EMPIRE ROLLER RINK

200 Empire Blvd
[D,Q,S to Prospect Park; 2,5 to Sterling Street; D to Botanical Garden]
http://www.empirerollerskating.com/

Apparently, Empire Roller Rink is a fairly popular name for a rink, as Google will attest to. Anyway, I ended up as a guest at (follow me now) my soon-to-be boyfriend's good friend's birthday party. Up until this point, it was damn near impossible to verify his existence - his friends were all doing something and that something was consistently not meeting me - so I was dealing with several levels of shock when I found myself at Empire.

For one thing, its incredibly hard to get to - probably because its in Brooklyn and I don't even pretend to know the ropes of Brooklyn. Okay, sometimes I do, and find myself very embarassed. So although there are three routes to Empire listed, all three are equally far away and in the heat of the day in question, equally awful. Then again, I saw a procession of rastas (who appreciated that my hair was natural - looking, at least - and forgave me its shortness), so that almost made up for it.

The next shock was inside Empire itself; its like walking into the 70s: everything is multicolored, most people are using actual rollerskates (NOT rollerblades which, incidentally, you can't rent) and the popular hip hop of the day was flying out of the speakers in the DJ booth that looked down on the skating floor. "So ... you skate around in a circle ? Over and over again ?" I asked incredulously. "Yeah - its really fun! Doing the same thing, over and overAfter almost falling on a couple of deftly skating kids (who made asses of us older folk, of course), I'm inclined to agree.