Career comes full circle
As a champion indoor speed skater, Shaun Pattison zoomed around rinks from Mexico to Denmark at speeds approaching 35 miles an hour. Six weeks ago, he became a fourth-generation roller rink owner and he’s moving even faster.
Pattison, 27, and his 26-year-old wife Jericho are the new owner-operators of Pattison’s North skating rink, a Spokane staple for some 50 years. Originally called Cook’s North Division, it was built in the mid-1940s, he said.
Pattison’s granddad took it over and gave it the family moniker in 1951. It’s been in the family ever since and is one of five Pattison-owned rinks around the state, he said.
A great-grandfather started the family trend in the 1930s by owning a rink south of Seattle; Shaun Pattison bought the Spokane rink from an uncle.
Open seven days a week, the rink hosts open sessions, birthday parties, family nights, school and church events and often opens for kids on school holidays.
On an ordinary Saturday afternoon, 250 preteens can be found swarming to the beat of the cartoon-inspired “Crazy Frog,” “The Bird Dance,” or the “Hokey Pokey.”
Teenagers flock in on Saturday evenings, swirling to pop tunes under flashing disco lights, black lights and a fog machine.
Among the regulars are an older couple who skate the cha-cha as they have for about 50 years, a Tri-Cities family who drives up weekends and a couple of Montana dudes who skate Saturday mornings.
“This is where my dad (Mike) grew up,” Pattison said, nodding towards the rink’s 95-foot-by-175-foot Grade A maple planks, bathed in pink and green neon lights.
His father opened Federal Way’s Pattison’s West when Shaun was sixth months old. That’s where he laced up his first tiny pair of quads — traditional roller skates his dad handcrafted for him a quarter-century ago.
Shaun Pattison “girl-ized” the black leather skates, adding pink wheels and laces, for the couple’s two-year-old daughter Kennadi, who spins around the rink, but only when the spirit moves her.
“She’s a moody skater,” Pattison said with a laugh.
Part of the appeal of running the rink, he said, is being surrounded by family. His wife works the ticket stand and does general accounting. He does all the building maintenance, repairs skates, schedules 20 employees, stocks the snack and pizza concessions and runs the DJ booth, ensuring a “squeaky-clean” play list, he said.
Best of all, the couple brings their tow-headed little girl and their mellow Neapolitan Mastiff, Charlie, to the rink almost every day.
“I’ve been in training all my life to do this,” Pattison said in a recent interview. “It’s kind of neat seeing my daughter doing the same thing.”