Once upon a time many years ago, around ten o'clock at night, when I was about to leave an evening of folk dancing and go home, I happened to catch a radio program of organ music. It was the old WGMS station in Washington, DC, which disappeared from the air waves about ten years ago. After a piece of music, the DJ said it was so-and-so playing such-and-such on the Wurlitzer (the Mighty Wurlitzer) at the Alexandria Roller Rink, which by the way, is also history.
I don't know that there's still a roller rink anywhere around here. They may have gone the way of drive-in movies in an urban/suburban setting like Northern Virginia. They may not be the cultural icons that bowling alleys are but somehow they seem to capture something of the 1950s the same as drive-in restaurants, meaning the kind with carhops and the little trays that hook onto the window in your car.
Anyone still go roller skating or live near one? I've never been roller skating myself. There are, on the other hand, a few ice skating rinks around here, which for some reason, don't make me think of the same things. I imagine little girls with Olympic aspirations. But a roller rink makes me think of teenagers out to have fun before going by the drive-in on the way home. It's definitely a young person's thing.
I don't know that there's still a roller rink anywhere around here. They may have gone the way of drive-in movies in an urban/suburban setting like Northern Virginia. They may not be the cultural icons that bowling alleys are but somehow they seem to capture something of the 1950s the same as drive-in restaurants, meaning the kind with carhops and the little trays that hook onto the window in your car.
Anyone still go roller skating or live near one? I've never been roller skating myself. There are, on the other hand, a few ice skating rinks around here, which for some reason, don't make me think of the same things. I imagine little girls with Olympic aspirations. But a roller rink makes me think of teenagers out to have fun before going by the drive-in on the way home. It's definitely a young person's thing.