Roller skating was dangerous. Kids would try "crack-the-whip" if the monitors weren't watching. Guess they thought it was roller derby time!

time to stop and hit into a door that was unlocked. Went flying out the door into the gravel. Never played that again. I still Roller skated with my girlfriend or on the sidewalk in the city. I never Ice skated as there was no place available to skate.

My buddy and I were always looking for cool places to skate. We got chased out of many an empty swimming pool.

We were in Texas, but idolized the Santa Monica skaters depicted in the great documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys.

giant one.

Remember the key you used to tighten the skates around your shoes (circa '50's)? About 30 years ago I rollerbladed out and back on an 18-mile greenway paved trail. Took a little over 4 hours. Ah....the days of having energy...

But ice skating was my thing as a kid. Indoor rink or frozen outdoor pond or even the parking lot they flooded in winter (Ohio) for us to skate on.

the boot roller skates to be used indoors only. Two types of wheels.

Bobby Hull was my idol.

My idol was Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe

the Igloo ---Mellon Arena. Thank you Cartoonist. I remember as a kid watching Bobby Hull play for Chicago.

so I was both ice & roller skating.

In Alaska (we lived in Ft. Richardson Army Base, now Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson), the Army had dug out a shallow oval area at the end of every other street of housing and installed a large flood light. When it got cold enough, the base Fire Dept would come by and fill the oval with water and when it froze over we had an ice rink....right at the end of the block. Free ice skating!

I Colorado Springs, we lived in the city. No free ice skating, but there was a roller rink within walking distance, so I hung up my ice skates and started roller skating.

Been many years since I've done either....I think I would be better at roller skating now, I'd be afraid of breaking an ankle ice skating.

Thanks for bringing back the childhood memories!

rink. Too far to walk and none of our parents would take us. My friends made skate boards out of rollering skating wheels attached to a board. I was too afraid to try.

Multiple times per week... Still skating (62) at adult nights once every couple months.

This was when I was in high school. I don't remember how long we skated for, but it was a LONG time.

Same problem skiing, couldn't stop. So I'm none of the above. And that's ok. 😁

graceful people on the planet 😂

Learned to ice skate before I learned to roller skate.
Took figure skating lessons at around 7 years old. Maybe 3 years of lessons.
I liked roller skating too, but I missed the ability to stop suddenly & throw the shavings!
When my wife & I were still dating, we went roller skating a few times because she dug it a lot. There was a rink in the town where we lived prior to marriage that did a 21 & over night, so we were skating around tykes
Also, when we moved to the town where we settled, there was roller rink in the town 6 or 8 miles west. There was a good Italian place nearby, so we'd skate, then eat, then go home.

Every Sunday afternoon at the roller rink. No ice skating rink in my rural area. We had a large farm pond nearby; however, after a child went skating alone on the pond, broke through the ice and drown, no one in our community was allowed to ice skate.

walk to it. The school skating parties were held a little distance away, Buses from the school were used. It was a happy time for me once a month to go there with my friends. all through grade school. 1 to 8. I miss those times.

Life-long (and long life) dedicated roller skater here. So much so that all the profits from my first entrepreneurial venture (at age 9 when I’d mow yards for 25 cents a pop) was spent entirely on rollerskating.

All I knew was that I wanted to skate. The way I figured it, when  there are eight wheels under your feet clickety-clacking across maple boards in the neighborhood rink, and a 6-mph breeze waifs across your face, creating quiet time to dream and solve life's mysteries, well, that's reason enough to break your developing back mowing other people’s lawns.

As a high schooler, I did dance and freestyle with my partner who’d throw me into air.

I moved up to competitive artistic dance and figures after turning 53, where I learned that across the country there are over 60,000 people age 50+ who roller skate regularly. (I hear you loud and clear, RustyWheels!)

Many older skaters compete regionally, nationally, and internationally, with all the fancy moves of Olympic ice skating. (Thing is, with politics being what it is — sound familiar? — although roller skating is more difficult than ice skating, ice skating leadership has been dead-set against allowing any type of artistic roller skating into the Olympics. Which is one of the reasons that Tara Lipinski switched from roller skating to ice when she was six years old. After three years with one of the best RS coaches in history — who was also my coach [but I’m not biased] — once Tara learned to control a bunch of slippery wheels, it was a piece of cake for her to control two easy-peasy blades.

So, with my newly-learned knowledge of all those older folks who roller skate, I founded a nonprofit group called the Golden Rollers of America Network (GRAN) complete with a national skate camp and monthly newsletter to put forgotten roller skating friends back in touch. And Wow! even skaters who’d lost track of each other for decades reunited. Very gratifying.

After that, I became certified RS coach and branched off to start the Free Wheelers Skate Club for at-risk kids to keep them off the streets. My still fave fun show-off trick is hula-hooping on skates!

If you’re still with me as I wander down memory lane, I want to thank you, debm55, for triggering my tiresome rambling.

Love all your forum posts!!

roller skate again. And all the work you have done for the Golden Rollers, You are loved. Debbie.

I ice skated on an actual pond in North NJ near my cousins as a kid! Also ice skated on a few occasions at Rockefeller
Center's ice rink (I'm an NYC'r) as a teen. Basically stayed near the outer fence.
Unfortunately, I had weakish ankles on the blades. Extra thick socks. The tightest I could lace up the laces to stabilize my ankles. I think it mostly due to high arches thus outward pronation.
Very frustrating!

I had no problems with regular skates as kid, tween! My dad, or uncle drove us cousins to a nice long concrete walkway by the Hudson River maybe in the 80s (street-wise location).
My only problem was I never learned that special little turn you did to stop. I either had to run out of steam, or coast into the wooden benches (no injuries).
It was still a lot of fun!

stop.The other way was with the cross foot. I think it was called. untll I learned them I would bang in to the wall, went flying out an unlocked door. or slam into the wall. Otherwise I thought it was fun. went to my school skating parties every month.

Sounds like you'd get bruises off and on.

No I never had toe stoppers.
Just now hrough the magic of You Tube I saw the plow, the spread eagle, and a transition.
The spread eagle is what I always saw.
.

He bolted it as it could be opened from both sides and I continued to skate. Hey. I paid a buck for that ticket from my bottle money and I was going to skate.

you electric_blue68

if I could have kept my balance on them, but I couldn't I know I was (still am) myopic and astigmatic, which may have contributed, but I expect the inner ear was at least as great a culprit.

The boys played hockey and the girls did figure skating. I would get new skates for Christmas every year until my feet stopped growing. I was never especially good at it, but I could skate backwards. I did do some roller skating as well when I was pretty small, using those old-style skates that you fastened to your shoes with a key. But I much preferred ice skating.

parents wanted to dry the distance to get there. At that time men worked all week and couldn't be bothered with their kids on week ends. It was their time to relax.

There was usually a lot more room, though the ice was often rougher than on a rink, but there were no walls to collide with. And it was much more fun to be outside. We also played broomball on the lakes - you wore boots instead of skates, and you'd whack a soccer ball or a basketball around with a broom and try to score goals, sort of like in hockey, though our rules were more like in Calvinball.

So skating is just a normal winter activity for kids here.

linoleum, especially when it was just waxed. Mock ice skating.

She thought the same thing about tennis!

Dad thought law school would be 'fun!' Took 'a few years' for Dad's wish to be 'realized!'

worked all day and is to tired to take you to this ,that or the other place. With my friends, and their parents I found my way. (also collecting glass soda bottles) so I had money of my own.

Haven't done either in decades. I ice skated with my kids one time at an indoor ice rink (it doesn't freeze here..LOL)
Roller skating is more prone to falls. I've got a bad back and bad feet, so pretty much anything skates is well in my past.

I used to roller skate almost every Friday night for a few years.

Wore heavy socks, and laced tight. As soon as I stepped on the ice I fell . Had to crawl back to the gate. thinking back I think you have to learn when you are really young. Also I had weak ankles--still do.

As I mentioned in my post I had weak ankles, and had to super tight lace, and wear extra socks for ice skating!

You might try to find on line some Tai Chi instructions. I took an 8+ week class in my early 30's, which I practiced for 5 yrs w a then 2 yr diminish and stopping, then learned another form 10+ yrs later (another 5 yrs steady practice 2 yrs diminsh to nothing).
Now I do a little again, need to do more.

From first round I noticed within a few months of steady practice my ankles got stronger! I was amazed. And they've stayed that way.

I liked ice skating, better. We had to skate on the sidewalks, but they were old and broken up in quite a few places, with tree roots showing. The ice skating was better as we had a large yard and my father built a skating rink for us in the winter.

And we had freezing weather for a few weeks every winter. So everyone would go to Ellis Pond (that is the name of the pond) every afternoon as soon as the ice was thick enough to skate on. Someone would usually build a fire and we kids and a few adults would skate until dark. As I look back on it, it was just like in old paintings of days gone by.

We would skate every day until the ice got too thin and started cracking under the weight of several kids playing hockey. BTW, brooms make good hockey sticks. Only one kid had a real hockey stick.

I had not thought of this in decades. Thanks Deb55 for reminding me of those good times.

Relied on the ponds to freeze and it was awesome. You could skate through so many locations. When you did reach a dead end, walk over to the next little frozen water tributary. Happens no more in Southern Maine.

except for the river and no one skated on that. With roller skating you could skate on any sidewalk or side street. Heck , we even did our version of Roller Derby . Good times.

I still skate. I’m in my fifties.

We had a roller rink in town, and the ice rink was a section of the river that froze over every couple of years. There would be a big warming fire on shore and a lot of us skating in circles around this back water pond just off the main flow of the river. My dad had hockey skates, and I had figure skates. He could share circles around me, but I loved everything about ice skating and figure skates.

Then a live band would set up and we would dance the night away.

I never got the chance to try ice skating (I lived in southern New Mexico) and I was completely terrible at roller skating.

We used to go the rink almost every week. My mother was a big roller skater so we were led into it fairly early. Then, there was the skateboarding, which was very big at the time. We had this small patch of pavement that had been paired by my house so we skated there all the time. The road was a circle, so it was hardly traveled at all.

Being from the south, ice skating was alien to us. Mainly because ice was seldom thick enough to skate on. Heh.

Father said it was too far(5 miles)

I did a lot more ice skating.
Besides, at that time the roller skates the kids had were those ridiculous metal skates that clamped onto your shoes. The small metal wheels didn't roll well, and they had a habit of coming loose from your shoes.
As kids got more used to wearing sneakers, it was nearly impossible to get those skates to stay on.

Unfortunately, I got older and my lower back will not let me partake in my previous enjoyable youth fun.


*insert pouty face here*



Also: During my teenage years, I was a skateboarder as well. It didn't go well with some of the guys and some of them called me a "poser". I could ride a skateboard and I skated many figure 8's and streets in my teens. I just couldn't do tricks.

it, PS no helmet, knee or elbow pads. My group liked to play roller derby.

I loved to sit, and watch them!

Sometime we need to stop and enjoy the happenings around us.

I roller skated as a kid, tween. Bycicled as a kid, up into my twenties on relatives, or rented bikes. Climbed plenty of monkey bars, too.

So I enjoyed some sports, motion, a bit of climbing.

Skate board parks have motion, interesting ways of using the boards etc. Fun to watch!

There were no paved roads initially, and even when they were, the asphalt was too rough for roller skates. I grew up on the shore of a small lake in northern Virginia, and it used to freeze over for a couple of weeks where we could skate across it in the winter. I don’t think that has happened in the last thirty years.

Once you fall through the ice on a lake that big, you're done before you ever find the surface again.

Our area was very hilly, so there were no even surfaces to roller skate on. It was out of the question for us.

Broke my arm roller skating

I don't think I knew anything about a helmet back in the 50's. Based on current norms, I should have died at least 100 times

We had both a good sized pond in the county park that froze over in winter and a roller rink within three miles.
Walking distance for both.

Although I broke my wrist when I was 8, I hit a patch of ice that didn't freeze smoothly on Lake Charlevoix. My dad almost caught me going down, but I was just out of reach. I didn't have to do dishes for 8 weeks so there's that, lol.

My mom tried to get me to roller skate, but I just couldn't do it. I kept tripping on those bumper-stop things in front. But I did love ice skating.

body slide. Luckily the ice ring was surrounded by a fence . I crawled over to the fence and left. Never to ice skate again.

We took group ice skating lessons for years, would be at the rink on some Saturdays from 8:30 to 5:30. I loved every second of it.

Later we rolled skated a couple of times a month at a local roller rink but I never liked it much. It seemed like groups of girls and boys flirting with each other. Ice skating was much more fun, bigger rink, better exercise.

This is a box my skates came in from probably the late 1950s. The skates are long gone but I use the box to keep old photo negatives in.

you hit one tiny pebble with those metal wheels sending you to your soon to be bloody knees. LOL

Big flat curves of metal.

at the two local rinks

When I was a kid, the Monroeville Mall in the Pittsburgh suburbs had an ice-skating rink. I could skate well enough to stay upright. And, we had a roller rink too at our local bowling alley. Both are gone now, sadly.

Pond hockey.