THE BROOKLYN ROLL: Enter The Roller Rink / Concert Venue Xanadu

In the heart of Brooklyn, New York’s Bushwick neighborhood, sits a plethora of music venues. Each weekend night finds 20-somethings stumbling from door to door, popping into warehouses and clubs from the second the sun goes down to when it comes back up. The neighborhood is constantly booked and busy, with top-tier talent performing every weekend in nearly every venue, making it hard for fans to decide what their itinerary will contain. And, with the neighborhood highly competitive due to its high volume of shows, Xanadu figured out a way to stand out.

The roller rink music venue provides a whole new experience for fans, allowing them to skate the night away with their favorite artists either DJing or playing a live show. The venue hosted Four Tet performing under his real name, Kieran Hebden, on Jan. 12, as part of Winter Jazz Fest, and Teksupport teamed up with Thriftshoppe to enter the venue on Feb. 15.

“Thriftshoppe is all about expanding a clubgoer’s horizon,” says Olena Ferrer of Teksupport and Thriftshoppe. “We aim to recreate the thrift store atmosphere at our parties, and Teksupport has a knack for producing top-notch events at unusual venues. Xanadu has brought an extra dimension to the table by providing our guests with an opportunity to roller skate for a part of the night while we were able to introduce some of the Xanadu regulars to the Teksupport x Thriftshoppe experience, which included a vintage market, a tattoo station, and a secret ‘bathroom break’ party in one of the bathrooms. Fantastic venue and staff. We’ll be back for more!”

The room itself, with a concert capacity of about 1,000, can adapt for a variety of live shows, with DJs having the opportunity to perform in the round as attendees skate around them, or to block off the end of the room for fans to watch performers on stage in a traditional venue setting.

Varun Kataria came up with the idea for the roller-rink-slash-music-venue before he even really knew how to roller skate. He wanted something fresh and exciting for the area, the idea coming to him after the pandemic. He saw how the supply chain issues impacted the live sector, and that society felt the need for gathering places.

“I realized that society makes it difficult for businesses to function,” Kataria says. “The kind of models that we have to function, the business models, the profit margins, price and labor pressures, make it hard to do this thing and survive. I felt I needed to imagine a different model that could be sustainable and resilient through a crisis, and I needed to lean in harder on the core function of our business, which is to create gathering spaces for people to connect.”

He realized if he created a venue that served a dual purpose, it might be easier to keep afloat. Kataria felt a roller rink could be the same model of a music venue, with a giant floor, lighting and sound. He felt that, with a bit of imagination, a roller rink could work as a club and an aesthetic rink. Kataria then got himself a pair of skates, and started learning how to use them while checking out different venues.

He doesn’t describe himself a great skater, but admits he’s gotten pretty good throughout the course of this project. Once the wooden floors of Xanadu were laid out, he was able to start practicing every day, and he still heads to the venue five times a week where he throws on his skates and glides around.

“I feel like it’s an important American pastime that has been around through the eras,” Kataria says. “Whether it was vaudeville, disco, R&B, hip-hop, there seems to be a parallel of rollerskating culture that piggybacks off of American popular culture. There are literally no other indoor, year-round roller rinks in New York. There had to have been dozens through the years, but when the last rink closed in Staten Island, that left us as the only one in the city.”

Xanadu’s lineup features a wide breadth of music, providing something for everyone. Fans can come in for jazz nights, catch metal shows, find a house music show and every possible thing in between. Kataria emphasizes how roller skating is an activity that puts people in their bodies, making sure they’re present with themselves and others in the room, heightening the live music experience.

“We wanted to build this bridge between skate culture and dance culture, because they really are related. They’re almost like cousins,” Kataria says. “Skating is dancing on wheels. There are incredibly talented skate DJs that are doing amazing stuff with music and remixes, and I think it’s very relevant to dance and rave culture. Building the bridge is evident in our format, we have very musically-driven skate sessions and also concerts and purely music events without skates.”

As Kataria has been working with music venues throughout his entire career, he understood the needs of one. When he began diving into the research of a roller rink, he discovered the two operated quite similarly. The only major difference was that in music venues fans remain static. In roller rinks, they’re always moving around, and so the sound coverage becomes a bigger challenge.

“It was an interesting exercise to think about the different performance formats in a rink,” he says. “Because a rink is not a traditional auditorium or venue, it gives you a lot more flexibility. We have a main stage, but we also have little side positions. It’s been really awesome doing things in the round, having them off to the sides and on the main stage. It keeps the experience interesting and fresh. You can see two events back-to-back, and they’re going to feel very different – almost like you saw them at two different venues.”