When the owner of Funky’s Skate Center, Joanne Wills, was 17 years old, a fortune-teller envisioned “many wheels” in her future.
Now, “everytime I’m cleaning wheels I think of that woman,” Wills said, laughing.
What the seer didn’t predict was the Miller Circle explosion that rocked Harrisonburg in fall 2020. Beyond the complete devastation of a strip mall — which housed many popular community hubs — it left Funky’s in partial rubble and Wills in considerable debt.
“I didn’t really believe that Funky’s had gotten damaged until I saw the pictures — that definitely hurt,” Maryssa Mottesheard, a manager who was to come in on that morning, said. “We had no idea what the future was going to be.”
Extinguishing hopes
Prior to the explosion, COVID-19 was laying waste to the rink in a different sense.
As with most other businesses, Funky’s was forced to close at the pandemic’s start, only reopening for reserved parties in September of 2020 — such as one that was scheduled for Oct. 17, the day of the blast. This strategy seemed enough to “keep the wolf from the door,” Wills said in a 2020 interview.
Beyond financial issues, however, the pandemic also brought about the makings of an existential crisis for the family business. Wills wondered if anyone would even want to come to a roller rink, given the future uncertainties behind COVID-19. Moreover, seeing loved ones touched personally by the disease, she saw it as a hazard: “You don’t want to do that to your family just to make money.”
Instead, hemorraging money, Wills dropped the insurance on the Funky’s building for that year, despite a history of always having it.
“I’ve never ever used insurance, if something happens I’ll just pay for it,” Wills remembers thinking: “I didn’t expect it to blow up.”
No one did. The explosion, which occured one Saturday morning and would be determined by the city as caused by a natural gas leak, brought down Funky’s ceiling, shattered the windows, cracked its walls and produced a myriad of costly electrical issues.
It also left no one to blame and, therefore, no one to help pay for the damage. Especially with the statute of limitations for pursuing compensation coming up this October, any hope for reparations may be quickly waning.
Without insurance, Wills considered moving on from Funky’s, leaving it to be a relict of the city’s past. However, community outreach — such as that of the local Roller Derby team — and family encouragement created some motivation to push forward.
“It wasn’t really my choice, but I definitely tried to push them to reopen,” Callum Wills, Joanne’s son and a manager at Funky’s, said.
The team helped set up a GoFundMe page, which Mottesheard estimated provided Funky’s with $2,000-$3,000. While helpful, it wasn’t enough to cover repairs, costing around $220,000.
One stroke of luck did bring in some slight profit during the overhaul. While everything else was damaged, the solar panels on Funky’s roof remained intact. The produced electricity, unused by the rink, was sold to the grid.
Still, to save on expenditures, Joanne — with help from family members, Mottesheard, skating enthusiasts and other volunteers — tried to do much of the clean-up and repairs independently, apart from hiring an electrician. According to WHSV, one could find her there almost daily, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., working on mending the property. The work included moving debris, cutting out old ceiling installations and installing new flooring, Callum said.
“Everything, pretty much, here is updated,” Mottesheard said, recalling having to replace everything from walls to doors. She looks at the change optimistically: “This place needed an update and I think it’s much better now that it did have that.”
The refurbished skate center now has an updated lighting system, as well as walls painted by community members, such as JMU students.
Remade and reopened
Before its refurbishment, Joanne described Funky’s — founded in 1974 — as reminiscent of its original decade. When she took over in 2008, she was excited to enhance the facility.
“I was full of energy and enthusiasm,” Joanne said, “but then your business gets going and to do stuff like that, you obviously got to close down.”
In a way, the forced closure allowed for much needed upgrades. If one walks in now, they’ll be greeted by multi-colored LED lights, artistic patterns on the walls — some of which were the work of JMU students — and hundreds of feet gliding on modernized woodwork. Unseen by customers are updates to the electrics of the building, which Joanne said is important improvements to avoid potential fires.
The Harrisonburg community appears to have greeted the November opening enthusiastically, with business keeping the family on a grind.
“It was really busy this year,” Wills said. “Too busy, actually. It was a bit too crazy at the beginning.”
At the start, Funky’s saw a surge in younger customers, around age 12, many of whom had other motivations than just skating. Joanne recalls a fight breaking out, as well as public scenes. This prompted her to lift the age to 16 for night skating, unless one came with a parent. Initially, there was some concern over the financial consequences.
“It did hurt, and it might hurt over the summer a bit,” Joanne said. Yet, “in a way, it ended up [being] a lot nicer place, [with] a lot nicer atmosphere to it.”
Full of families, college kids and couples, many of the clients are recurring members of a familiar community. Cherrie Davis, a customer who comes every other week with her husband to meet up with friends, enjoys the new design which she said reminds her of a childhood skate rink.
Skaters weren’t the only ones to shift age — so did the staff. Given the labor shortage that’s lingered one in the aftermath of the pandemic, Joanne began hiring younger workers and had to get rid of the snack bar, which usually would require two to three employees.
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Another change came in the form of a slight price hike of about a dollar on everything, especially to help cover the rebuilding costs. Nonetheless, Mottesheard notes that, “we’re still one of the cheapest things to do around here.”
While Funky’s recent popularity has given Joanne hope that they’ll be able to manage the debt caused by the explosion, the summer months tend to be more inactive for the rink, something that Callum already sees happening. But no one seems worried this time.
“Everytime you think it’s the end of the world,” Wills reflected, “it’s just little hiccups in the road of life.”
Contact Filip at breezembr@gmail.com. Filip is a media arts and design and international affairs senior.