ISSAQUAH — At a bygone Bartell Drugs building in Issaquah, a pair of dazzling neon roller-skate-shaped signs glow in the darkened windows. Inside, balloons float, music blares and a mirrored disco ball scatters color across a hollowed-out storeroom floor.

This is Rock and Roll Roller Rink, the first brick-and-mortar roller rink to open on the Eastside in decades, according to its founders. The unconventional nonprofit, which debuted last month, was years in the making, beginning as a monthly pop-up before finding its home. 

“Before we opened here, there was a 40-mile gap on the Eastside between rinks,” said Ayla Web, a founder of the rink. 

Now, with a year to prove itself, the hope is that Rock and Roll — born out of the loss of other beloved rinks across the Greater Seattle area — can become a longtime space for family-friendly, community-building fun. 

Born and raised on the Eastside, Ayla has been skating since age 5 and started working at Bellevue’s popular Skate King at 16. She was there for nearly a decade until it shut down in 2015. Since then, other roller rinks in the area have followed suit: Bremerton’s Skateland closed in 2019, followed by Auburn Skate Connection in 2020, Everett Skate Deck in 2022 and Tacoma’s Skateworld in 2024. 

“When Skate King closed, it put a hole in my wife’s heart,” said Spencer Web, Ayla’s husband. 

He also worked at Skate King as a teenager and saw it through its final days while juggling a multitude of other customer service jobs. Now, he volunteers at Rock and Roll, supporting his wife’s vision of establishing a long-term rink in the community. 

“Skate King was kind of my family and home,” said Ayla. “I decided it was time for a new rink for the Eastside.”

After years of tossing ideas around, concepts for the nonprofit began to materialize. Two other founders — husband and wife Ed Mills and Irene Pasternack — worked with Ayla to get it off the ground, helping with fundraising efforts and investigating potential partnerships with cities on the Eastside and with King County. 

“As a nonprofit, city, states and government agencies are interested in working with you,” said Mills, who serves on the board of the organization as treasurer. He also regularly volunteers at the rink as an instructor and at the front desk.

In 2025, the organization received a green light from the city of Issaquah to host a monthly pop-up roller rink at the Pickering Barn, a multiuse recreation space. Once a month, volunteers would fill a U-Haul with skating equipment to build a rink from scratch at the top of the day and tear it down at the end of the night.

“It was hard to get spots, so scheduling was difficult. We were hauling in hundreds of pounds of boxes. Most people would describe it as unsustainable,” said Mills.

Despite the challenges, Ayla and Mills said that the pop-up attracted large crowds, sometimes bringing in over 400 people. With this show of support, a permanent home seemed the logical next step.

Earlier this year, after hitting roadblocks looking for a suitable building, Mills said that they found the old Bartell on East Lake Sammamish Parkway. The organization signed a short-term lease with the landlord, who Mills said agreed to give them a year to find out if the rink could sustain itself in full operation.

Until Rock and Roll, the closest rinks that Issaquah residents had access to were El Centro Skate Rink in Federal Way and Lynnwood Bowl and Skate — the 40-mile gap Ayla was referring to — along with Seattle’s Southgate Roller Rink and Arcade. All of these are at least a 30-minute drive from Issaquah.

Rock and Roll is open six days a week, excluding Mondays, offering all-ages open rink hours, themed nights and an instructional summer camp. The rink is primarily run on donations and ticket sales for daily skating sessions, monthly passes, summer camps and hosting birthdays or other large group events. There’s no charge for visitors who just want to watch. Plus, if you’re interested in DJing, you can take lessons for free. 

The rink is still growing into itself: For those who may have frequented the old Bartell, the skeleton of the building has not changed much.

“We’re kind of bare bones industrial,” said Cliff Alcordo, who has been volunteering with the rink since its pop-up days. He got involved with it after running into Ayla at a classic car show in Issaquah, recognizing her from her time at Skate King.

During a recent Thursday’s Duran Duran-themed night, Alcordo worked behind the skate rental window that used to be a pharmacy counter. Instead of prescriptions, he was in charge of handing out pairs of inline and quad skates to customers. A mixture of families, teenagers, hobbyist skaters and die-hard Duran Duran fans showed up ready to hit the linoleum 

“I’m just here to help keep moving it along, you know. There’s no harm in trying,” said Alcordo. 

Alcordo spent large stretches of his childhood on military bases, where he could always count on three things: a movie theater, a bowling alley and a roller rink. 

“In your 20s and 30s, people either take up cycling, martial arts, running, whatever activity. I found skating,” he said. “That sustained me for 10 years. Kept me out of trouble and in shape.”

Alcordo’s two sons also volunteer at the rink on occasion, allowing them to skate for free. The rink will soon usher in more volunteers as part of a King County job training program; given its nonprofit status, it’s also eligible to offer community service hours. 

Pasternack said that they are making a particular effort to ensure that volunteers through the county program will gain job experience as well as utilize their existing talents, like creating artwork for the rink’s walls or improving point-of-sale technology systems. 

Even as the rink continues to expand in size and scope, its future is still to be determined. 

The ultimate goal, the founders said, is to stick around as long as possible. Under their nonprofit status, they are determined to purchase their own building — the one they’re currently in or another if need be — as a protected asset, sheltering the rink from being turned into another business or bought out by developers.

“There’s just been a lack of community activities for people to do” in the Eastside, said Spencer. “Bowling alleys have been closing down. The roller rinks have either suffered fires, floods or real estate developers.”

For now, the founders are happy to be providing the Eastside with a roller rink of its own.

According to Ayla and Mills, daily attendance at Rock and Roll has fluctuated since its opening, from 10 people to dozens. These numbers don’t surprise them: Ayla said that roller rinks across the country tend to see fewer visitors during the summer. When school starts back up and temperatures start to drop, she hopes that they will see larger groups of 80 to 100 (the rink’s max capacity is 230).

“It brings people together. It’s healthy exercise. … It’s a meeting place,” said Ayla. “It’s the business of happiness.”

For Matthew Flora, a Rock and Roll monthly pass holder and speedskater, the new rink’s opening is a hopeful changing tide. 

Flora typically skates with his team at El Centro Skate Rink, but the new Issaquah rink is conveniently located for leisure. He glided effortlessly and quietly around the rink on Duran Duran night, neither getting in the way nor outshining more wobbly-kneed newcomers, exemplifying the rink’s goal as an accessible, community-centered space.

“The Pacific Northwest used to be a dominating force in indoor inline speed skating,” Flora said. “We’ve suffered a lot because so many rinks have closed. … That’s what makes this exciting.”