"Ice-skating at one of the city's public rinks can be annoying: schlepping your stuff on the subway, sometimes with a child in tow; lines; rental fees; and dodging speed-demon teens or stumbling first-timers. Plus, LeFrak's hours are indecipherable. So what's an aspiring Shane Hollander to do? Well, have you considered building your own backyard ice rink? Lauren Collins Peterson, co-founder of the reproductive-rights organization Abortion in America and former figure skater, spent this winter figuring out how to do just that."
"Last winter was a really tough time in our household. One of my favorite people in the world passed away from aggressive brain cancer, I was in the middle of a very complicated pregnancy, and we had a lot of family stuff going on. It was just a hard time. And so this year, I could not face the prospect of another bleak, depressing January, and I really needed something to look forward to that would make me excited about frigid weather."
"I was a figure skater growing up in Wisconsin, and this was something I begged my parents to do as a kid. So I got this crazy idea that I could build myself a rink in the backyard. I started to follow the Minnesota hockey dads of YouTube and Instagram who are building these so they can get their kids out there practicing hockey at 6 a.m. before school."
Lauren Collins Peterson converted a 250-square-foot plot behind her Crown Heights townhouse into a backyard ice rink for her family. She aimed to avoid city-rink hassles like crowded lines, subway schlepping, rental fees, and unpredictable hours. A former figure skater, she drew inspiration from Minnesota hockey dads on YouTube and Instagram and from a childhood wish to have a backyard rink. Personal hardships the previous winter motivated the project as an uplifting, cold-weather activity. Peterson lives with her wife and two children and discussed planning, family involvement, and repurposing a no-man’s-land at the rear of the yard.
Read at Curbed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]