Lock 3 Park

This is a good time! Grab your favorite person/s and enjoy a relaxed environment with live music, food and drinks.  You'll be outside enjoying the beautiful weather while meeting new people and enjoying the old. Love it.

Lock 3
Akron, Ohio
Wednesday December 28, 2011
Four Stars

This is simply a great place to take any child under 12 or date who can't ice skate.  There is an abundance of parking in the structure, but we like idiots parked in the meter and didn't put enough quarters in the machine. (Luckily a parking ticket is only ten dollars).  Form the parking structure.  The elevator leads you to the skate rental shop.  It costs a mere $3 dollars/person for a pair of skates.  I got a pair of black figure skating blades (which is first for me), but they are comfortable and it makes spinning a lot easier.  We then proceeded to the small outdoor rink.  The ice was super choppy, but it's a great place to teach the little ones to skate.  There are bunch of kids and adults falling all over the place.  There really isn't any time limit, but after an hour, I was completely done.  We then bought a three $1 hot chocolate and went home.  This is a cheap and great way to spend a winter day.

The centerpiece of Downtown Akron's "revitalization", Lock 3 Park is along the Ohio & Erie Canal between State and Bowery Streets, and actually contains former Locks 3 & 4.  Sure, the idea of building a public venue along a glorified sewage dump might seem like a silly idea, but the park has actually become a great place to host festivals and concerts.

My favorite festival, the National Hamburger Festival, is a weekend-long festival in August that embraces the hamburger.  Hamburgers here are served in every style imaginable, and can even be found deep-fried.  Huzzah.

There are also concerts here every now and then.  I've only been to one, which I was too drunk to remember much about.  I just remember it being a surprisingly good venue for being located between buildings and located along the canal.  In the past, such acts as Devo and countless shitty cover bands have performed for free or for minimal charge.

The winters are when the kiddies come to Lock 3.  Why do they come here in droves?  Ice skating.  The ice skating here is best in the region, hands down.

Overall, Lock 3 Park is not worth missing out on, especially during a festival.