Roller skating labels were one of the earliest paper goods I collected. It all started when I purchased a book called Skate Crazy: Amazing Graphics From the Golden Age of Roller Skating by Lou Brooks. The book featured history of the glory days of roller skating. He defined the era of 1937-1959 as “the golden age.” After reading the book I began to scour the internet for labels. I have accumulated over 130 different labels from acrosss the United States.
As with my previous installment of The Collection Collection, there will be a dozen examples of items from my archives.
During the age popularity for roller skating roller rinks would produce a sticker/label with a rink or roller skate theme containing the name and address of the rink. The labels, often colorful with eye-catching graphic were not only advertising for the rinks, they were collectors items. You went to a roller rink, you got a label and affixed it to a scrapbook or your roller skate case. The more labels you had, the more places you have been skating, unless you decided to skip all of that traded labels with other collectors.
I found an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer from October 3, 1964 that provides a pretty thorough history of label collecting.
They're the Universal Roller Skating Sticker Exchange, founded to "promote the sport of roller skating and to advance the hobby of rink sticker collecting." Many roller-skating rinks circulate stickers advertising their establishments and today, in fact, special stickers are Issued for URSSE conventions.
Thirty years and more ago skaters started mounting souvenir stickers on their skate cases. As they visited more and more rinks and their collections grew they started using albums. Trading and correspondence among collectors began. Some collectors branched out into collecting rink post cards and pins, club stickers, and "felts" emblems issued by some rinks for sewing onto skating Jackets (secretary-treasurer Joe Devonshire's "felt" album weights 39 pounds!).
In 1948, Mr. Devonshire says, 28 "strangers" met in New York and organized the exchange. They've met annually since, despite the saddening decline in roller-skating they've had to observe.
There's also a high turnover in URSSE membership, Mr. Devonshire discloses some new members seem to grow appalled at the difficulty of collecting the 8000 rink stickers URSSE officers estimate are available worldwide.
The fluctuating roster averages about 200 members, but in the 17 years there have been 3000 names on the rolls, from all 50 states and as far off as Australia and New Zealand, and even one from Bombay, India.
Men and women of all ages from pre-teens up are members, and love of roller-skating as a hobby generally preceded their sticker-collecting interest.
Mr. Devonshire sees the rise of the drive-In movie and the popularization of bowling as chief reasons for the decline temporary, he hopes of roller skating. The nonprofit operation (at a buck-a-year dues it couldn't be much else!) consists mostly of circulating membership lists so collectors can keep In touch with one another.
Due to the advent of TV, bowling, and numerous other factors, roller skating and label trading eventually fell out of fashion. The collectors moved on and the buildingsthe buildings replaced by chain drug stores or leveled to become a vacant parking lot.
As with my postcards and matchcovers there may not be much information to be found about these roller rinks. The labels may be the only piece left. I feel like sharing these may help, in a very small way, save the name and legacy of these places and serve as a visual reiminder that roller skating truly was a barrel o’ fun.