By JAMES MICHAELS
A local gay tradition that predates the Stonewall Revolution will come to an abrupt and unexpected end on Tuesday, August 9, for the last Tuesday Gay Skate night at the Gold Coast Roller Rink on South Federal Highway near the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. The rink itself will close on August 14 and shortly after that, the building will be demolished.
The rink was originally opened in 1947. Back then, boys had to wear jackets and girls had to wear dresses in order to skate.
Admission at that time was 25-cents, skate rentals were 10-cents and a hot dog would cost a nickel. Everybody was welcome to the rink; even African-Americans skated right next to their white brothers and sisters during the turbulent civil rights era of the ‘60s, which was rare in the United States, especially in the deep-south. The Gold Coast Roller Rink is one of the oldest surviving businesses in Broward County.
In 1968, the owner decided to start holding a Tuesday Gay Skate night. The Tuesday night party was kept mostly secret. Friends would tell friends by handing out hand drawn photocopied flyers. Admission was by invitation only and you had to be known by somebody who already attended the Tuesday get-togethers – it was considered a safe place to come and meet people. Management didn’t want just anybody walking in, so there was a sign on the door announcing that the rink was closed for a private party.
When the rink was sold in the late 1990s, it was sold with the understanding that the new owners would keep the Gay Skate tradition going.
Ryan Conley, a promoter and volunteer who started as a deejay at the Tuesday Gay Skate in 1998 was only given a week-and-a-half notice of the closing of the rink. Conley explained that Gay Skate generally now attracts between 10 to 15 skaters on a typical Tuesday; however, depending on the time of year, the promotion and the deejay playing that night, attendance could be as high as 100.
“We used to get 300 to 400 people on a Tuesday night,” said Conley, “but that was pre-Gay.com, Adam4Adam and Manhunt days. Now, there’s not that much of a need to go out and meet face-to-face when you can click, chat, drive and well – you can use your imagination.”
Several years ago, a cross-promotion called “Intoxiskate” was combined with the Tuesday Gay Skate. The Tuesday party, created by a private promoter, was for the gay-friendly community who would not necessarily want to attend a “gay night” but would attend an alternative lifestyle gay-friendly night.
Conley said that the Gold Coast Roller Rink was only closed on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve or when a hurricane threatened the area. However, Gold Coast was closed for a few weeks for remodeling years ago when the new owners took over the property.
Also affected by the closing of the Gold Coast Roller Rink are the 75 members of the Gold Coast Derby Grrls roller derby team, whose home rink is the Gold Coast.
“None,” exclaimed Rich DeRosa, one of the coaches for the Gold Coast Derby Grrls when asked how much advanced notice the team had concerning the closing of the skating rink. “There is a very, very good chance that we will go to the regional playoffs. It has never been done so fast before. We are the first team to become an official team and six months later make the international playoffs. And in the week of finding out we are in the running, we also find out we are losing the skating rink, so it’s been bedlam for the last week and a half.”
“Carnivorous Licks,” a team member of the Gold Coast Derby Grrls and their public relations director, said that the team first found out about the closing of the roller rink from a posting on Facebook.
“Then we were given a notice of evacuation that we have to be out by August 13th,” said Licks. “And we’re going to go skate at Holiday Park or places like that and do the best we can to find maybe a warehouse to skate at. The sad part is our entire history has been there and we don’t have that now.” The team will also be skating at the War Memorial Auditorium and up in West Palm Beach.
Licks said that they’ve participated in Intoxiskate and Gay Skate and that it will be strange that those won’t be around anymore since they, along with the Gold Coast Skating Rink, were such a huge part of the LGBT community.
“Even though this is a tough time for us,” said Licks. “We’ve been through worse. So we’ll just have to tough it out and if, we have to travel an hour to skate, we’ll travel an hour to skate. If we have to skate outside, we’ll skate outside. We’ll just have to work a little harder to achieve what we want. Even though there’s a few bumps in the road right now, we have a lot of huge things ahead for us. We’ll be fine.”