller skating rink song?

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Roller Skating: A History

Belgian inventor John Joseph Merlin developed the first roller skate prototype in the mid 1760s, but the inventor with the most United States skate patents was James Leonard Plimpton, who made a series of improvements to the design during the 1860s and also founded the New York Roller Skating Association (NYRSA). 

In 1866, the NYRSA leased the Atlantic House Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island—which had served temporarily as home to the United States Naval Academy during the Civil War—and converted its dining room into a rink to introduce roller skating to the area. Rinks started popping up across the U.S. during the 1870s. 

An 1880 wood engraving of a skating rink in Washington, D.C., courtesy of the Library of Congress

The years between 1937 and 1959 are known as the “golden age of roller skating.”