Moonlight Rollerway- The Roller Skating Rink from “Glee”

One location that I have been dying to stalk for months now is Rinky Dinks, the cabaret/roller rink owned by April Rhodes (aka Kristin Chenoweth) in the Season 1 episode of Glee titled “Home”.  On a quick Glee side note, I just have to say that I was not at all happy with last week’s Britney Spears-inspired episode.  Besides just being disappointing as a whole, I was HIGHLY annoyed with the recreation of the “ . . . Baby One More Time” music video.  That video has to be one of my all time favorites and the fact that they couldn’t even get the costumes right seriously bothered me!  I mean, hello – where were the pink hair pom poms in the opening sequence????  Dressing up like “. . . Baby One More Time”-Britney without those pom poms is like dressing up as the Pope and not wearing a white robe!  I had a better Britney costume when I dressed up like the singer for Halloween back in 1999 and I didn’t have a big Hollywood budget to do it with, either.  Ugh, don’t even get me started!  😉   Anyway, in real life Rinky Dinks is known as Moonlight Rollerway and it is a national historic landmark.  The building which houses it was first constructed in 1940 and was originally used during World War II to build and produce airplane parts.  In 1950, the property was purchased by a man named Harry Dickerman, who transformed the space into a roller rink named Harry’s Roller Rink.  The property was taken over by new owners in 1963, who renamed the place Moonlight Rollerway, as it is still known today.  The rink is currently owned by Dominic Cangelosi, who was named the “RS Gazette Rink Operator of the Year” in 2006.  And the original 1950 maple wood flooring, which measures 75 feet by 170 feet, is the same flooring that Moonlight patrons skate on to this day. 

And while the Grim Cheaper and I did not have time to actually skate at Moonlight Rollerway, the employees there were nice enough to let us inside to snap some pics and take a look around.  They also answered all of my silly little questions about the filming of Glee and confirmed that Matthew Morrison is very cute in person.  😉

I first found out about this location from an acting friend named Alex who had worked as an extra in several scenes of the 2002 gross-out comedy Van Wilder.  One of the scenes he appeared in was the Lambda Omega Mega fraternity party, which he told me had been filmed at Moonlight Rollerway.  

Since that time, I’ve recognized the rink in several other productions, most memorably in the Brett Ratner-directed video for Jessica Simpson’s hit song “A Public Affair”, which also starred Eva Longoria, Christina Applegate, Christina Milian, Maria Menounos, Ryan Seacrest, Andy Dick, and Brent Bolthouse.  And even though Jessica Simpson is easily my least favorite celebrity of all time, for whatever reason I really loved that video.  I am pretty sure that was mostly due to her super-cute skating outfit . . .

. . . which I tried to emulate at a friend’s roller rink birthday party just a few months after the video was released.  🙂

You can watch the “A Public Affair” video by clicking above.

In the “Home” episode of Glee, Will Schuester (aka Matthew Morrison) goes on a search for a venue that the New Directions can utilize as their daily rehearsal space after finding out that Sue Sylvester (aka Jane Lynch) has commandeered their usual spot.  He winds up at Rinky Dinks roller rink, where he finds his old glee club crush April Rhodes, who now owns the place.  Producers changed quite a bit of the interior for the filming of the episode, including adding quite a bit of neon decor to the walls and a stage to the middle of the rink.  You can see the rink dressed for the filming on the Moonlight Rollerway Facebook page here.

The rink’s snack bar and . . .

. . . skate rental area were also used in the episode.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: Moonlight Rollerway, the roller skating rink from the “Home” episode of Glee, is located at 5110 San Fernando Road in Glendale.  You can visit the rink’s official website here.