It started with Kristi Yamaguchi. My parents took me to see her in Stars on Ice when I was 7 and, from the moment her blades hit the ice, I was enchanted. After years of loving figure skating from afar, last winter I signed up for adult beginner classes at one of New York’s many public skating rinks: the LeFrak Center in Prospect Park. I’m still no Tessa Virtue, but I can reliably move both forward and backward now — wobbling, yes, but mostly without falling over. “It can be hard to keep your seen-it-all-before, New York cool while flat on your back(side), of course,” Emily Ludolph writes in this look at skating across the decades. “But it is the indomitable city spirit that gets us back on our feet and ready for more.”