Growing up along the Wasatch Front, for most of us, meant a childhood sprinkled with visits to Classic Skating. If you were attending a birthday party in the 1990s, it was at either 49th Street Galleria or Classic Skating. Maybe Seven Peaks water park if it was a summer birthday. But far and away the most popular party location was Classic, with its neon carpet, greasy arcade games, aroma of cheap pizza with a hint of vomit and well-worn skating rink. We loved it there.
It was at Classic Skating where I first held hands with a boy during a mating ritual called “Snow Ball,” wherein young men would line up on one side of the rink and girls would line up on the other. As the lights dimmed and a slow song began to play — in this case it was “Kiss The Girl” from “The Little Mermaid” — the boys would approach the girls, ask them to skate, and together they would circle around the rink, hand in hand. I remember wondering if holding hands was always such a sweaty ordeal and feeling relieved when the lights came back on and we all went back to flailing on our skates to peppier music.
Many of my peers experienced similar life milestones within the walls of Classic in our formative years. Stop any Utah native on the street and ask them to tell you a story about Classic and they’ll have one, no question.
It’s appropriate, then, that two Utah natives paid homage to our collective childhoods at Classic by roller-skating from the location in Orem to the Sandy location in the grand tradition of Utah men participating in made-up, grueling physical activities for the lolz like the Whale-o-thon runners and the Crown Burger consumption tour.
Alexander Nielsen and Weston Borup attended Timpanogos High School together and spent their weekend evenings at Classic Skating’s disco nights, hitting Deseret Industries (Utah’s most prominent thrift shop) for disco-appropriate outfits and Beto’s (Utah’s most prominent drive-thru burrito chain) after.
“I remember looking around at all the other people there and thinking, ‘Oh yeah, this is where we belong,’” Nielsen told me during a call. The two men continued to skate together even while attending school at different universities. Borup would drive from Utah State University in Logan to skate with Nielsen in Provo, where he attended BYU.
“At BYU, the typical college party was much different than the typical college party at any other university,” Nielsen explained. “We had skate parties in the parking garage of Provo apartment buildings and that was like a crazy night.”
Eventually they both finished school. Nielsen got married and had a daughter, and Borup joined the Air Force, where he was an officer for five years. When filling out his application to join the Air Force, one of the fields required him to list any risky activities. He wrote roller-skating.
Recently, Borup moved back to Utah, and the two skating enthusiasts decided it was time to fulfill a long-held dream.
Years ago, during a meeting of BYU Roller Skate Club, Nielsen found himself wondering how many miles he had skated after looping around the rink over and over. “I remember thinking, if we stretched out this rink, what’s the distance that we could go?” he explained. He shared his rumination with Borup, and they concocted a dream of a day when they would skate a couple of laps in the Orem Classic, then skate all the way to Sandy and do a couple of laps there.
That day arrived on June 10, 2025.
They began their journey at 10 a.m., right as the Orem location opened. After one lap, which the employees let them do for free upon learning of their plans, they began their journey to Sandy.
They made their way through a series of connecting trails, primarily uphill, in roller skates. They had water in their packs, and stopped once to get lunch at Wendy’s, where they skated right on up to the cashier, and once to jump in a river and cool off.
They arrived in Sandy at 6 p.m., eight hours after they left Orem. “I remember opening the door to get into Classic Skating,” Nielsen told me. “We felt a rush of air conditioning and it was like an oasis.”
Nielsen and Borup stumbled in through the front doors, dusty and haggard, barely making their way to the front desk, where a woman was working. They told her what they had just accomplished, and she in turn asked if they would be skating to the Layton location next. Unbeknownst to Nielsen and Borup, there is a third Classic Skating another 60 miles north of Sandy in Layton.
They decided not to spend 10 more hours or so skating to the third Classic and instead made a few celebratory laps around the rink and ordered Beto’s breakfast burritos.
“It was really hard,” Borup told me when I asked how they felt after the ride’s conclusion. “But when you do hard stuff like that, you feel good.”
Nielsen made the journey in secondhand Riedell roller skates, because, as he puts it, “I felt like it was more fun to have trashy roller skates.” This decision didn’t make for the easiest recovery, but both he and Borup are now back to doing what they love now — skating at the rink.
They’re chronicling their adventures on Instagram under the handle @skooterbooters, where they welcome other skate lovers to join their community and possible future Classic pilgrimages.
“I’ve made a lot of friends through the roller rink, people that I probably wouldn’t meet any other way,” Nielsen told me. “I think there’s something unique about the kids here. They’re exceptionally goofy in a really fun way.”
“Exceptionally goofy in a really fun way” does, pretty accurately, describe my Utah childhood, due in no small part to the many visits to Classic Skating. And while I have no desire to skate 40 miles in homage, mostly because I no longer own skates, I’m glad Nielsen and Borup do and did.