10/16/2026
Book Your Appointment and Put Rink Rat in the Notes & You'll Get a 10% Discount
For 61 years, a roller rink in Alexandria, Kentucky was the only social network Campbell County kids really needed.
Four local men opened RECA Roller Rink in 1958, in a building they'd honestly planned to tear down before deciding to put a skating floor in it instead. Over the decades it passed between a couple of owners, most recently a family that bought it when their daughter was just 10 years old and kept it running for another 36 years. On a good weekend night, the place would pull in more than 400 skaters, with lines stretching down the hill all the way to the highway, and the owners even bought their own school bus at one point just to haul kids in from Silver Grove.
Here's the detail that gets people every time: regulars at RECA weren't just customers, they had a nickname, "rink rats," and by most accounts if you grew up in that part of Northern Kentucky and didn't hang out at the rink, people genuinely thought something was wrong with you. It survived into 2018, when burst pipes flooded the office and rippled the skating floor, and after that the repair bills and dwindling crowds finally caught up with it. The last session, fittingly called "One Last Roll," happened in 2020, and Campbell County hasn't had a roller rink since.
Were you a "rink rat" at RECA, or did your family skate at one of the other Northern Kentucky rinks that are still hanging on?
📷 AI-generated historical illustration. Not an archival photograph.
