KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When the lights dim and the music turns up, Winnwood Skate Center comes alive.
The roller rink in Kansas City's Northland has become a gathering place for anyone and everyone, but it has a particular history of welcoming Black skaters when they were rejected elsewhere.
"There were certain rinks that Blacks weren't allowed to skate at," Mike Richardson, who's been skating for 25 years, said.
At Winnwood though, they found a home.
"Whenever they came to the rink, it's like all that background stuff, where they came from, who they belong to, kind of all went away," Kelechi Ekeh, a relatively new skater, said.
Richardson added, "Just the camaraderie of the other skaters that skate here is what makes me keep coming back."
Richardson got into skating because his father and other family members were skaters. Then, he took it a step further, becoming a competitive skater who traveled around the country.
He even appeared in the 2005 film "Roll Bounce," starring Bow Wow and Nick Cannon.
"How it feels for me when I'm skating is just as a peace of mind. I'm happy," Richardson said. "Everything that I normally worry about during the week, I'm not thinking about it when I'm skating."
While the environment at Winnwood is welcoming, of course, there's a little friendly competition — especially between the old-school skaters and the newer generations.
"I'm gonna go ahead and say the older skaters are a lot smoother, I'm gonna say that," Richardson said.
"Everybody wants to be the best. It's like 'Aight, you can do that.' 'Well, I can do this.' 'No, I can do that, too, you know,'" said Reggie Simmons, who's been skating for about 12 years.
But the skaters always welcome newcomers, especially younger kids in need of a community.
"In certain communities, you don't have a lot of resources to be able to do things like this, so it just gives people another option, another resource, another outlet," Simmons said.
Richardson, who now works to mentor young skaters, says there are a lot of life lessons to be learned at the rink.
"You learn patience because you have to be patient when you're trying to learn new moves and things like that," he said. "You learn to not give up, not quit, you cannot be a quitter."
Richardson also said skaters can learn ways to overcome adversity.
"You also learn adversity, you learn how to work through adversity because when you get better, you might think you're really, really good," he said. "And so you come up against somebody at a competition that's way better than you, now you've got to go ahead and go back to the drawing board. Now you got to, you know, step your game up to get to another level."
For those afraid of trying something new, the skaters say there's a whole rink full of people willing to show rookies the moves.
"We're not afraid to like reach out to people and people come up to us all the time, [saying] 'Hey, how are you doing that? Can you teach me how to do that?' For sure. I want people to be better," Richardson said.
Winnwood offers a variety of skating times, including adult skate nights, family nights and themed nights. The schedule can be found on the skate center's website.
