Local roller skating group want a rink to call home

Windsor, Ont. -

What’s old is new again, at least in the roller skating community.

Those who grew up in Windsor will remember, with nostalgia, skating at Wheels.

An online campaign is now gaining speed to find a space to bring the sport back.

As a hairstylist, work has been sporadic during the pandemic for Crystal Durocher.

“I haven’t been able to do my passion, which actually made me quite depressed for a while and my girlfriend, she’s a roller skater and she said, ‘Girl pick yourself up a pair of skates and I swear you’ll be feeling good.' And you know what, I fell in love with the sport right away,” says the founder of WE Roller Skater.

She isn’t alone.

“The rollerskating community is seeing quite a boom in popularity,” says vice president of Windsor Roller Derby, Lula Kuli. “There was a TikTok video that really blew up. That’s all it took, was a 10 second video on TikTok and people said that looks like fun. I would love to roller skate.”

That's even though they have nowhere to skate. So, local roller skaters have taken to social media.

Kuli and Durocher have an online campaign to find a new home and to entice new skaters to join the sport.

“My goal is to attract an investor that would be interested in getting us a rink locally because not only do we want a place for people to go to to have fun but we’d also like a place for our awesome roller derby team,” says Durocher.

“We’ve hopped around to a lot of places over the years. We skated at the Armoury downtown, we skated at Belle River, we'll go as far as Essex, Amherstburg. We’ll skate wherever anyone will let us essentially,” says Kuli. “If you’ve got a big enough arena, we’ll be there. We would love to host games there, but ultimately we want to bring rollerskating and roller derby back to the core of Windsor.”

After just one month, the WE Roller Skaters Facebook page has over 600 followers, all hoping to bring roller skating back.

“It’s got to be in a great space, it’s got to be big, it’s got to be accessible, on a bus route, it can have funky carpets for all I care, I just want somewhere safe to skate,” says Kuli.

“I just feel this place would be a magical place where we could all just have a recess, take our breaks from stress and just have some old-fashioned fun, you know, connect with people and have a good time. Let’s get our rink,” says Durocher.