When Usher isn’t skating at the Super Bowl, he’s at this legendary rink
Alexander owns Cascade Family Skating in Atlanta, a legendary space for roller skating, particularly for Black skaters. Usher pops up at other popular local rinks, including Sparkles in Smyrna, Ga., but Alexander said Usher started coming to Cascade about a decade ago — sometimes skating there two or three times a month to stay sharp.
“Can you imagine somebody like Usher with 500, 600 people and nobody cares?” Alexander said, noting the number of skaters the rink sometimes draws.
Cascade is a special space for skaters and is extremely well maintained, said Tasha Klusmann, roller skate historian and curator of the National African American Roller Skating Archive.
“It is a vibe,” she said.
Roller skating has had a resurgence in recent years, especially within Black communities, Klusmann said. Skating is a perfect cultural fit for Black Americans, she said, because it embraces multigenerational gatherings along with the free expression of movement like dance and an opportunity to show off skills.
“It actually is the perfect mirror of the Black community,” she said.
Klusmann said roller skating began as an activity for the affluent in the 1800s because it required open space, like a ballroom, to skate. Once it came outdoors, skating started to be available to everyone, she said. That created a popularity boom that sparked a comeback for indoor skating.
Just over a century ago, skating rink owners brought in organs and people would skate to waltzes. After the jukebox craze of the 1950s made on-demand music more common, rink owners began playing recorded music in the ’70s. This is where regional skating styles were born, Klusmann said, as rink owners played music that was popular in their areas.
“That kind of flavor or regional difference that shows up in the music, the dress, the talk also happened in roller skating,” she said.
The literal sonics of the area informed how people skated.
Just as hip-hop was beginning to form its regional identities, the Atlanta Aggressive style was born — decades before the city’s intense trap music sound would take over dance floors and airwaves across the country. (She said Usher showed off the Atlanta Aggressive style during his Las Vegas residency.)
Positioning themselves to ride that early wave, Alexander and his aunt bought a struggling roller skating rink in Atlanta in 1993. They later opened Cascade on the city’s west side.
A giant neon script reading “Cascade” greets skaters as they walk in the doors. Inside there’s more neon and funky carpet leading to the hardwood rink, where people dressed in everything from T-shirts to designer blouses glide around. Alexander created the design for Cascade himself, with a restaurant and lounge on a second floor deck overlooking the rink.
Alexander himself is not a skater. He sprained his wrist while skating when he was 14, and he didn’t step foot inside a rink again until he bought one nearly two decades later.
He said he opened the business to give families a place for safe fun. He said he spends at least $100,000 on security every year, which shocks other rink owners. “We felt like we were babysitters babysitting people’s most prized possessions,” he said.
He said he tries hard to provide a safe space for families because he never had one himself. Alexander, one of 17 children, said his parents didn’t make memories with him.
“I didn’t have any memories of going to a movie or a ballgame or a park with my mom or my dad,” he said.
Cascade cost $2.5 million to build in 1999, Alexander said, and he was turned down by nine banks when trying to finance it. His mother passed away before it was built.
The rink’s opening coincided with an early-2000s movement by adult Black skaters to spread regional styles nationwide.
Cascade quickly became a hub for celebrities, which Atlanta has plenty of as a rap capital. The rink has even hosted music royalty: Beyoncé held her 21st birthday at Cascade. It was around the time she was starring in the Austin Powers movie “Goldmember,” so Bey’s camp spent $50,000 decorating the rink gold and white, Alexander said.
“Boy, she skated all night,” he said.
Many of the Atlanta celebrities Usher brought onstage at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas — including Ludacris, Lil Jon, will.i.am and Jermaine Dupri — have spent nights skating in Cascade, Alexander said.
As for the headliner himself, Usher drew raves for his Super Bowl skating, with Washington Post reviewer Chris Richards writing, “If it looked like the whole world was sliding beneath his feet it was because he was on top of it.”
Alexander said 45-year-old Usher takes lessons to grow his skills but will also roll up next to someone at the rink and ask them to teach him how they just pulled off a move.
“Usher is a really good skater,” Alexander said. “He’s not up there with the best of them, but he can hold his own.”
