Liberty Renovation Article, Frederick Magazine_July 2011

By Guy Fletcher
As a New Life Awaits the Building Once
Known as Skatehaven, Those who Ruled
the Rink in Feathered-Back Hair and
Designer Jeans Recall its Glory
In their minds, it’s still 1981.
It’s a Saturday night and the
line is snaking outside the doors
and into the parking lot of
Skatehaven, Frederick’s epicenter
of early teen life. Inside, DJ
Kemosabi Joe greets the packed
sky-blue floor of skaters with his
customary, “Welcome to
Skaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatehavennnn”
before the speakers start
thumping out Joan Jett’s “I Love
Rock ’n Roll.”
Behind the waist-high wall at
the end of the floor, girls with ohso-perfect hair and Jordache jeans
find their perch to see and be
seen. To the left side of the floor,
the kids are playing Pac-Man,
pinball and air hockey. To the
right, a few couples sneak off to
make out in a dimly lit corner. A
blend of odors—a concoction of
cotton candy, popcorn and cheap
cologne—fills the air.
“There’s some kind of emotional connection there,”
says Tim Frye, a former skater and Skatehaven employee.
“My whole youth centers on that experience.”
Skatehaven closed in 1986, but many who spent
their nights and days at the rink never really let it go.
A Facebook page in honor of the rink has more than
1,200 fans, a remarkable achievement for a business
that lasted less than a decade. Many of the employees
“There’s some
kind of emotional
connection there.”
and regulars still gather for reunions—sometimes at a
skating rink or a local restaurant—to catch up and
talk about their days on wheels. It’s a testament to
what the place meant and the special memory it still
holds for them.
“I get it every day,” says Kevin
Faulkner, another former employee.
“People always say to me, ‘Didn’t you
work at Skatehaven?’”
their wares on the same floor where teens once ruled
on skates. Antique Station closed last November, but
the empty stalls are still there … and so is the floor.
The 35,000-square-foot building was sold to
Ausherman Development Corporation, which plans
to turn the building into the mainstay of present-day
Thomas Johnson Drive uses—medical and
professional office space. Ausherman has ambitious
plans to remodel, but not level, the building. From
the outside, the most noticeable difference will be
replacing the drab, 31-year-old exterior of tan
corrugated metal with a modern, attractive façade.
The building’s roof and frame will remain, but the
rest will essentially be gutted, leaving no semblance of
the former antiques or skating businesses. The
Liberty Professional Center, as the new facility will be
known, could be open for its first doctors by the
middle of next year.
“We saw this as an opportunity to build
additional and needed office space, and to take
something that’s not so attractive and turn it
around,” Justin Ausherman,
I TRIED MY
IMAGINATION
There used to be a skating rink here.
That’s what comes to mind when
touring the old Skatehaven
building these days. For more
than two decades after Skatehaven
closed, the building was known
as Antique Station, where
vendors would sell
project/property manager for the firm,
says during a tour of the site.
Just a few feet away, 44-year-old Lee
Ann Palmer Redmond walks through
the rows of empty vendor stalls. She
points out where the rink’s snack bar used
to be and the former location of the shop
where those lacking in “cool” would have to rent
skates with those ugly orange wheels. She also
spots the DJ booth from which Kemosabi Joe
commanded the night. For her, this archeological
dig of sorts is very personal.
“I lived here on weekends,” she says, smiling.
KICK OFF YOUR
SUNDAY SHOES
Ausherman plans to
turn the former roller
rink/antique business
(left) into a modern
professional office
building (above).
The year was 1978. Disco was all the rage and roller
skating was entering a boom era, thanks to pop
endorsers like the skate-donning Linda Rondstadt
and the movie “Roller Boogie.” In the rinks,
singsong tunes streaming from Wurlitzer organs
were being replaced by modern disco and rock
music blaring from speakers ... and it attracted
youthful customers to match. “With the change in
music, roller skating got a whole new clientele,” says
James Vannurden, director and curator of the
National Museum of
Roller Skating in Lincoln,
Neb.
In Frederick,
newcomers Bill and Pam
Ruehl were looking to build a roller skating
rink. Pam had grown up roller skating in Mobile,
Ala., and when the Ruehls moved to Frederick she
searched for a local rink to go to with her
stepdaughter. The closest she could find was the old
Stargaze Skateway in Braddock Heights, once the
oldest rink in the country. (Stargaze Skateway
burned to the ground in 1998, the result of arson.)
They wanted something closer, newer, bigger.
In less than one year, the Ruehls’ idea went from
planning to site acquisition to construction to the
doors opening on Skatehaven. This work included
extending Thomas Johnson Drive by 175 feet so it
could reach the rink. The total $850,000 project
gave local skaters a modern facility, with dazzling
lights and a state-of-the-art sound system. “When
we opened, I think I had $25 in cash,” jokes Bill
Ruehl, now 68 and living near Myersville.
But when those doors opened in May 1979,
Skatehaven was packed with 800 skaters almost
from the start.
Frederick 59
“I did my homework in
the snack bar of the
skating rink,” says former
employee Tim Frye.
“It was just the right time,” explains Pam
Christian, since-divorced from Bill Ruehl and now
living in Falling Waters, W.Va.
I WANNA GO BACK
The early 1980s might have been morning in
America, but the action at Skatehaven took place on
Friday and Saturday nights. Ruehl estimates that 75
percent of the rink’s business was earned on the
weekends. The crowd would get so big that
admission was restricted to meet fire code, and in
fact, it wasn’t uncommon for the line to be halted.
Inside, the real sport at Skatehaven was
socializing—meeting friends, talking over a slice of
pizza at the snack bar, perhaps summoning the nerve
for a couples’ skate. “It was a real ego boost when you
got to skate with some of the attractive girls there,”
recalls Jim Grant, 50, a skater who grew up in
Middletown.
Redmond remembers checking everything to look
perfect for a night at Skatehaven, from the right
clothes to the right hair. There was a strategy here,
too. “You had to have a bit of hairspray, but not too
much because you couldn’t have your hair stand still
when you skated,” Redmond explains. “You wanted it
to flutter a little bit.”
60 Frederick
“You had to have
a bit of hairspray,
but not too much
because you
couldn’t have your
hair stand still
when you skated.”
One of the unique and challenging features of
Skatehaven was its blue floor, which was made of
polyurethane (not the hardwood common in many
rinks) and lacked a level area where skaters could easily
merge into the skating traffic from the waiting area.
There were no steadying handrails, either. As a result,
skaters had to take a small step to get onto the slick
floor, often with others zooming by them. “If you got
twisted up a certain way, you were down [on the floor],”
Redmond recalls. Once on your skates, your first
destination would be the mirrored wall at the far end of
the floor, where you would check, naturally, your hair.
For those hitting the floor a bit
too fast or too reckless, a sharp whistle might have
been aimed in their direction by floor guards like
Frye and Faulkner. One whistle got you a warning,
while a second meant you were off the floor for
10 minutes. “But I never had any problem with any
of the kids,” the 45-year-old Faulkner recalls.
That’s probably because they were so close. Frye,
now 47, says there was a special bond that formed
among customers and employees who spent so much
time together. He talks about doing his homework
in the snack bar and only half-jokes about living off
of pizza and Oreos. “It was our hub,” he says. “I
lived there and slept at home.”
PUMP IT UP
Ask a dozen different skaters the songs they
remember and you will get a dozen different
answers. Combined, it’s a soundtrack to teen life of
that era, with names like Sugar Hill Gang, Loverboy,
AC/DC, Stray Cats, Air Supply and Michael
Jackson. And one name is
always mentioned: Kemosabi
Joe.
Kemo, as he likes to be
called, was the popular
morning DJ with Z104 radio
in Frederick. The radio station was planning a
promotion for the opening of Skatehaven and Kemo
was there the first Saturday night from 9 p.m. to
midnight. And he was there almost every Saturday
night until the place closed. “It was just a rock ’n’
roll good time,” he says. “I was just so grateful to be
part of it.”
Now a DJ with a group of radio stations on the
Eastern Shore, Kemo still looks back with
amazement on the Skatehaven days—the packed
floor, the loud music, the excited reaction from the
crowd when he let out his traditional welcome. “The
energy was just boiling over,” he says. Sometimes
that energy level got too high, so he would shift into
a lower gear with a couples’ skate or slower song, just
to let the throng relax before the next round of
louder, faster party songs. And while the rock and
pop music was obviously aimed at slightly rebellious
youth, the Ruehls were very clear in drawing the line
Frederick 61
DON’T YOU FORGET
ABOUT ME
As the ’80s reached their midpoint, much of the first
great generation of Skatehaven “rink rats” started
moving on to weightier pursuits—driving cars,
dating, even college—and left the haunt of their early
teen years behind. The facility was still profitable,
but the crowds began to wane. Ruehl recalls being at
a crossroads—either willing to commit more
money to upgrade the facility and ensure its future
viability or put the building on the market and see
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but not the skating business—was found and, just
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Skatehav
to maintain a
like that, Skatehaven was gone.
family atmosphere, which is why songs like
In recent years, Christian looked into the property
“Cocaine” and “Highway to Hell” were forbidden
as possibly the site of a Skatehaven II, but could never
from the play list.
get the financing required for such a project. The cost
Kemo marvels over the following Skatehaven still
of a new rink would probably be three or four times as
has today and thinks it has to do with people
much as the 1979 project, she laments. Now 52, she
wanting to reconnect with a time and place in their
hasn’t given up hope of bringing a rink back to
lives that was simpler, easier, less stressful. “There
Frederick. “If the opportunity ever arises, I would
were just so many memories made at that place,” he
definitely be interested,” she says.
says. “It’s like a song you remember from when you
But, in a way, Skatehaven never really died; it
were growing up. There are so many memories
merely rolled off into the distance, leaving behind
connected with that song.”
rich memories of being a wide-eyed teen with big
62 Frederick
dreams, bigger hair and coming of
age in a more simple time, before
the rushed, checklist era of cell
phones and iPods. If you
wanted to meet your friends
at Skatehaven, you had to
actually call them on a phone
and, yes, talk to them. Or
maybe you never called and
just assumed everyone would
meet there. They usually did.
Skatehaven left behind
tangible reminders, too. Even
after the building became Antique Station, it
retained many of the physical features of the former
business, including the outline of the blue skating floor
(now covered in carpeting), many of the lighting fixtures
and even a mirrored disco ball that hung from the ceiling.
“Every once in a
while you’ll find a
red quarter floating
around Frederick.”
Then there were the infamous red
quarters, issued to patrons as a refund
whenever a video game ate their change.
This was done so the rink managers knew
how many quarters they were losing to refunds
when the coins were emptied from the machines. “Every
once in a while you’ll find a red quarter floating
around Frederick,” Faulkner says, shaking his
head in amazement.
But for him, and so many others, there is
a much deeper and lasting impact from the
days of Skatehaven.
“If it wasn’t for Skatehaven,” he says, “I
wouldn’t have the friends or the memories
I have.” ✣
About the
Archival
Photos
The old Skatehaven photos in
this article were provided by
Suzanne Adams, daughter of
co-owner Bill Ruehl. Adams
practically grew up at
Skatehaven and now lives in
Milton, Ga., north of Atlanta.
“Oldies will come on the radio
these days and if it’s a ‘Skatehaven
song,’ no matter where I am, it
transports me through space and
time back to the rink with the skyblue floor and the disco lights, with
not only the electricity in the air but
the smell of popcorn, cotton candy
and pizza swirling around as the
crowd would get a draft going on the
floor,” she says.
Like many people, Adams was
pleasantly surprised when she
stumbled across the Skatehaven
Facebook page and found so many
other people who shared the same
great memories. “It has been so
awesome to re-connect with so
many friends,” she says. “I think it
was an amazing time in our lives and
we will always share that sense of
family no matter how far
apart we are.”