ICE CAPADES LAUREL PLAZA WAS THE VALLEY
By high school, the Calls Apartments had matriculated into gang banger territory. The white hesher girls of the late 70s, with mullet hairdos and razor blades underneath their tongues, had either been sent off to reform school, or gotten PG. Their younger sisters had died of pre-adolescent lung cancer, or been incarcerated for picking fights with egg heads at the Laurel Plaza Ice Skating Rink. So, by 1984 depending on which door you banged on, you had your choice of bargain priced dime bags, shrooms, and what hardcore losers called ludes.
- There are times when a picture is unnecessary. To have experienced Ice Capades, Laurel Plaza is to have experienced East San Fernando Valley youth culture circa 1968-1994 (although it officially closed in April of 1995). This was a place where phrases such as Lancer, Huskie. Knights, Corvallis, and Parrot hadpecial meaning. Other words of coded language, that might be spoken at the rink also included: Wednesday on the Boulevard, Val Surf, Union Sub, and the Whitsett water slides. And maybe most important, the single word, "SKATER" which a 14 year old girl might inscribe into wet concrete drying around a new city lamp post on the opposite side of the the street in her tract between neighbor practice of "Summer Nights."
Although those of us who identified as skaters during the 70s inevitably watched Bewithched, the 1972 episode filmed at our rink pales in comparison to our own individual experiences watching through, or behind the glass.
