5
Photo illustration by Rachel Lobaugh
school days, his babysitter’s boyfriend worked at Skateland, so Guthrie found himself there most days, he said. While not an avid skater as a teenager, Guthrie wound up at a church event hosted at Skateland a few years later in high school. “That’s where I actually met my first real girlfriend,” Guthrie said. Memories of Skateland exist against the soundtrack of the “Hokey Pokey” and “Telstar” by The Ventures for Guthrie, along with the fizzy taste of a “suicide” — a concoction of every soda syrup the rink served, he said. Tony Hughes, a 1984 OU alumnus, started skating in high school before he moved to Norman for school in 1979. Hughes skated at the Norman rink and worked there as a floor guard. “I always left with a smile, and it was pretty good exercise due to the footwork,” Hughes said in an email to The Daily. Hughes learned to skate after a first date took a turn for the worse when he was 16. “I was doing OK until we decided to get drinks at the concession. I told the girl to go find a seat, and I would bring over the colas. Needless to say, but I did not make it to the table with the drinks,” Hughes said. “Yep, on the floor with the colas all over me. I decided right then that that would never happen again and started going back just about every week to learn how to skate.” Hughes said there are two key steps to being a good skater, which he learned in his self-taught skating journey.
“First, get your own skates that fit well, have good wheels and have the trucks loosened to your abilities. … Second, learn how to fall without hurting yourself, usually by rolling. Once you lose the fear of falling, you hardly ever fall,” Hughes said. Later, in 1992, Hughes brought his girlfriend at the time to the rink where his favorite memories of Skateland were made. “She was pretty good, and we would act out the Meatloaf song, ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light.’ Among other things, we would sing the male and female lyrics to each other ...,” Hughes said. Younger Normanites are also losing a classic Norman establishment that served as a birthday party favorite, greek event location and general hang-out spot. Political science junior Becca Yanez met her middle school trio of friends at Star Skate. Yañez said memories of Star Skate include childhood birthday parties, couples’ skate in middle school, her “death
just falling and embarrassing myself publicly,” Yañez said. For Yañez, Star Skate represented a piece of Norman’s identity —, a piece that the town has now lost. “I think that without it, it’s just not going to be the same. It’s just another thing that made Norman, Norman,” Yañez said. The hope right now, Hale said, is that after the economy recovers from the pandemic, he can open another rink in Norman. Until then, the city is losing a ubiquitous establishment in the town’s collective memory. “You’d have to be older than 60, basi- cally, to remember a time before the rink was there,” Hale said. “Everybody’s losing something. … It’s not just me that’s losing a business, but it’s the community as a whole. … A part of their life will not be a part of their life anymore.”
grip” on the walls of the rink and her friends trying to teach her how to skate. “There have been several accounts of me
Ph
ot
ob
yT re
yY ou
ng
