The famous 30 Rock isn’t the only downtown outdoor center that’s got it going on.
I thought I might find a deserted core Saturday in the heart of Syracuse, N.Y., when I had my dear wife Karen stop the car off on our way to a holiday party so I could see if there was indeed somthing I could write about for my weekly community blog for Syracuse public media site waer.org.
Score at Clinton Square.
You can click the link below to read my column.
http://waer.org/post/clinton-square-ice-rink-still-appears-wed-central-new-yorkers-and-fun
Snow of the week be damned. On this last sequential day for the next 89 years, the people of Central New York — a couple hundred of them, anyway — were going to skate among holiday lights before night officially fell.
Now if only I could skate, I’d be tempted to join them for the fun and exercise.
Is there an outdoor rink where you live? Have you ever skated outdoors? Would you be tempted to learn how to ice skate now?
The photographs of the skaters really made me nostalgic, Mark! Fun chance to get a party and a post all in one fell swoop of an evening! smiles
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It was the perfect two-for-one day, Robin. You cauight me!
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There a several outdoor skating around here. But growing up we always went in door skating. I couldn’t skate and definitely don’t want to get on ant skates now.
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No, not now, Kim. Stay away from ice on the street, too. 🙂
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OMG, I LOVE ice skating! I’ve never even seen an outdoor rink but that looks like so much fun! Is there a lake under there, or was is made specifically for skating? That tree is HUGE! Any idea how tall it is? My town only gets a temporary indoor ice rink 2 weeks a year in January. The closest permanent ice rink we have in in St. Pete, a little more than an hour away. 😦
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The rink is built over the reflecting pond fountain part of the square in the summer, Rachel, so it’s on concrete, really. There’s a rubber carpet in the middle of the rink, a long strip that everybody as to skate around. That covers the machinery that spouts up the water in the shallow fountain in the warm months!
I don’t know how tall the tree is this year. Very!
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Oh, that sounds like fun! I probably would skate on a lake, at least once to say that I did, but I’d also probably be terrified to do so. (I’ve had a lifelong fear of being trapped enclosed in something under water… could be a car, could be a submarine… and could be trapped under ice. Though I have no actual fear of water or being underwater itself, sans the enclosure, of course.)
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That nightmare is from an “Omen” sequel where a kid is trapped under the ice … mine is, anyway, Rachel. Ugh!
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Was there really that sequel or are you being metaphorical? So you can appreciate why I had to ask if it was really on a pond. 🙂
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There was really a sequel and a scene that I described that freaked me out and visits my dreams periodically, Rachel! 😦
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OUCH! Now I have to check out Netflix and see if they’ve got that! I saw an Unsolved Mysteries once where a guy believed he was reincarnated from a soldier who was killed aboard of submarine that was hit in WW2, and they showed the reenactment of how he was trapped when it filled with water…That spooked me forever!
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Incredibly picturesque, Chum. I have never tried ice skating. I have this fear of breaking my bottom.
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Bottoms and pride have been known to get bruised, Aud. 🙂
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We have indoor rinks pretty much unless you live up near the mountain ski resorts. That is where you will find outdoor rinks. There is a small one outdoors near a local restaurant mall. You could probably get good enough to skate around the rink. I have been on ice skates many years ago. Ice hockey is popular with the boys but they use indoor rinks and it can be a very expensive sport with the skates and all the gear. And ice hockey practice is usually at inconvenient hours like the crack of dawn. My son did roller blade hockey instead.
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Yes, hockey parents write checks, drive minivans full of neighbor kids and get up at 4 a.m. That is a fact, Deborah.
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Mark, I would probably make a really good ice skater, since I could dance across the ice like a ballerina. I make those moves frequently here at home just before each fall, so on skates I might be able to avert the actual fall and dance my way around the rink. At least I can dream about it. I’ve never hurt myself in my dreams. We have an ice rink here, but I have what I consider a healthy fear of ice, so I have never tried it. I have roller skated as a kid, using the sidewalk skates that required the key to keep them on, but I had no nerve endings back then. I also jumped from swings that I pumped high enough to loop over the top. The nuns were not amused, but we had fun scaring them. I love your Syracuse rink. Saw it on the weather news a few days ago in fact. Beautiful.
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I remember roller skates that needed keys back in the day, Angie, and I couldn’t do that, either. Yes, the rink here is really beautiful. You must have been something scaring the nuns when you were a kid.
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We all had fun scaring them. Really didn’t take much to scare some of them, and swinging so high the swing did loops over the top was fun, but jumping from the top was even better. I could skate with the sidewalk skates, just couldn’t do it on ice. MS hit me when I was 14 or 15, so a few things changed, but I still was a dare devil when I wanted to be, wa ha ha ha.
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I was not much of a daredevil, Angie. I do remember pumping the swings to go as high as we could when I was a kid, though. We’d dare each other to try to go all the way around, make a complete loop! Nobody ever could, of course. We’d have to settle for leaping off at the apex and jumping as far out into the sand pit as we could. At least we had a sand pit!
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We have one in Chicago:). And it’s awesome. . . something about people outside around the holidays with skates on . . . makes you feel like you’re in a Rockwell scene:).
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It looks like a special scene, for certain, Kay. I’m glad you can enjoy it in the Windy City.
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i love to go, love the festive atmosphere, am a horrible skater, but it does not stop me. nice shots, mark )
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Thanks, Beth. Half the people on the Clinton Square rink were bad skaters. The other half were really bad skaters. All of them were having fun! Seriously, only a few were really scooting around the ice.
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No outside rink where I am. And though I wouldn’t be tempted to skate I do have a lovely lady who I’ve met who’s parents in the early 1900’s built a lodge and they had a pond and she told of their skating parties. I do wish there were some old fashioned skating parties to attend. And I mean old fashioned. I wouldn’t skate. But I would go. ANd be happy to be there. 🙂
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I would go and wear a top hat and push m’lady around the ice if she so requested, me wearing me galoshes. How does that sound to you, Colleen, for old-fashioned skating party?
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It sounds just lovely! I am sure you and your lady, in your splendor and top hats and such will be waving at me and my gallant but also non skating husband as we lean upon the fence at the edge of the pond cheering on all of the skaters. And then gather around the fire with hot beverages when the skaters come off of the ice. Pink cheeks and sparkly eyes. 🙂
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No you and your husband will be joining us for I am sharing my secret. You, as is my lady, will be sitting on a chair, which we two men will be pushing along the ice! That’s how they teach the tykes to skate around these parts here. The put folding chairs on the ice, let them steady themselves as they push them along the ice. Genius. I watched my Elisabeth learn to skate like a pro that way when she was 4.
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WELL BY GOLLY THEN SIGN ME UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂 I’M ALL IN FOR THAT FUN!!!!
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We can do it. 🙂
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I would LOVE to ice skate! Great pics, Mark. Believe it or not, there is outdoor ice skating in downtown Phoenix each year. By the time Dave and I left the Suns game Friday night and went for a walk, it was closed for the night. Here’s a pic I tweeted out https://twitter.com/AngieMc6/status/543649868397297664/photo/1 .
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Arizona is cooler than I thought, and I mean that both ways. Thanks for the link, Angie McFly!
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My kids skated but I never got the hang of it. Lovely pictures
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Thanks, Rose. Skating is hard to learn, I think.
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I have always wanted to learn to ice skate – but where I live one would have to go very far to find an ice skating rink.
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And you want to move to Arizona, besides, PJ!
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LOL! I doubt I would get on a pair of ice skates now anyway.
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My Kentuckian parents were so excited about snow and skating when they moved to Michigan that I had my first pair of skates at 3. There was an outdoor rink where all us kids went every Friday night to skate all through the winter. Occasionally I got to skate on a pond on somebody’s farm. One winter my dad turned our back yard into a rink and all the neighbor kids came to skate. But most of my memories are the public rink, with music playing and hot chocolate at the snack bar. When my mother and I visit Flint each year and drive down that road I can’t even figure out where the rink used to be… Haven’t skated or owned a pair of skates in YEARS. Doubt I could stay up any more.
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It sounds like you had great fun on the ice growing up, Leigh. How special!
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Love this Mark. I haven’t skated since I was 12 and I never was really good at it. I have thought about taking it up many times recently. I should just do it! Wouldn’t it be fun if we could do it together and laugh at each other???
Diana xo
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I have a feeling it would be a laugh riot for us, Diana! 🙂
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would be happy to ice skate if it wasn’t so blasted cold out there. And when it warms up, the ice turns to slush. What to do? There is probably a middle-of-the-road cold temperature we never experience in Minnesota.
Your pictures are great, Mark. Wish you had been out there skating 🙂 Next time. Dear Wife Karen will hold you up.
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LA woman Karen? I dunno how far around the rink we’d get as a duo, Liz … As for Minny, too warm or too cold. That is vexing, yes.
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I’ve never seen a tree so big–well, not since the redwoods in the 1980s, and I barely recall that. You would scoff at the “ice rink” they put up last weekend at an outside holiday event in a nearby town. It was about 12′ by 12′ and three inches thick of ice that the children were supposed to turn into snowballs, but the sun melted it all into the grass until the entire field was a muddy mess. NEXT weekend, however, the schmancy mall will truck in tons of snow to at least a foot thick so the kids can have a snowball fight. No ice, though.
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A snowball fight in Austin is schmancy indeed, laying it on thick for the mall people. I hop the kids have fun, Kerbey. Snowball fights should be. That is a big tree somebody cut down off their property to delight Clinton Square goers in Syracuse, I surely agree with you.
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There’s a vintage photograph on PInterest of a little Dutch boy on skates with a giant pillow tied to his bum. If somebody would do that for me, then I would consider giving it a try!
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That’s a quite delightful condition to place on your skating needs, Barbara! I think your hubby volunteers. 🙂
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Ice skating – no, not for me. I don’t like falling over!
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Good plan to not dust off the ice with your pants, Rachel! I use that same plan. 🙂
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I used to go to the Catskills with my folks twice a year and stay at a resort hotel called the Concord. Don’t know if it’s still there, I imagine it wouldn’t be too far from your neck of the woods. Anyway, there was a skating rink in the hotel. All I can say is, yes, I could stay upright and afterwards my ankles would hurt like hell. I must have been doing something wrong.
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The buckling ankles is what plagued me, too, Marissa. Ouch.
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Oh, okay! So I’m not the only one!
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I turn my ankle just walking the dog, Marissa.
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