Serena Brown strapped on her childhood rollerblades to take a spin with her friend Olivia Bettaglio around a blue-yellow-and-pink-checked rink in an unlikely location.
“I saw this pop-up and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s on a roof,” Brown said with a laugh. “So I came out to skate on a roof.”
The two Mission District residents were among dozens of people on a recent weekday to skate under sunny skies on top of a two-story building in the heart of San Francisco, where SVN West set up a pop-up rink at 10 West Van Ness Ave.
Bettaglio, who sometimes skates at the Sixth Avenue rink in Golden Gate Park, said she was curious to check out the new venue, where a DJ provided a soundtrack as skaters with varying skill levels glided around against a backdrop of downtown highrises.
“I just like the new venue,” she said. “It’s in the sun, up high.”
Jayna and Nolan Brunetti, who moved from the Midwest to San Francisco a few years ago, made a date of it for much the same reason.
“I think the fact that it’s on a rooftop, that it’s a beautiful summer day in San Francisco — how could you now come out?” Jayna said.
Nolan said roller-skating reminds him of his childhood in Cincinnati.
“My wife surprised me with a nice roller rink get-together because I haven’t been skating since I was a kid,” he said. “It’s special because it’s a nostalgic thing for me. It’s something I did in Ohio when I was younger. But this, because it’s on a rooftop, it’s cool.”
Victor Tort, a San Franciscan by way of Puerto Rico, could relate to the nostalgia: the last time he laced up a pair of roller skates was decades earlier when he was 9.
“It’s good to have those memories back,” he said.