WORDS Tara Crutchfield
PHOTOGRAPH Amy Sexson
Skate World Disco lights refract and shimmy around the room. Overhead, Stevie B belts out the first chorus of “Diamond Girl” as seasoned skaters float around the rink in perfect rhythm with the music and each other. They pass a mother and daughter holding hands while dad clings to the wall to keep from falling flat on his back… again. It’s another Tuesday night at a generational hangout, Skate World. This legendary Lakeland skating rink has hosted some fifty years of birthday parties, first dates, rink rats, and squealing summer campers. Owner Chanel Bellotto works to keep Skate World clean and current so it can play host for a lifetime longer.
Bellotto always told her dad when he was ready to retire that he could sell the rink. She had her own ambitions and had no designs to take it over. After working in Washington, D.C., alongside Congressman Putnam for five years, Bellotto returned to Lakeland to work in event planning and fundraising at Florida Southern College. “When my dad passed away, it was very, very sudden.” When Bellotto resigned from her job to run the rink, everyone told her she didn’t have to do it, that taking on the rink meant inheriting a considerable debt. Just sell it and move on, they told her. But it was summertime, and Chanel refused to close the doors on all the children who had signed up for summer camps and relied on Skate World as a safe, fun place to hang out during their school break. She decided she’d keep Skate World open for a couple of months and sell it after summer. “At the end of the summer, I looked at my boyfriend at the time (who is now my husband), and I said, ‘We need to rip up the carpet, we need to gut the bathrooms, and we need new roller skates. And we’re going to Las Vegas for the roller-skating convention.’”
HISTORY OF SKATE WORLD In the early 1970s, Arlys Talbert purchased Skate World, operating at its original location off Memorial and Lakeland Hills Boulevards until 1973, when the rink moved to its current spot. In 1977 Arlys’ daughter, Arleen Talbert, married Adonis Dedes, and the couple purchased the rink from him. Dedes owned and operated Skate World until his passing in 2007. That’s when his daughter, current Skate World owner, Chanel Bellotto, took on the family business.
“His exact words were, ‘There’s a convention for you people?’” she laughed.
We sat across from each other in a café booth at the rink. Chanel wore a pair of skates as she shared memories of her dad and her time growing up at Skate World. She smiled through a few tears as she began to talk about her dad. “He didn’t know a stranger,” she said.
A RINK REFRESH The couple went to Las Vegas, where Bellotto joined the Roller Skating Association International. She played an active role with the organization, serving as president of the section encompassing rinks in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. After her time as president, she was elected to the National Board of Directors, on which she served for three years. Though the Skate World owner loved her time serving on the board, it required a lot of travel, which meant time away from her “sweet and very supportive” husband Al and two sons, Trey and Jackson. “I serve God first, then my family, and then my business. My managers and employees, I think of them as family,” she said. Bellotto fulfilled her term on the board in 2020.
Bellotto’s childhood was illuminated by neon light cutting through the smoke of birthday candles (her own and others’). She spent her days in a whirl of lights and music and pizza and roller skating. “I would come on Saturdays with my dad as a little girl, and I would skate and play Ms. Pac-Man – that was my thing,” she said. In her teens, Bellotto started working at the rink – hosting birthday parties, running the music, and helping at the register. “I do have a servant’s heart. I enjoy serving people and taking care of them,” she said. Bellotto describes her time growing up at Skate World as full of “happy, joyful memories.” Her father was beloved in the community, with many roller rink regulars referring to Adonis as their dad, uncle, or big brother. “I have parents and grandparents that will come in and tell me what a godsend he was because this was a place where they could drop their children off, and it was a safe haven. They knew that my dad would not let them go outside. They knew that if for some reason, they couldn’t come and pick their child up, my dad would take them home. […] If a child needed something, my dad would give it to them.”
Since taking ownership of Skate World in 2007, Bellotto has made it a mission to refresh the rink regularly – new flake epoxy floor in the café, new carpet, new tables, new lights, a new air conditioning unit. The most significant rink reinvestment was a new skating floor in 2011. Florida humidity wreaked havoc on both the previous wood flooring and concrete beneath. Skate World’s current laser-leveled, polished concrete skating floor came with a $100K price tag. The Skate World owner’s commitment to keeping the rink up-to-date paid off in 2018 when Chanel Bellotto was given the Operator of the Year award by the Roller Skating Association International. “It’s given to an operator that continually invests in their business. They’re a progressive operator, not afraid to take chances, not afraid to try things that are new, and willing to share those ideas with people,” Bellotto explained.
Adonis was even known to give hungry kids slices of pizza. “He was ever so generous and would give anyone the shirt off his back. He loved everyone,” said his daughter. Grown men have cried when they find out Adonis has passed, and folks continue to share stories of him with Bellotto. “That solidifies what I’m doing here. This is where I was meant to be,” she said. “God certainly had a plan because I was never, ever, ever going to run the skating rink.”
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