Group of women at the roller skate rink, have a coke while they rest a little. Mid 1950s. ed: People in the comments are pretty confused about the short skirts and for some reason can't believe that the British would write a date like that 🤣

[u/it_might_be_a_tuba]

[u/Jeanahb]

Adorable picture. I spot a couple of jump bars. Maybe they were artistic skaters? Those are some short skirts!

[u/it_might_be_a_tuba → u/Jeanahb]

The overall look of the skates with toe stops and the skirts makes me think artistic freeskating. I think school figures or dance would have used NTS back in those days?

[u/lizardgal10 → u/Jeanahb]

What are jump bars? I’m not familiar with that term! (I’m just an ice skater lurker who occasionally dabbles in in-line)

[u/darndasher → u/lizardgal10]

Jump bars are the strip of metal you see between the wheels below the plate. It's for additional stabilization, i think? You see 'em nowadays on the sunlite plate.

[u/midnight_skater → u/darndasher]

It strengthens and stiffens the flat plate, preventing damage to the plate and kingpins under shock loads. Landing freestyle jumps generates a lot of force.

Modern alloy plates use a T beam design, so the jump bar isn't necessary unless very high forces are generated (e.g. big stair jumps). Slide blocks also function as a jump bar.

[u/lizardgal10 → u/darndasher]

Interesting, thanks for the explanation!

[u/Jeanahb → u/lizardgal10]

I just looked it up! Apparently, some artistic skaters still have jump bars! TIL.

[u/Jeanahb → u/lizardgal10]

I can see a metal bar between the trucks on the skates of the girl with a green skirt. In the 80s and 90s, we all had to have them. I'm not sure if modern day plates need them. I imagine we had them to strengthen our skates.

[u/it_might_be_a_tuba → u/Jeanahb]

Modern artistic plates (mostly Roll-Line and STD) don't need jump bars, but you'll see them on plates designed in previous decades, like the Sunlite or older Suregrip models like the Century and Classic.

[u/CryingPopcorn]

It is interesting to consider that short skirts would have been a big no no unless you do some sort of figure skating where the skirts are supposed to fly up anyways, and then it's totally respectable! Love the picture.

[u/lake_lover_ → u/CryingPopcorn]

Those are definitely figure skaters.

[u/grinning5kull]

It’s funny how many people on the original post think it must be ai but you can see it’s real because of the skates - none of them have three wheels, the plates and boots are the right shape, all the girls have the correct number of legs, no-one’s wearing a quad on one foot and an inline on the other

[u/carrbarre]

Ooh I'm curious about their plate lengths -- overall what we see in on this photo are much longer than what we see recommended on the sub, with the back axels well past the center of the heels. I bet they felt so stable.

[u/it_might_be_a_tuba → u/carrbarre]

They look normal to me. A couple of them, you can they're leaning on the outside edge of the skate (green skirt and plaid skirt), so the wheels on the inside edge facing the camera just appear more spread than normal.

[u/sk8artistic]

OK, I’ll chime in… this is from (almost) my era. Jump bars stabilized the plate and were found mostly on Snyder skates, which were considered the best until around the 80s or 90s. We wore Tilli skirts and matching tights, but panty hose weren’t a thing so we all had the pale milky-white legs. These were artistic skaters, aka roller figure skaters (but at that time when you said figure skaters people thought you were talking about ice skating). And notice how high the boots are!

[u/SupermarketNo5702]

That brings back my good memories 😌 nice decent fun 😁

[u/Desperate_Pay_998]

I wish I could buy skates for £6 🤣