Holiday on Ice

Defying Mother Nature’s usual way, Tuesday--the penultimate day of 1997--was one of the warmest December 30ths in memory in Los Angeles, registering 81 degrees at the Civic Center downtown.

Defying Southern Californians’ usual way, Carlton Powell didn’t head for surf and sand. Instead, he made a beeline for a large patch of ice, laced up a pair of skates and spent the afternoon going round in circles under blue skies and bright sunshine, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, shorts and a baseball cap.

“I grew up skating,” said Powell, 37, a mechanical engineer who lives in Glendale. “I’m from the Bay Area.”

Welcome to the skating rink at Universal CityWalk, the only outdoor ice rink in Los Angeles. At a place where reality is virtual and projected on a screen, someone has invented a frosty way for Angelenos to get a taste of “real” winter.

But forget Currier & Ives. Ditch the images of skaters gliding along in Rockefeller Center, their scarves trailing, their hands mittened, their breath frozen in air. This was singularly L.A., from the skaters’ bare arms and legs to the blaring beat of the Pet Shop Boys to the nearby movie marquees to the two-story guitar standing sentinel outside the adjacent Hard Rock Cafe.

For some visitors accustomed to the real McCoy, it didn’t quite add up.

“Do you want the truth?” Manhattan-raised Lauren Landress asked a reporter, whose mission it was to uncover such.

“It doesn’t have the New York charm.”

In Central Park’s Wollman Rink, Landress explained, “you’re surrounded by magnificent trees and the whole beautiful architecture of the Upper West Side.” In Rockefeller Center, the “decorations are spectacular,” likewise the Art Deco surroundings and the sculptures, said Landress, a 45-year-old public-relations executive now living in the Hollywood Hills.

“In defense of this, it’s wonderful that they have it,” she continued, waving her hand at the CityWalk rink. But back East, “it’s the real thing.”

Her father was blunter. “The idea is great--that I can tell you,” said Sy Yankus, 72, visiting for the holidays from New York. But “aesthetically, it doesn’t compare. It needs”--he paused, then settled on a word all Hollywood would understand--”development.”

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Plenty of people would agree that CityWalk’s outdoor rink is a great idea. Since it opened for business the day after Thanksgiving, visitors have flocked to the rink each day by the hundreds, shelling out up to $9 for each hourlong skating session, according to a CityWalk representative.

“Yesterday was mobbed,” spokeswoman Audrey Eig said. “The holidays are here now.”

As a pastiche of an East Coast experience, however, the rink, which shuts down on Sunday until next fall, throws a crisp midwinter light on the peculiar Southern California mentality at this time of year. We can’t stop bragging about our all-season beautiful weather--but when it comes to Christmas, we dream of a white one.

Perhaps it’s only human nature, the view that the grass is somehow greener (or the Christmas whiter) at the other end of the thermometer. Maybe it comes down to L.A.’s relative youth, which forces us to import traditions from elsewhere (unlike the CityWalk rink, which has been open for five years, skaters have cut the Rockefeller Center ice for decades). Or maybe it’s just the curse of status-conscious Southern Californians to envy the Big Apple and suffer from the kind of insecurity that enriches therapists.

But this being self-promotional Hollywood, what might be called a knockoff is instead touted as an innovation, as avant-garde.

“The architecture of CityWalk is over the top, edgy. They were trying to bring something edgy” to the southeast end of the strip, said Eig.

True, it is the only outdoor rink in Los Angeles, though not in all Southern California. The same company that operates the facility at CityWalk has one in Orange County, at Disneyland.

At 4,000 square feet, however, the CityWalk rink is much smaller than indoor rinks such as the well-known Pickwick ice arena in Burbank (17,000 square feet) as well as the outdoor rink at Rockefeller Center (8,400 square feet). Because of the warm temperatures and the crowds, the operators must smooth the quickly slushy ice with a Zamboni every hour.

“There’s too many people,” said Matthew Long, 15, a lanky hockey player from Eagle Rock who swooped and sliced around the rink with speed and assurance. “I have to dodge the little kids because they’re all over the place.”

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In spite of the space constraints, most everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves Tuesday afternoon. Not expertly--the patrons are “99% inexperienced,” said rink manager Phil Valentine--but adequately.

“It’s our first time on ice, as you can see,” said Tony Manning, 35, a vacationer from Dublin, Ireland, who caromed around with his 5-year-old son, Ross. “We’re getting there, slowly but surely. We’ve fallen two or three times, but we’re still standing.”

As it happens, living in Southern California can actually provide an edge when it comes to picking up the skill. All that in-line skating--on wheels, say at the Venice Boardwalk--is good preparation for ice skating.

Powell, the Glendale engineer, goes in-line skating once a week. That, coupled with his experiences as a child in the Bay Area, keeps him agile on the ice. Not that there aren’t occasional mishaps, but he isn’t worried.

“Falling on ice isn’t a problem. It’s falling on your Rollerblades on concrete that’s a problem,” he said. “Here you just slide.”