It was the 1979 hot spot where celebrities like Cher, Elton John and Nile Rodgers went but that also welcomed the wannabes: Flipper's was the anti-Studio 54.
'Los Angeles was roaring,' photographer Craig Cisco Dietz recalled. The city was a 'very different world' with a 'fun spirit. It was the last hurrah in many ways.'
The open atmosphere, Dietz said, was due to the skating disco's owner, whom people called Flipper, but whose real name is Ian Ross. 'He is the man. It was his passion. His dream,' Dietz told DailyMail.com about Ross, adding that the casual and caring Englishman set the tone for Flipper's.
Ross, known for helping to found pirate radio station Caroline in the 1960s, married Roxana 'Bunty' Lampson and the couple has six children, including model Liberty Ross. When Ross moved to the United States in 1978, he told the New York Times that he had to check out the Empire Roller Disco in Brooklyn.
'I got myself to Flatbush by subway because a yellow cab wouldn't go,' Ross told the Times. 'And it was a complete epiphany: a wall of noise, heavy funk/disco type music and probably 900 people going around this wooden rink dressed in gold and silver and glitter and turbans and God knows what.'
Inspired, Ross opened Flipper's the next year in West Hollywood.
The rink's publicist got Dietz a job taking photographs and he spent over a year documenting it.
'Flipper's was just the funniest place to go to in LA – bar none,' he said, 'to get drunk, to get high. People came there to get crazy, to have fun, to skate, to be a part of the scene.'
Dietz's photographs are part of a new book called Flipper's Roller Boogie Palace 1979-1981, a retrospective that Liberty Ross undertook.
In 1978, an Englishman named Ian Ross came to New York City and headed to the Empire Roller Disco in Brooklyn. The Flatbush rink opened in 1941 and remained a popular spot throughout the decades. By the 1970s, it was such a hot spot that Cher throw parties there and skated with the legendary Bill Butler, whose nicknames include Brother Bounce, the Godfather of Roller Disco and other monikers, according to a 2020 New York Times profile on the skater. Ross would open his own roller disco called Flipper's in Los Angeles in 1979. Above, three skaters embody the decade's fashion at Flipper's
Photographer Craig Cisco Dietz was there to chronicle the scene, which included celebrities, artists, musicians, rockers and wannabes, 'who got in,' he said. Dietz, who was born in LA and attended UCLA, told DailyMail.com that 1979 was a 'very different world. Los Angeles was roaring.' There was a fun spirit that permeated the city, he said. 'It was the last hurrah in many ways.' Above, an image of Flipper's skating rink with its stage, center, where bands like Le Roi and the Lifters, played
Dietz said Ian Ross was a casual and caring guy who set the tone for Flipper's. The photographer said he spent over a year documenting the roller disco and did not see fights or aggression. Ross, known for helping to found pirate radio station Caroline in the 1960s, married Roxana 'Bunty' Lampson and the couple has six children, including model Liberty Ross. Above, the couple's eldest son Atticus, a musician and composer who won an Oscar with Trent Reznor for their original score for the movie The Social Network, Bunty and Ross
'I got myself to Flatbush by subway because a yellow cab wouldn't go,' Ross told the New York Times. 'And it was a complete epiphany: a wall of noise, heavy funk/disco type music and probably 900 people going around this wooden rink dressed in gold and silver and glitter and turbans and God knows what.' Above, a woman shows her skates while the woman, center, sports a Seditionaries t-shirt, part of the collection of Vivienne Westwood, a designer, and Malcolm McLaren, who managed the Sex Pistols. The pair, who were dating during the 1970s, ran a shop called SEX in London
Roller skating had been around since the 1800s, but in the 1970s, it blossomed as a pastime, and, for some, a way to get around. In 1941, the Empire Rollerdrome opened across from Ebbets Field, then the home for the Brooklyn Dodgers, the baseball team. The family that owned the rink 'purchased the speaker system from the 1939 World's Fair, and installed it in the space,' according to Brownstoner.
Roller skating had always been coupled with music with Brownstoner noting that early rinks had organists. The Rollerdrome changed hands but continued to be a popular spot throughout the decades and became famous for signature styles such as the Brooklyn Bounce, according to the article.
Disco, a genre of dance music that flourished in the 1970s, became paired with roller skating and roller discos sprung up. In Flatbush, the rink was renamed Empire Roller Disco and traded in the organist for a DJ. Robert 'Big Bob' Clayton, a legend who spun there for years, called it 'the birthplace of roller disco.'
'I used to go to Empire in '69, but I wasn't worried about DJing in the skate world, I went there because I liked the hustle. I'd go there and dance, I'd skate for the first two hours, then the next two hours, I would hustle in the middle,' he told RA, a platform for electronic music.
'You've never seen anything like it before,' Ross told the Times about Empire Roller Disco, which closed in 2007 and is now a self-storage facility.
Artists, rockers and musicians flocked to Flipper's. Above, Chalo (Charlie)
