And so began Roller World. It was billed as the biggest skate floor in the state by the owners but I found out later that they made that up just like so many other tall tales. Guptill's Arena up near Albany was bigger by far but they ran with the story anyway.
The early weeks and month of the monster were a blur. It seemed like I was either skateguarding, DJing, handing out rentals or chasing a vacuum cleaner in my sleep. Sessions were relentless as the owners tried to get as many bodies in the door as they could to recoup the construction cost and presumably keep the loan sharks from breaking their knees. Friday ran from an Afterschool Skate into the night session which was usually 7pm till 1 in the morning. Saturday was all day starting as early as 9 for a while for a couple of matinees and then another marathon night session till 1am again. Between sessions and after it was all over, the crew had to clean the joint. We learned to vacuum with skates on to make it faster over about an acre of carpet. The bathrooms were sometimes epic events even with concrete floors and block walls. Even the farm animals of my youth couldn't have done the damage that sometimes was done in those stalls.
Hit or miss, the doors opened again and the crowds came. In the early days, the place was busy. I think the only day we were actually closed was Monday. Tuesday was for private parties, Wednesday and Thursday had oldies/adult night and a session with recorded organ music for the traditionalist dance and figures group. We never had a live organist that I recall although there was an organ on the stage. It was all on 45s that I gritted my teeth and played for the dancers. Then it was off and running for another weekend.
Usually we'd clean after the night session till about two or three in the morning then load up and go down the hill to Sambo's Restaurant (how non-PC is that name these days?). They had all-you could eat fried shrimp or gigantic breakfast specials that got destroyed by tables full of starving rink rats.
Sometimes we'd skip that and go street-skating all over town until nearly daybreak. Somebody would drive a pack of us up to the Cornell campus and we'd work our way downhill into Ithaca from there. We knew where we could ride on walls, down stairs, through alleys and blast down deserted pedestrian paths. 'Libe' slope was a favorite although it's paths were narrow and zig-zagging to scrub off speed was tough. I think we tried State St. a couple times but most of it was still bricks then so even gumball wheels couldn't take it. More often it was a tucked-in screamer down Buffalo Street hill or University Ave. past the city cemetery. I distinctly recall doing it in a wet snow that rooster-tailed off the back wheels of whoever was in front of me. Timing the traffic lights was everything. On better nights, we'd often we'd end up in the spiral parking garages downtown terrorizing the drunks staggering out of the Aurora St. bars and dodging IPD.
But mostly we skated on the big floor on Triphammer Road. I basically lived there. At some point, somebody figured out that we skated roughly 60 miles a day on the weekends. I went through wheels at a frightening rate.
Somewhere along the line, I upped my game by trading my faithful Sure-Grip Century skates for a pair of Douglas-Snyder Imperials. I saved up for months to get the plates, Riedell 120 boots, Fafnir bearings, nylon cushions and Gyro wheels. The whole rig was over 800 bucks back then and cost more than the car I was driving. I built them myself in the shop and they've been my faithful companions ever since. They've never seen a toe-stop, just dance plugs under the nose. I never tied them past the eyelets either and the tongues are permanently bent from being pinned down under the laces. The iridescent lightning bolt stickers were my trademark so I made a new set for the heels the first day. I can't for the life of me remember where the idea for dog collar chains on the back came from though...something I saw someplace I'm sure but it's long gone.
The lightning bolts and dog chains are still there all these years later even though the original wheels and bearings long since wore out. I have no idea how many sets I burned up but there's a pretty sizeable pile of used ones in my garage.
These days the wheels are Roll Line Ice artistic since Gyro went out of business and RollerBones built the newest set of bearing but the plates and boots are still going.
But back to RollerWorld...over time, the money must have gotten better because suddenly we were installing a suspended ceiling, more lighting and more sound system. By 'we' I mean the almost free, unskilled labor that sold tickets and swamped restrooms. Nobody had any idea what they were doing but an always changing crew spent days stringing wires and ceiling grid from teetering man-lifts and wire-nutting lighting bars to extension cords. It was all deemed 'temporary' so somehow the code enforcement guys never made us tear it all down.
The craziness of endless sessions went on through construction wreckage but at least the drop-ceiling made the indoor rainstorms stop. Somehow, it all worked.
For a time, no matter what...the place was jammed. We held a skating contest that brought skaters from what seemed like everywhere. There was a few live band nights. One private party brought in over 800 people on a Tuesday. I rode my Sportster around the floor towing 20 or 30 kids a couple of times...as did the owner's wife with her MG Midget car. We routinely ran out of rental skates and snack bar food. A Saturday night needed at least four people watching the main floor to keep it even roughly under control. It was absolutely nuts.
Somewhere in there, four of us formed a skate team that travelled all over the place basically just showing off. We practiced in the off hours late nights and early mornings. We actually got pretty good at our routine after a while but it seemed like my skates never came off my feet.
It was certainly not how the farm kid wobbling around Skate City even remotely pictured it turning out. But almost inevitably, it started showing some cracks. The good years seemed to get a little shady as time went on. The owners had a growing reputation as a really seedy bunch. Things that we hadn't noticed before...
The end was coming but we never saw it till it was too late.
