One Last Time!

After 39 years under the same management team the historic Roller Palace which has held it's place on Sohier rd held it's final skate for a final time. This past Tuesday night skaters from all over filled the parking lot and the rink to help celebrate memories and good times. The Roller Palace which has numerous times announced it closure confirmed this time would be it. Saying the final sale process on the property for it to be turned into public storage units is almost complete. Many developers over the years have looked in the land including this past winter where they wanted to turn it into a rehab center. However after consideration and some complaints from locals the state decided to pull it's funding from that project.

Many locals will remember spending many of rainy days and Friday nights here at the rink as skating was in it's prime back in the 80's but those will only bememories. Speaking to many of the skaters at the final skate last night they all repeated the same thing. "We're going to miss this place" & "It's sad to see it go but there are other places for us to skate but this one was one of the best". Although the rink will be no more at least Tuesday night gave everyone a chance to finally know that this would be it.

Personally growing up in Salem myself and going to summer camps in the area I can always remember going out to the Roller Palace on rainy days and spending hours going around the rink until I felt my feet were going to fall off. Skating around the rink last night to me brought back those memories and it made me feel very sad that my 6 month old son won't have a place to go this when he get's older. I am learning that as we move more and more into the this generation of screen's and video games kids don't have many places to go unwind and actually be kids. I really hope however that we can ensure that other rinks and places like this won't fade and the community can support local business.

If you would like to enjoy one final skate around the rink I was able to capture that in a video that can be seen by clicking here!

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