Lights blasted down from overhead, while the sounds of Heart's "Barracuda" blared from the speakers as teenagers strapped on their roller skates and took to the floor, gliding along the sleek surface, giggling with friends and revelling in their freedom from parents.
This might have been a typical Friday night at the Stardust Roller Rink, the place where youth and families alike could have a cheap night out cruising on roller skates to the latest tunes. From the mid '60s to the early '80s, the North Vancouver rink was the place to be.
"It was rock music, loud music, and so on, a lot of people skating around, a lot of that American Graffiti kind of vibe, young people strutting their stuff. Then it morphed when the disco era hit," says Noel Hardy, general manager of the rink until its closure in 1983. "We had multiple disco balls and strobe lights and all kinds of sound operated lighting effects and very high-end sound systems. It was very, very popular."
Stardust was the brainchild of Mel Ross and Bud Allen, neighbours in West Vancouver who decided one day in 1963 to go into business together.
"We were speaking over the fence. He was working for another company and I had my own business but I was selling it," says Ross. "So we talked about concept and we talked about what can we do together and I liked him immediately and I guess it was reciprocal."
Ross, then 30, and Allen continued hashing out details, trying to figure out what business venture they wanted to jump into.
"Then it hit us that our kids kept saying they had nothing to do, 'There's nothing to do, we have nowhere to go.' So we started thinking. .. what are things that kids can do that we can turn into a business," says Ross. "We went through a list and what appeared to be the most practical was rollerskating."
Neither Ross nor Allen knew anything about roller-skating, so they drove across the border at 7 p.m. on a Friday night to visit the local roller rinks.
"We got down as far as Edmonds (Wash.), there was a half a dozen of the rinks in the area but we went into the first one," says Ross. "We got in there, we opened the door and the place was packed. I mean you couldn't move there was so many (people). I looked at him, he looked at me and then that was that."
Ross says both he and Allen were working paycheque to paycheque, supporting young families with no money to spare.
"That didn't seem to bother us. At least, it didn't bother me because I always had a notion that where there's a will there's a way and he did too. So that's how it began. That was the idea," says Ross.
The two came up with the name Stardust from a hotel sign they came across in Sin City.
"We learned that there was a roller skating convention that was being held in Las Vegas and one of the suppliers that we contacted about getting equipment and skates and stuff invited us to attend," says Ross. "So we went down there - my partner and I and our wives - and while we were down there we were driving around trying to think of names for the company."
The two had been wracking their brains for about a month, says Ross, long before construction had started.
"We were staying in a hotel, we got in the car and we drove down the strip, and all of a sudden this huge neon sign lit up with stars and this thing was Stardust and I said 'That's it, that's it,'" says Ross. "We went into the Stardust hotel and we got stationery, matchbooks and anything with their logo on it."
The business partners researched equipment and a location for their new enterprise, but after approaching the District of West Vancouver and having no luck, the two went to the City of North Vancouver.
"When you're ignorant, you can ask all the questions you like, to whomever you wish, even though if you were knowledgeable you would never in a million years do it, but we were so dumb we just went ahead," says Ross. "We talked to the city manager, a really nice guy, and we told him what our idea was and he thought it was a great idea. And he said, well, why don't we go and talk to the mayor, so we went and talked to the mayor and he liked the idea as well."
Ross and Allen asked if the city had any property they could purchase and were offered one and a half acres of land off Bewicke Avenue and Marine Drive on West 14th Street for $12,000. With no money in the bank and no way of paying for the property, Ross borrowed money against the business he had sold, while Allen also borrowed money and together the two came up with enough to purchase the land.
"We now had the land but now we needed the building and nobody would lend us any money - nobody. We hunted for months and months and couldn't do it," says Ross.
The two came up with the idea of having their newly purchased land appraised, which in turn they could borrow money off of. The land was appraised at $75,000.
"With that appraisal we were able to find a mortgage company that was prepared to lend us the money if we paid a 25 per cent bonus and then the interest rate was some outrageous amount," says Ross. "But we went for it because we didn't think there was any possibility that it wouldn't succeed."
After securing an architect and contractor, construction on the Stardust began in the spring of 1964 but was fraught with complications, says Ross, including soil problems and water supply. Eight or nine months later, the Stardust opened.
"The place was full from that point onward for years," Ross says. "It started off with a bang and went right on. It was an interesting business but a lot of hard work."
Hardy, who started working at the North Van rink in the early '70s as Ross' assistant, says the Stardust was a social place.
"It was a facility that attracted a lot of young adults, a lot of teens, families," says Hardy. "There were days - Saturdays - where there were over 1,000 people there."
Weekends bustled with skaters of every age. Friday nights were for teens while adults came on Saturday and Sunday nights.
"If you want to pay and the door's open, come on in. We used to get crowds of a couple thousand people on our band nights," says Ross.
Weekend mornings offered carnival children's programs, which Ross says they practically gave away but offset the costs with profits from the snack bar.
"What we later discovered was that Friday night was the best night we could have chosen to go and look at a roller rink because Monday to Thursday it's dead, it's a weekend business, so we had to go into programs and devise schemes to get people in during the week," says Ross.
The rink had 25 employees, all part-time, and would host private parties and group bookings including floor hockey. Ross says hockey was extremely popular and groups or teams would book the rink on Fridays from 11 p.m., when public skating ended, right through to 8 a.m. the next morning and again on Saturday nights.
The business duo also found ways of attracting customers throughout the week by including time for families.
"Tuesday night was family nights," says Ross.
The roller rink also offered programs to girl guides, boy scouts and inschool programs. Ross says they generated kudos from the community.
"We had tons of thankyou letters from schools," says Ross. "We took skates into the schools, into the public schools, and taught kids how to skate, right on the gym floor."
Hardy says they taught youngsters from kindergarten right through to Grade 7, covering all school districts.
"The main reason for that was to try and ensure that when they came to the facility for field trips or out with their family they could at least stand up," says Hardy. "It was a way to bring it to them and teach them proper skating etiquette and how to get up and how to fall down."
Hardy says at the time the rink closed, there were seven instructors, teaching as many as 4,000 students a week.
"A lot of young people, I like to think anyway, know how to roller-skate because they took it in their elementary school class," says Hardy.
One of the key aspects of the Stardust was the surface of the rink. Ross remembers one particular event that led to the instalment of the interlocking wooden tile.
"New Years Eve, I'll never forget it, it snowed. The heaviest snowfall in history and our roof leaked and ruined our floor," says Ross. "We had to make a new floor over the weekend. I don't know how we did it. We got an army of guys, a lot of the skaters volunteered their time and efforts. We made a new floor. We did it ourselves. There was mostly all staff and volunteers because everybody loved the place."
After numerous problems with the wooden tiles, however, the floor was changed to coated asphalt but the surface was slippery. So Ross and Allen came up with the idea to recreate roller skate wheels, styling them after a European model.
"It was such a sensation that we started manufacturing wheels for other skating rinks across North America," says Ross.
The wheel business folded soon after the manufacturer took their creation and went into business for himself.
"Unfortunately, you can't patent a wheel," says Ross. "So we went out of the wheel business and back into the skating business, but it solved the problem of the floor."
Over the years, music at the roller rink evolved as much as the flooring.
"We brought into the rink what we thought was the correct music for skating, which turned out to be organ music, the old-time organ music," says Ross. "And one day, this one kid comes up to me and says 'Mr. Ross, you should get some popular music because some of us don't like those old tunes,' and I looked at him and thought 'Holy God, he's right,' so we switched very quickly and then the Beatles hit and that did it."
Ross says they were one of the few rinks at the beginning that turned to popular music.
"I think that once that happened we were copied and it went that way," says Ross. "The skating community, they would visit with each other, like we would go down to California and see what was being done there, people would come up and see what we were doing, so it got around."
The rink also featured live bands, including Sweeney Todd, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Heart. The Stardust even came close to hosting one of the 1970s' most famous duos.
"Sonny and Cher booked and didn't show," says Ross. "They apologized. They got called to the Ed Sullivan show and we got dumped."
The rink also hosted a popular battle of the bands with local groups.
"Garage bands would come out and battle for the hearts and minds of all the young teeny-boppers," says Hardy. "And advance to the next round."
The Stardust offered a special kind of nightlife for young people and Ross says over the years it was smooth sailing for the most part.
"We were so busy handling the volumes of people that came in, that we had relatively few problems," he says. "Pretty much the kids behaved themselves because if they
didn't they were banned and we had a very strict policy."
Hardy says rowdy kids were barred for a period of time.
"They couldn't see their friends and they were on your doorstep pleading their case to get back in because all of the girls or boys that they were interested in were skating at the rinks on Friday and Saturday nights," he says.
As the Stardust became more and more popular, Ross and Allen expanded their business and opened rinks in Richmond and Surrey. One year saw all three locations together grossing about $1.5 million.
"That was our top year," says Ross. "That was the disco craze when all three rinks were operating at full capacity."
But the popularity of the Stardust started to decline and the North Vancouver rink, which opened in the fall of 1964, closed its doors in 1983.
"The numbers kept shrinking, the minimum wages kept increasing," says Ross. "The biggest expense was labour and so it just got to the point where there wasn't much money to be made. We decided that we're just, pardon the pun, spinning our wheels."
Ross and Allen decided to let go of the property, renting it out at first and later selling. Soon after, it was developed, changing hands through multiple businesses.
The city also took notice of the popularity of the rink in its heyday and gradually started building ice skating rinks, converting them to roller rinks in the summers, says Ross, and with that copied the Stardust's programs and promotional ideas. But, he adds, that wasn't the biggest reason for the rink's demise.
"I think it was more of a population shift. We had a really good run I think but because of the cost of real estate and the fact that the young kids grew up and moved away, there wasn't anyone coming in behind them," says Ross. "They were closing schools because they didn't have the population and that was our bread and butter: the schools and the school kids."
The Richmond location closed soon after North Van, but Surrey would hang on until 2005. Allen passed away, but the partnership between the two lasted the duration of the business.
Looking back, Ross, now 80, says his best memory is of the young people who came through the doors night after night.
"I think just seeing the kids having a good time, being excited coming and going and just screaming with delight and realizing that this is a happy business. Everybody's having a good time, everybody's busy and it made me feel good," he says. "It wasn't just about making money, it was good value for families, that really was, and of course the relationships that we developed and my relationship with my partner."
Ross continues to run into people who remember the Stardust.
"I went to cross the border and one of the border immigration guards asked me 'What do you do?' And I said, 'I'm retired.' And he said, 'What did you do?' And I said, 'Well, I had a skating rink.' 'You had Stardust?' 'Yup.' 'Carry on,' and didn't ask me any more questions," says Ross. "But that happens a lot and there's quite a number of people that have met and married and I just don't have a handle on numbers, but many. You run into people who remember with great fondness the times that they had, and the people that they met. That was their whole life: skating Friday night."
