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Get your socks on! A fun way to skate without ice comes to Santa Barbara

Caroline Feraday
/
KCLU
There's a sock skating rink on the roof of the MOXI Museum

A sock-skating rink is welcoming visitors.

It's a fun way to experience ice-skating but without the cold!

On the rooftop of the MOXI museum in Santa Barbara, a group of children are squealing with delight as they slide across the white slippery rink. This is winter-skating - California style. Cut out the cold and ice and the double axels…take off your shoes and skate….in your socks!

"Sock skating is a place where you can skate without ice. So you take off your shoes, but you leave your socks on and you are on this very, very slippery surface. If you can picture the movie Risky Business, where Tom Cruise is skating right in his living room - it's like that, except more clothing," explains Robin Gose, President and CEO at MOXI, the Wolf Museum of Exploration and Innovation.

She says sock skating is a hit for visitors both young and old.

"It's so fun because there's no ice, there's no snow. There's no chill," said Gose.

The sock skating rink is open on the roof of the MOXI Museum
MOXI
The sock skating rink is open on the roof of the MOXI Museum

"We've got these fabric snowballs and that kind of adds to the whole winter fun and excitement. You know, kids in Santa Barbara don't get snow unless they travel somewhere for that. So we're bringing a little bit of that winter fun and winter magic here," said Gose.

Mom Sarah Lang is stood at the side of the rink watching her children skate. She's from Minnesota and here on vacation.

"We are used to doing a lot of ice skating and time in the snow. But now we're on vacation in Santa Barbara, so why not do it in the sun?," said Lang.

She says that compared to real snow, "it's way less messy and it takes a lot less time to have to get all dressed up and all your gear. So I can get used to this!"

Caroline Feraday
/
KCLU
Visitors can take off their shoes and skid around in their socks

Her daughter Josie takes a second to pause from throwing fabric snowballs to explain the appeal.

"I really like you because I'm hot, but I'm having lots of fun," said Josie, who also said it hurts a lot less to fall on the sock skating rink than on real ice.

And joining them in the rink is almost-two year-old Lola...also known as Froggy!

She agreed that the skating was fun, and throwing the snowballs was fun but being hit by them was less fun.

And if it seems like the kids are having all the fun…there’s an adults only happy hour on the rink on Friday. What could possibly go wrong?

Caroline joined KCLU in October 2020. She won LA Press Club's Audio Journalist of the Year Award in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Since joining the station she's won 10 Golden Mike Awards, 6 Los Angeles Press Club Awards, 4 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards and a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Writing.

She started her broadcasting career in the UK, in both radio and television for BBC News, 95.8 Capital FM and Sky News and was awarded the Prince Philip Medal for her services to radio and journalism in 2007.

She has lived in California for eleven years and is both an American and British citizen - and a very proud mom to her daughter, Elsie.