Decatur, GA: Where not to go if you can’t skate too good

In a moment of craziness, a group of friends and I decided to recapture our childhood by going to Golden Glide Skating Rink Friday night, (2750 Wesley Chapel Rd, Decatur, GA) The rink has an adult skate from 11:30 p.m. – 2:30 a.m. on Fridays (21 & over). And, yes, these were actual adults — folks in their 20s and 30s who probably have kids and/or mortgages. I even saw one dude who had to be in his 50s who managed to outskate everyone in our group.

We got there around midnight, paid our admission, got our skates, put them on, and looked at the rink.

It looked like the set of “Roll Bounce.”

I mean, folks were out there speed-skating, dancing, skating backwards, doing Nancy Kerrigan-esque spins and Bolshevik dances. I swear one guy looked like he was breakdancing on his skates. They had coordinated skate-line dancing routines that you know they practiced before they left the house. It looked like 1979 minus the afros and bellbottoms.

See, the last time I was on skates was about six years ago. They were in-line skates. And I was on a quiet street in a small-town. The last time I had been in an actual rink with other people on a pair of quad skates (four wheels, two axles) was 20 years ago. I knew this going in. What I didn’t count on was that people who had been skating non-stop since they were two would actually be out there. Or, rather, that there would be so. damn. many of them.

The people at this rink take their skating seriously. If you can’t skate verywell, you might just want to go and watch (no seriously, some of the folks were that good). Which is what I finally had sense enough to do after getting slammed into the rink wall.

tag-ology: roller skating, atlanta, decatur, ga