Rivergate Skate Center is a neighborhood roller rink with a storied past

Like so many iconic spots around Nashville, the Rivergate Skate Center is located between two strip malls.

Steve Haruch WPLN News

Dale Weaver and his son Zayden

Tucked away just off Gallatin Pike and Rivergate Parkway in Madison, it’s a long, low building. At first glance it looks like it could be a car repair shop or a really wide garage. The sign outside is fairly plain. In many ways, this place hasn’t changed much since it first opened in October 1978.

Dale Weaver remembers that time well.

“I was blown away by the sound system, by the lights,” he says. “It’s something I’d never experienced.”

Dale was a teenager back in 1978, and he’s been skating here ever since. I meet him at the rink on a Thursday night.

Listen to the full episode on This Is Nashville: Nashville’s roller skating culture

“We didn’t have the things that the kids have to do these days,” Dale says. “You would have people lined up down the sidewalk almost to the end of the building waiting to get in — and that was every Friday and Saturday night.”

It doesn’t take much to bring him back to those days. Just hearing his favorite music from that time — Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” is near the top of that list — makes him want to pull on his skates. He remembers there were regular dance skate competitions here, and everyone would practice their moves.

The point was to develop your own groove.

“Today i see a lot of people copying and doing the same things,” he says, “but back then everybody had a unique style, and that was a lot of fun.”

It was the waning days of disco, and maybe the Olivia Newton-John vehicle “Xanadu” wasn’t exactly a box office smash. But you might call that era Peak Roller Skating. Between the music, the style and, of course, the heyday of rinks like this one, Dale remembers it as the “perfect time” to be a skater. And it’s a time that has stayed with him all these years.

“I didn’t realize it back then, how much it was going to mean to me being part of that.”

Rink master

Back in the late 1970s, this location was just a big lot with a small house. That is, until a man named L.R. Brown came along, bought the property, and tore down the house.

“He is kind of a legend in the skate world,” according to Jason Cockerham — the current owner. Jason worked alongside L.R. Brown for decades, learning the trade and becoming general manager here in 2004.

“We’d go to conventions every year, and I noticed from my first convention with him that he was so well-respected in the industry,” Jason recalls. Then he mentions those E.F. Hutton commercials from the ’70s — the ones with the famous tagline: “When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen.” That’s how it was with L.R. Brown.

That wasn’t just because L.R. owned multiple skate rinks in Alabama and Tennessee. He was the kind of guy who would dig out a six-foot incline by hand — literally. That’s what he did to clear the way for building the Rivergate Skate Center. (His time doing calculations for NASA did not come in handy, as it turned out.)

Steve Haruch WPLN News

Rivergate Skate Center as it looked in 1978. There’s a collection of old photos in a binder at the rink.

This place did so well, so fast, that within just a few years, L.R. opened another location in Brentwood, then in Smyrna. And even though he did well enough to drive a Mercedes around town, he also kept a pair of old skates in the trunk, just in case.

“He’d probably break them out once or twice a year if one of the one of the rink managers said, ‘Hey, I think our floor needs to be recoated.’ ” Jason recalls. “He would skate on it and say, ‘Yeah, I think it’s ready.’ ”

That floor is made of northern rock maple — “that wood is more dense because it’s colder up there,” Jason says — and in theory, it should last forever, as long as it’s properly maintained. But some time in the ’90s, termites started eating away at the floor here in Rivergate, and it had to be replaced.

The more things change

Steve Haruch WPLN News

Owner Jason Cockerham holds a photo from the 1970s, showing the original speakers and “spider lights.”

The floor isn’t the only thing that’s changed here.

At a glass case full of skates, wheels and bearings, Jason takes out a binder of photos from the early days. One picture shows a black contraption on the ceiling that spirals out about 15 feet in every direction from the center. These were known as “spider lights,” and like all the neon lighting around the rink, it has been switched out for LEDs.

And they also replaced the original speakers just a few years ago.

“I don’t know that … anything will ever sound as good as those,” Jason says wistfully. “Those were amazing.”

Other, smaller things have also changed over the decades. The lockers are in a different spot. What used to be the “pro shop,” where people could try on skates, is now part of the office. But the skate rental window, the concession stand and the DJ booth — they’re all in the same locations. And by and large, the center looks pretty much the same as it did in 1978. You might say this place is timeless.

Jason tells me that L.R. Brown’s designs have done more than stand the test of time.

“Not trying to brag … his rinks are some of the nicest in the country. And people come from all over to see them.”

And when he says “all over,” he means as far away as California, England and Australia.

‘It’s like my therapy’

As much as Rivergate Skate Center’s reputation has spread beyond Middle Tennessee, it’s really the locals who keep this place going.

“I have a couple that are in their 70s that get out there and skate like they’re 20,” Jason explains. “People from all walks of life, they they come together and they say all the time, ‘I get to leave all my stress outside the door and I just come roll and I feel free. And that it’s like my therapy every week.’ ”

Note: this claim has not been evaluated by a psychologist. But for locals like Dale Weaver, whether it counts as therapy or not, this place is special.

“This is where I’ve got my first girlfriend, my first kiss,” he says with a snort. “That may be going too far, but that’s … part of the memories that this place brings.”

Places like these don’t always outlast the kind of rapid growth our city and region is experiencing right now. And that’s not lost on Dale.

“This town has changed so much,” he says. “We’re lucky that this place survived.”

Dale also feels lucky that he gets to bring his 10-year-old son Zayden here. They skate together often, and Zayden calls skating with his dad “the best feeling ever.” And when Dale asks him if thinks he’ll bring his kids here someday, Zayden says, “Definitely. … And if you’re still alive, I would try to get you out here to teach them as well.”

For now, they’ll just keep coming here, taking laps around the floor and enjoying each other’s company.

“This is part of my history,” Dale says as he looks out at the other skaters whooshing by. “And you know, to be able to think back to the memories I had here and to still be able to come and enjoy that … that means the world to me.”

Steve Haruch is the senior producer of This Is Nashville. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @steveharuch.