Everyone in an ice rink is smiling.
Have you ever noticed this? Teenagers with hockey skates racing from one side to the other. The moms who gently guide their I-don’t-know-about-this kids across the ice. Couples (there are always couples) holding hands in affection and wanting to remain vertical.
Skaters determined to stay on their feet were smiling and laughing recently on a new patch of ice in New York. Glide, a pop-up ice rink in Brooklyn Bridge Park, brings a different vibe to the New York skating scene. While its bigger and more seasoned cousin, the Rink at Rockefeller Center, is the bona fide destination in town, the Glide is across the river. At a park. It’s quieter. More quirky.
Glide debuted in December and will remain open until March 1st.
It’s right under the bridge, making you feel like you can almost touch the blue bricks of the bridge’s Brooklyn tower. Ferries and barges on the East River hum. And when night falls, Manhattan turns on its lights, seemingly just for you.
If ever there was a place with Instagram written all over it, this is it.
Or TikTok. That’s how Dorian Herrera and Fernanda Fernandez of the Bronx, both 17, learned about the scenic spot. They spent about an hour on the ice, holding each other and laughing under the lights.
“It was a lot of fun,” Ms. Fernandez said. “I feel like I was going fast.”
As stunning as the $400 million campus is now, this part of Brooklyn was anything but in the days before the park. In 1984, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey ended its freight operations at the Brooklyn Piers and planned to sell the land for commercial development. By then, the place was abandoned and supposed to be to be visited only by younger people, a reputation gained in the 1970s and 80s.
The land remained barren for decades. In 2002, the State and City of New York, under Governor George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, agreed to fund a park at the site.
Early renderings of the park, dating back to 2005, included an ice rink as a draw in the winter, according to Eric Landau, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, which manages Brooklyn Bridge Park. The first sections of the park opened in 2010 and now encompasses 85 acres, stretching along 1.3 miles of Brooklyn’s shoreline.
But the site intended for the rink, called Emily Warren Roebling Plaza, opened as just a park in 2021, though temporary artwork came ashore under the bridge and pickleball courts reached the piers.
Brooklyn Bridge Park put out a call for proposals in March 2023, and IMG, the sports management group, submitted a bid in May. IMG partnered with BSE Global, the parent company for Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets.
“We were perfectly positioned to bring this rink to life,” said Judi Ludovico, vice president of IMG Events. Prior to this project, IMG was part of a Glide site in London at Battersea Power Station. Ms. Ludovico declined to comment on the financial makeup of the deal with Brooklyn Bridge Park.
For BSE Global, the rink was an opportunity to create another neighborhood gathering place. “We have a long-standing relationship with the Parks Department, having previously collaborated on multiple basketball court renovations in Brooklyn,” Aaron Jakubovitz, BSE Global’s vice president of marketing, said in a statement.
The space they created continues the park’s mission to attract a wide range of New Yorkers—college students, high school students, tourists, toddlers, kids at heart.
Ms. Ludovico, the IMG vice president, declined to disclose the rink’s financial condition, but said in an email: “We are pleased with the performance of the rink.”
Along with the free skates, the rink also hosts many themed nights. The vocal stylings of Taylor Swift, BeyoncĂ© and Harry Styles have already permeated the winter air. February will feature a Valentine’s Day skate and a K-pop night.
To further encourage visitors to get outside, Brooklyn Bridge Park provides free and discounted tickets to New Yorkers on certain days and has subsidized tickets for schools and community centers. Standard tickets for adults are $15 off-peak and $25 peak, while youth tickets cost $10 to $12. “We wanted it to be accessible to everyone,” Landeau said.
On a recent afternoon, Claudia Pasculli, a tourist from Argentina, and her husband picked up their 10-year-old son, who was skating for the first time. Getting on the ice was her son’s idea, she said. But once he got out there, he found out it was a little harder than it looked.
However, Ms. Pasculli had no complaint. “Everyone helped us and gave us some guidance,” he said.
Madeline Rios, 19, and Alrzando Bustillo, 24, of Queens, were also rookies. Both said they had only skated a few times before, but that didn’t stop them from starting and stopping and starting again, making their way around the rink. And to take pictures of course.
“I like the view,” Ms. Rios said.