A Eulogy for a Terrible Place
Let me tell you about my rink.
Highland Ice Arena opened on December 14, 1962 and was a family business from the day it opened to the day it closed on October 15, 2022. It was, without a doubt, the second-worst rink I ever skated. Certainly Highland was the worst rink that was open year-round - the only ice I've been on of lower quality was a holiday rink at Seattle Center before the Key became Climate Pledge that was only open November through January, about the size of a Basketball half-court, and "resurfaced" only once per day after close and without the benefit of a Zamboni.
Highland was a step above that. But only just. Walking in the front door was like stepping back into the 90's. A look to your right, and you'd see their little pro shop, the NHL merchandise within slightly yellowed with age and using logos now featured on Reverse Retro jerseys. The rubber flooring was chipped and cracking, and hadn't been replaced in ages. Your walk to the rink was always dangerous because the mats rippled and waved in spots, creating tripping hazards. Looking up to the rafters, you could see the accumulated dinge, dust, and puck marks that the decades had built up.
And then there was the ice itself. Because their Zamboni drivers didn't turn off their water in the corners, there was a noticeable slope up and down when you skated laps. I think pebbled curling surfaces might have smoother ice. The roof leaked, necessitating buckets on the ice on more than one occasion. I once saw a ref attempt to repair a divot with a green plastic watering can. You had to be careful when you went to the benches, whether going through the gate or over the boards - there were a few spots where there were no mats, leaving exposed metal plates where the boards slotted in. There was also a smaller, second rink, which felt claustrophobic due to the walls directly on all sides of the rink, which was where stick n' puck normally was, the sound of pucks hitting the walls explosive in the enclosed space.
There were two locker rooms. One downstairs, where you'd expect it, behind the benches. One was upstairs. Yes, upstairs. If you used that locker room, you had to tramp down the stairs in your full gear, through the lobby, then out onto the ice. And that one was the nicer looking locker room of the two, likely because it was a later addition. The one downstairs legitimately looked like a scene in a prison movie, and not a nice one. There was a toilet in the middle of that locker room with no stall walls around it. Once, a beer league teammate said they found a turd in one of the showers, and I fully believe them. I once met another local beer leaguer who said they refused to use the locker rooms there, instead just changing in the lobby, which honestly sounds like a better idea than using either locker room.
Please don’t get it twisted: I am not shitting on the place. That was done for me, by an anonymous person in their locker room showers. No. I loved this rink. It was my rink. It may not have been the rink where I learned to skate (shoutout to the Vallco Rink, now known as the Cupertino Ice Center), nor was it the rink where I first really fell in love with the feel of ice beneath my blades (Sprinker Recreation Center, you were way too far away but it was worth the drive every time), but it was home for me from when I first moved into Seattle proper until it closed. It was where I forged an unbreakable bond with a friend who is now more like family (hey Jed!) and where I decided that it was past time for me to actually play the damn game of hockey. The place where I learned to play. Where I would nudge Jed at almost every song during public skate and say, "THIS IS MY JAM!" Where I would pet Ollie the rink dog during Zamboni breaks.
It was terrible, yeah. But it was home, and I loved it. Unfortunately, the disrepair of the rink was too much to handle. Apparently the boiler room was far from the fire code, and while it was owned by the original family, the fire marshal allowed it to be grandfathered in. Selling the rink would require the new owners to repair and retrofit it, a task with a price tag that exceeded the property's total value. So it makes sense that when Highland was sold, it was sold to developers who would tear down the rink and build up something new, something that suited their dreams and not those of the previous owners.
It's hard for me to wrap my head around the incredible loss I feel at having just lost this physical place at the same time that I am losing a virtual space which it is no hyperbole for me to say changed the trajectory of my life. That friend who became family, Jed, was a mutual follow of mine on Twitter before we happened to run into each other at a public skate at Highland. They realized it was me because I'd tweeted a picture of the rink. Jed is far from the only real friend I made on Twitter. Some helped me fundraise to get me to finish my degree. Some helped me when I was leaving my marriage, both financially and emotionally. They helped me to navigate the weird space of the quarantine, of pregnancy, of becoming a mother. They stayed through my terrible puns and shared my doodles and encouraged me to keep making things even when I thought my work wasn't worth sharing with anyone.
Twitter was and is, objectively, a terrible place. Instead of leaks from the ceiling you had random nobodies getting into your business. Instead of a turd in the shower, you might find a horrific RT on your timeline that you wish you could unsee. But like Highland Ice it was my home for a time, and I hope you'll forgive me for taking this metaphor a bit literally as it was my homepage on my personal desktop's browser. The moments of joy I found there sustained me through some incredibly tough times, and much like Highland Ice, I fear we may never see anything quite like it again.
Better options exist, both for ice rinks and for social media sites. They're just going to miss some of the old charm, and maybe that's for the better.
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