Lifelong Fishtowners ask city to fix unsafe roller hockey rink

FLYERS IMMORTAL Bobby Clarke blasts the puck past a helpless goalie in the 1973 metal sculpture at the Fishtown Rec Center's roller-hockey rink.

After 40 years of exposure to rain, blistering heat and freezing cold, the metallic Clarke remains forever young, frozen in time. Unfortunately, the rink is not.

Neglected by the city's Department of Parks and Recreation for too many years, the concrete playing surface is so veined with treacherous cracks that roller hockey gave way to foot hockey (sneakers instead of skates) decades ago and has never returned.

A rusted metal roof, supported by vertical beams, hangs high over the rink, but rain can blow in on all sides, then seep under the rotted wooden boards onto the playing surface.

During a recent adult-league playoff matchup between two Fishtown teams, the Ducks and the Snipers, a thunderstorm flooded the rink, delaying the game for an hour while two of the players brought out a propane torch to dry the cement.

One held the big tank while the other held the hose and guided the flame over the puddles.

As his brother Danny sweated over the torch, Bob Mulvenna, who runs the adult foot-hockey league and referees most of the games, said, "I know it looks crazy, but it works.

"Things happen a little differently in Fishtown," he said. "People want to play hockey. I mean, they really want to play hockey."

Mulvenna said that last winter, Paul Omelchuk, a Fishtown roofer, climbed on the rink's rusted roof, removed hundreds of pounds of dead leaves and sealed the dozens of holes that caused games to be canceled last year when it rained.

Mulvenna, 38, a union construction laborer, did his best to hammer loose boards into place around the rink so no one would get hurt, but someone did anyway.

"A guy got his stick stuck in this hole," Mulvenna said, pointing to a rotted-out crevice in the boards. "The other end jammed him so hard in the stomach he had to leave the game.

"Look, I do what I can with a hammer and nails, but I'm not a carpenter. The boards need to be rebuilt. And the rink needs to be resurfaced so we can play roller hockey again."

The Daily News called Parks & Recreation Commissioner Michael DiBerardinis, who quickly sent a staffer to inspect the rink, off Montgomery Avenue near Girard.

"It will take about 300 staff hours to do it, but I think it's within our capacity," DiBerardinis said. "We can do it."

DiBerardinis said he would talk soon with the Fishtown Rec advisory council and the neighborhood's civic groups to make sure everyone is "engaged" in rehabbing the rink.

"We're in our high season right now, running around supporting camps and pools and leagues," DiBerardinis said. "That activity will decline in the latter part of August, so we can come back to Fishtown Rec and do the work from mid-August to mid-September."

That would fulfill Mulvenna's dream of returning the rink to its glory days when the late Tom "Hooker" Lynch lived across the street and refereed hundreds of youth roller hockey games.

After Lynch died from cancer in July 2001, the rink was dedicated in his memory, but it has fallen on such hard times, he wouldn't recognize it.

"It would be so dangerous to skate there today," said A.J. Thomson, who played many a roller hockey game there in Lynch's day, 30 years ago. "I think it would be safer to skate on your sidewalk."

After years of abandonment, the Fishtown rink's current revival as a foot-hockey hotbed began last year when Mulvenna and a few close friends played a pickup game - kids vs. grown-ups - and had so much fun that Mulvenna posted an open "who's got game?" invitation on Facebook.

"Within one day, I had 11 teams signed up," he said. More than 120 guys from Fishtown, Mayfair and Holmesburg to as far away as Levittown just finished men's league playoffs. The kids' league of 75 6-to-12-year-old boys and girls starts a new season in September.

Mulvenna said that if the rink was made safe for roller hockey, the number of youth and adult players would skyrocket.

"This was a softball neighborhood," he said. "But the hockey thing has turned into something crazier than I ever thought would happen. When we're playing hockey here, this place is electric, man. Really electric.

"I'm tired of reading that Fishtown is an up-and-coming neighborhood," Mulvenna said, referring to the recent invasion of young professionals. "We're not up and coming. We've been here all along, man, for generations."

Mulvenna, who proudly calls himself a Towner, looked at his fellow Towners, people he's known all his life, crowded around the rink, ready to cheer and wisecrack and bring the electricity to the game.

"Good, hardworking people," Mulvenna said. "Families. We don't have the money to fix this rink by ourselves. We need Parks & Rec to step up. I hope they do."