The roller skates will stop rolling: After 24 years, SkateTown, a family-owned and -operated roller-skating place in Grapevine, is closing its doors.
Owners Mike and Kathy Vouklizas announced the closure on the facility's Facebook page, stating that they sold the property "to pursue retirement."
The rink will close on August 21.
The couple opened the rink at 2330 William D. Tate Ave. in June 1997.
"Our story begins when our owners were just teenagers," they say on their website. "They both grew up with a love for skating, and competed in speed skating competitions until they were in their mid-twenties. They decided to get married and have children and move to the Grapevine area to pursue their dream of one day opening a skating rink of their own."
The venue was a popular destination for parties, and they also gave skating lessons, at a bargain price of $7 for beginner lessons every Saturday at 12 noon. They also offered private lessons, one-on-one with an instructor, starting at $20 for half an hour.
A spokesperson said that the instructors would be relocating to another rink, still to be announced.
The property had been on the market, but the actual sale was somewhat abrupt. The rink was still advertising lessons on July 30.
After the closure was announced, the owners commented that they were forced to cancel a number of parties scheduled back in May, stating, "There are things that we cannot control when selling real estate and that is basically what happened here."
Describing the new movie Pillionis almost an act of futility. It contains a variety of seemingly disparate parts that coalesce into a whole to make it utterly fascinating. Few other recent films have been able to walk the line between filthy and wholesome in quite the way this one does, and that’s only because few other filmmakers would actually dare to try.
It centers on Colin (Harry Melling), a meek man in his mid-thirties who still lives at home with his parents, Pete (Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (Lesley Sharp), while working a dead-end job giving out parking tickets. While performing in a barbershop quartet at his local pub, Colin catches the eye of biker Ray (Alexander Skarsgård), who summons him for a clandestine hook-up the following day (which just so happens to be Christmas Day).
With barely a word exchanged between them, Ray establishes a dominance over Colin that quickly leads to them starting a relationship in which Colin does anything Ray asks. And that means more than just sex: Colin, whether desperate for any kind of affection or unlocking a side of himself he hadn’t known, readily agrees to cook, clean, shop, and basically do whatever else Ray wants him to do.
Written and directed by first-time feature filmmaker Harry Lighton, the film is astonishing in the way it’s able to mine humor from Colin and Ray’s atypical bond. To call Ray “unfeeling” might not be totally accurate, but the way he treats Colin borders on cruel. However, the way Lighton structures the film, it’s easy to understand why someone like Colin would be willing to go along with the situation. It’s both hilarious and heartbreaking to see Colin debase himself in a variety of ways.
On the flip side is Colin’s heartfelt arc with his parents. It’s established right away that Peggy, who is sick with cancer, is a bit too involved with Colin’s love life, with the opening scene featuring her setting him up on a blind date. But their easy acceptance of his queerness and desire to see him find love is as heartwarming as it gets. The juxtaposition between the wholesomeness of their family and Colin’s new life is also the source of a good amount of comedy.
Lighton does not shy away from the sexual side of Colin and Ray’s relationship, and the scenes he depicts are as graphic as you are likely to see in an R-rated film. Some go up to and a little past what might be expected in a mainstream movie (including the use of a certain fake appendage). Other times they play out in a comical way to illustrate just how far Colin has progressed from the person he was when the film started.
Skarsgård, who stole the show in the Charli XCX movie The Moment, is the attraction in more ways than one in this film. The part calls for someone who’s not only impossibly handsome, but also a person who can stop dissent with just a glance, and he lives up to both qualities equally well. Melling, best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies, also embodies his role perfectly. He plays Colin as weak enough to be run roughshod over by Ray, but not so hopeless as to not be worth rooting for.
Pillion (which is the name of the secondary seat on a motorcycle on which Colin rides multiple times in the film) operates at a storytelling level that is difficult to achieve. Many people will not fully understand the film’s central relationship, but the way it is showcased by Lighton makes it compelling, gut-wrenching, and sexy.
