DISCO'S NOT DEAD ★ a fan page for Southgate Roller Rink

WELCOME, NIGHT SKATERS 🛼

YOU ARE VISITOR № 00048127

🚧 UNDER CONSTRUCTION — PLEASE PARDON OUR DISCO DUST 🚧

♫ now playing: stayin_alive.mid

Hi hi hi! DJ Dottie here. I built this little page to keep the flame lit for the greatest place on eight wheels — Southgate Roller Rink in White Center, spinning records and skaters since 1938. My mom did the couples skate here in a gold jumpsuit. I did my first backwards crossover here. If you skated Southgate in the summer of '79, you know there was magic in that mirror ball.

They keep saying disco died in 1979. Well — this page says otherwise, and so does every skater who ever hit the floor when the organ gave way to the four-on-the-floor. Disco's not dead. It just keeps rolling. 💿

— Dottie ✌️ (page last updated 8/14/99)

🎶 TONIGHT'S LINEUP (as posted at the rink, forever)

Shake Your Groove Thing · Peaches & Herb — 1979
Knock On Wood · Amii Stewart — 1979
Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now · McFadden & Whitehead — 1979
Tragedy · Bee Gees — 1979
Every 1's a Winner · Hot Chocolate — 1978
One Nation Under a Groove · Funkadelic — 1978
Night Fever · Bee Gees — 1977

📸 DOTTIE'S SCRAPBOOK — scanned on the library flatbed, 1999

mom's shoebox of rink photos!! i scanned my favorites before they fade.

a dark roller rink hall glowing with a neon ROLLER DISCO sign and colored lights — saturday night!! when the big lights go down the whole floor hums.

a mirror ball throwing squares of light across a dark room — the magic itself. mom says every wish you make under one comes true slowly.

blue quad roller skates with yellow wheels — rental blues with the yellow wheels — JUST like my first pair. i cried when i outgrew them.

aerial photograph of the Kingdome stadium in Seattle — the concrete moon 🌙 (dad called it that first)

the Space Needle photographed from its base in 1979 — the needle, '79. dad laid on the sidewalk to take this. a cop laughed at him.

downtown Seattle street with the Space Needle in the distance, 1970s — downtown, back when. we took the 22 bus in from white center for skate night.

Southgate Roller Rink in White Center, a blue barrel-roofed building with its sign lit and windows glowing at dusk — the rink itself!! walked up with my camera at dusk and the windows were glowing like 1979 never ended.

Southgate in its Skate Center days, the same barrel-roofed building with old script lettering and a pickup truck out front — and here it is back in its "Skate Center" days!! same roof, same magic, different paint.

📖 GUESTBOOK — sign it or the mirror ball cries

RollerRex84 · 08/14/1999

cool page dottie!! southgate 4ever. i did the limbo there in 79 and my back still remembers

DiscoDeb · 03/02/2000

my husband proposed during couples skate 1981!!! the organ played our song. crying rn (that means "right now" my grandkid taught me)

xX_Sk8rBoi_Xx · 11/30/2001

this page loads fast on dialup. respect.

WheelsMcGee · 07/04/2003

anyone else remember the night the whole rink did the hustle at the same time and the floor kinda… hummed? no? just me?

a satisfied customer · 08/20/2026

came back for a summer i misplaced. found it. thank you for the dance. p.s. for the four night skaters who know me: this website keeps one page it will not admit to. ask it for a page that isn't there. ✌️ — t.

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