Roller skating resurgence sparks interest in Arizona rinks

PHOENIX — One of the country’s favorite pastimes has made a comeback. Social media platforms such as TikTok and various events have reintroduced roller skating to a new generation.

Kendra Mikkelson attended an adult skate night at the Zoni Girls’ new venue in the Arizona Center after being away from it for years.

“I love skating, it’s my passion,” Mikkelson said. “(I’ve been skating) for most of my life, since I was 8. But I just got back into it within the last two years. What I like is that you don’t think about anything else, you just go into a bubble. I like the music, and I like the vibe.”

Roller skating businesses such as Zoni Girls and USA’s Skateland in Mesa have tried to cash in on this renewed popularity.

Zoni Girls is a roller skating business run by three sisters: the oldest, Paige Alexandria; middle sibling Tashi Gorzen; and the youngest, Sasha Gorzen. The trio started their business in 2019 after their father, Mark Gorzen, inspired them.

He encouraged them to pursue skating from a young age and taught them how to skate when they were little girls.

“He would always put us on a bike and weird things like that,” Alexandria said.

The sisters rediscovered roller skating during the COVID-19 pandemic and started visiting skate parks around the Valley to build up their skills once more.

TikTok has been one of the biggest sources for roller skating inspiration in recent years as videos about the sport are uploaded to the social media platform daily. Many people began to pick up the sport during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to multiple media outlets, and posted their daily progress to TikTok.

“Moxi, Riedell, Sure-Grip, Impala, all the big skate brands were sold out,” Alexandria said. “You would try to go on their website, look for skates and they were sold out; it was crazy. Those businesses really thrived during the COVID-19 pandemic (because) of people just looking for ways to get fit and get active and get the heck out of their house or have any sort of community or connection at all.”

Alexandria said the resurgence of roller skating did not only affect the skating community as a whole, but it affected big-name companies and how they advertise their products to their customers.

“Because now, (if) you look at Coca-Cola, Honda, like any silly commercial that you see on your Hulu account, there’s roller skating in it, and there didn’t used to be that,” Alexandria said. “It’s now become something that, not just like skaters and just the average Joe Schmo has found, it’s something that corporations have found as well. This is a trend.”

After a while, Alexandria started to notice an entrepreneurial opportunity in roller skating and brought the idea of starting a business to her two other sisters.

At first, Zoni Girls started as a clothing brand aimed at selling apparel to newly enthused roller skaters. Together, they sat down with their parents and planned out the details of their business. On the kitchen table they drew out their logo and came up with a motto and a name for the business.

Ashley Madison, an employee at Zoni Girls in Phoenix, cleans the inside of skates with disinfectant spray during a break from checking in new skaters …

“It didn’t seem unreachable because we had watched our parents build something up from the ground before,” Alexandria said. “I feel like a lot of people start their business journey with a logo idea or a motto or a name, and it changes over time.”

After the three women attended events across the Valley for their business, Alexandria began brainstorming the idea of creating a pop-up roller rink that they would take along at the different events they attended. In 2023, the Zoni Girls began attending 2nd Sundays on Mill Avenue in Tempe regularly, where they were approached by someone who worked for State Farm Stadium. The man wanted to hire them to do a pop-up roller rink during the Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert pre-parties in Glendale.

“We went through that whole process and learned a lot about contracting, and that was one of our first big events,” Alexandria said. “We went there, we made Taylor Swift Eras Tour T-shirts; we handed them out. We did a bunch of games, we did some skating, and it was just such a fun event.”

Zoni Girls opened a skate shop in Tempe on Myrtle Avenue and Seventh Street. After a couple months, they realized their customer base wanted to rent skates, and so they decided to start taking a few pairs of skates with them to various events.

“We tried it, and within the first 10 minutes, we didn’t have any skates, our 10 skates were gone,” Alexandria said. “So, we bought another 10 pairs … and then we just started going to little skate events.”

After attending more skating events and holding pop-up rink events around the Valley, Zoni Girls began to shift from a clothing brand to a skating brand.

“I was really sad about it, and it was really hard for me to watch the retail aspect of it disappear because it was something I’d worked so hard on,” Alexandria said. “(I) did the designs, and it kind of changed the dynamic of the way that the sisters were working together. It was definitely for the better.”

After the shift in focus, the Zoni Girls began doing pop-up events at the Arizona Center during First Fridays in downtown Phoenix. After one of these events, they were approached by the owners of the Arizona Center asking them if they wanted to rent a space in the center.

Zoni Girls opened its location — a roller rink with a half-pipe — in the Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix. On Feb. 1, Alexandria and her sisters picked up the keys to their new space.

“The big struggle of having the pop-up was never having a home for Zoni,” Alexandria said. “We had so much stuff that was in warehouses and all over the place … it was ridiculous how every five to six months, we were growing so fast.”

Since the opening of the Zoni Girls roller-rink venue on Aug. 17, Alexandria said business has flourished — hosting themed roller skating nights at the rink, including an Arizona State University skating night.

For USA’s Skateland in Mesa, an illustrious history and the fuel of nostalgia has kept it open for decades. General Manager Angela Webb said the rink's history has helped keep it alive.

“The fact that so many different generations have memories that are tied to the rink that they want to pass on – (they want to) share in those moments and create new memories with the younger generations (which) has really played a part in how skating has been able to be successful and be around for so long,” Webb said.

Webb said she began roller skating when she was 8 after she had her birthday party at a roller rink. She said she lost her love for roller skating around her teen years and early adulthood, but by her early 20s, she began skating again.

“Once I got to my early 20s, I actually started playing roller derby, and that was how I came to work for this company because one of the rinks that we practiced at was actually the rink that I ended up working for,” Webb said. “That’s kind of how I got back into skating. But skating has been super important in my life.”

The versatility of the sport, according to Webb, is why so many people continue to roller skate — now more than ever, in her opinion.

“There’s so many different types of skates and styles of skating. There really is something for everybody out there, for whatever you want to do involving roller skating. I don’t think roller skating is going anywhere,” Webb said.

Webb said during the COVID-19 pandemic, skating had a big resurgence because of this versatility of the sport, and it helped get people out of their houses and remain active during a challenging time.

She said that once the rinks opened back up, there was a whole new audience that picked up the love for roller skating, and that nostalgia factor is what drove people to pursue the sport again.

“You don’t need a lot of space to be able to do it,” Webb said. “There’s so many different styles that you can do. You can just go in and skate by itself as just a physical fitness activity. You can learn how to do dance moves on your roller skates. You can be athletic on your roller skates and do things like playing roller derby, do things like park skating, and learn how to grind on bars and do flips off of ramps. It’s just such a versatile activity.”