Walk into the LeFrak Center at Lakeside on a Friday night this August and you will find something that did not exist on this rink before this year: a stage, a sound system loud enough to carry across the water, and a crowd organizers projected at close to a thousand people, there for a band as much as a skate session. The covered rink has been open since 2013, cycling between ice in winter and roller skating in summer, but 2026 is the first year Prospect Park Alliance built a ticketed concert series around it. It was announced as a seven-show series called Glide & Groove, and the run stretched across six confirmed dates from July 24 through this Friday, August 28, the last one.
That detail matters more than a typical event listing, because it changes what this season actually was. This was not a returning tradition getting its annual write-up. It was a pilot, run once, with no guarantee it comes back next summer in the same shape. If you have been meaning to go, this week is the deadline, not a suggestion.
A Rink Building Its First Stage
The LeFrak Center has spent over a decade as a place for structured recreation. Ice hockey and skating in winter. Roller skating, boating, and the seasonal rhythms of Duck Island Café in summer. What it had not done, before this year, was pair a live touring lineup with the rink floor and call it a concert series.
BQE Studios took on that job for 2026, and Jordan Ekstein, who leads business development there, has been direct about why the format looks the way it does. The center wanted a setting where skating and live music share the same room rather than compete for it, and the double-rink layout under a covered roof gave them a structure other outdoor Brooklyn venues don't have. The programming grew out of specific requests from people who already use the rink regularly, not a top-down booking decision.
That distinction shows up in the results. The bands playing Glide & Groove are not headliners looking for a big room. They are working touring acts, several of them from New York City, playing to an audience that is half there for the music and half there to skate through it. When Dogpark opened the series on July 24, frontman Eamon Moore said afterward that the band had never played Prospect Park before and found the roller skating itself harder than expected. That is a small detail, but it says something true about the format: even the performers are treating this as a first-time experience, not a well-worn stop on a circuit.
Five Weekends, Six Different Rooms
The lineup moved through genres fast enough that no two Fridays felt alike. Dogpark, Juice, and Cab Ellis opened the series. Fish in a Birdcage, a Calgary act blending orchestral folk with electronics, played the following week. The Happy Fits brought their indie rock and electric cello sound on August 7. Tragedy, a glam-metal tribute to the Bee Gees, took over August 14. LSD Clownsystem, an LCD Soundsystem tribute act built around a clown theme, played August 21 alongside DJ Amber Valentine. The final night, August 28, closes with Phoneboy, Boys Go To Jupiter, and Shallow Alcove.
Each show ran from 6 to 10 p.m., with ticket prices varying by night and access to the rink floor included for anyone who wanted to skate through the set rather than just watch it. Rooftop VIP areas gave a second vantage point, with sunset views over the park's lake built into the ticket tier. Duck Island Café handled food and drink for the length of the run, keeping the operation inside the same footprint the rink already used for its regular season.
None of this required building new infrastructure. The rink, the café, the rooftop, and the sound system that already exists for winter hockey games got repurposed for six Friday and Saturday nights. That is worth noting for anyone wondering whether this scales into something bigger next year. The Alliance did not need a capital project to run this season. It needed a booking partner and a green light.
What the Last Night Looks Like
August 28 closes the series with three acts rather than one headliner, a format the earlier weeks didn't use. Ticket holders get roller skating access built into the price, and the VIP tier adds seating with private bar access on top of the standard rink-floor and rooftop options. Beyond the concert nights themselves, the rink has kept running smaller programming all summer, including skaterobics classes and an adult coffee club, so the space does not go dark the morning after the last show. Those recurring sessions are the part of Lakeside's summer identity that predates 2026 and will presumably continue after Glide & Groove wraps.
What is genuinely uncertain is whether the concert format returns next year in the same shape, a bigger one, or not at all. Ekstein has framed the goal as building a summer tradition, but a first season is a first season. Nothing about a seven-show pilot guarantees an eighth. If the series does return in 2027, this year's run is the baseline everyone will measure it against, down to the choice of pairing a Bee Gees glam-metal tribute with a rink full of skaters on a Friday in mid-August and having it work.
Getting There From Prospect Heights
For residents entering the park at Grand Army Plaza, Lakeside sits at the far end, past the Long Meadow and down toward the park's southern edge by the lake. It is a longer walk than a trip to the park's northern lawns, closer to a bike ride down the West Drive than a five-minute stroll. That distance is probably part of why Lakeside has functioned more as a destination within the park than a corridor most Prospect Heights residents pass through on a daily loop. A concert series changes that calculation for one night. It gives people a specific reason to make the longer walk rather than stopping at the meadow or the zoo.
That is the quieter story inside this season. Prospect Park is 585 acres, and most of the daily foot traffic from Prospect Heights clusters near the entrances closest to Flatbush and Eastern Parkway. Glide & Groove pulled people the length of the park for six nights across five weekends this summer, on the strength of a booking calendar rather than a landmark. Whether that pull outlasts the pilot season is the open question worth watching into next summer.
Friday, August 28, is the last chance to see this particular version of it. After that, the rink goes back to being a rink until someone decides to build the stage again.
If you're weighing what a season like this signals about the blocks around Prospect Heights, or thinking through timing on a move in or out of the neighborhood, Greg Mire Team offers a confidential consultation to talk through what you're seeing on the ground.
