What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017) | Hacker News Reader

What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

entertainment.howstuffworks.com

110 pointstype0201 comments

About 10 years ago I read a bunch of former roller bladers and skateboarders talking about the death of rollerblading in the 1990s.

It is much easier to do tricks on rollerblades, also it was viewed as a "gay" activity in a much more homophobic time in society. There was a picture of a rollerblader in a skating mag and they photoshopped pink makeup on his face and made his rollerblades purple.

Skaters started calling rollerblades "fruit boots" and that killed it for a lot of people who didn't want to associated with something seen as weak and "gay".

What happened is that I moved to the Swedish countryside and as such was confronted with hills and unpaved roads. When I lived in the Netherlands I used skates for transport in lieu of a bicycle because they're far easier to take along on public transport. I skated to the station, skated into the train, skated off it after 1.5 hours and 150 km, skated to my job and repeated this on my way home. I was just as fast as if not faster than most cyclists. Every now and then I skated to my parents, an 75km trip which took a while.

I never - and I mean never - heard anything about "skating being gay, that might be an American thing? To even consider homophobia (fear of homosexuals?) in this context is completely foreign to me and probably says more about the polarised society in the USA than about anything else.

Skates are practical means of transport in flat countries with good infrastructure like the Netherlands. They are not in the part of Sweden where I now live, otherwise I'd still be on them every day. A bicycle works fine here so I reverted to my original means of locomotion.

You might have just given me a solution to a problem I thought about this weekend: a place I need to visit for work is >= 1 km from the next public transport stop - the walking is a little tedious. I was using my car for pandemic (currently: train strike) reasons, but I want to stop that again after, and I do own rollerskates... still from the 90s.

Go for it, wear some wrist protectors and you should arrive in one piece. That is the only protection I use given that it actually work as intended and broken wrists are fairly common in all forms of skating.

The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms, so having a glove with plastic protection will help not losing any skin from your palms.

Also wear a helmet.

When I was a 13 or so, in the early '90s, I took an "extreme rollerblading" class on the weekends. The class started by teaching various kinds of stops (T-stop where you drag one skate behind you sideways, spin stop ...no one ever used a brake), and then moved on to going down stairs, performing jumps, and so on. We were required to wear elbow, knee and wrist guards as well as helmets. But one thing they taught us early on was how to fall correctly, or come to a falling stop. You want to try to go down with a kneepad first followed by the wrist guard, so you're using the knee to brake. This was something we practiced.

It's been over 20 years since I was on rollerblades and I don't even know if I'd have the balance anymore, but I wouldn't do it without at least one knee guard and both hard wrist guards.

I nearly entirely rely on the T-stop, most of my skates never had any brakes and I removed it from the ones which did since it is only in the way and of questionable efficacy. The disadvantage of dragging a skate is the enormous wear it puts on wheels but apart from that it serves me well. Knee protection might work for some but I never felt the need and just feel those things are in the way, the same goes for elbow protection. Having skated for decades without damaging either knees or elbows I'll probably be OK but by all means use them when you're just starting off, I did this as well.

My favorite were spin stops - I'd do that 90% of the time, or drag a T until I was slow enough to do one. The other problem with a T is your foot can catch if you're on a sidewalk. But playing hockey I would intentionally take a knee sometimes, so I think that would still be something I'd do automatically.

> The first thing hitting the concrete when falling is your palms

Yes, if you're young and have good reflexes, you can break your wrists. If you're old with slower reflexes, you can't get your arms out in time so you break your hip instead.

If you're looking for good gloves for rollerblading I recommend looking at motorbiking gloves. They're a bit expensive but they can be super comfortable and have a ton of protection around the wrist and knuckles.

Motorbike gloves do not include the essential part of wrist protectors, namely the hard plastic backbone which is meant to catch the fall and keep the wrist joint from overextending. If you want to wear them, fine, but make sure to use wrist protectors - with a rigid backbone - as well.

Not all of them do but as far as I can tell some of them definitely do. I don’t ride motorbikes so I’m not an expert in this but my friend who does showed me her gloves which do include wrist protectors. I’m in Europe if it makes a difference…

This is exactly why I stopped rollerblading. I had a coach who made us all sign “contracts” promising we wouldn’t rollerblade because so many players were injuring their wrists.

Homophobia is the accepted term for this kind of thing in both Dutch and Swedish, so you shouldn't feign surprise that "fear" comes into the terminology.

The Netherlands and Sweden are among the most LGBT-tolerant countries in the world. Not having to worry (much) about homophobia is a huge privilege.

The way you are talking, it sounds like you are neither gay nor have you ever given much thought to the plight of gay people in the large parts of the world where homosexuality is not tolerated, including the many places where it is still a crime.

The "polarized" US is not as gay-friendly as the typical European country, but other places are much worse.

Yes, homophobia is a thing even in NL; what I think the GP post was trying to point out is that there’s been no connection between inline skating and any particular sexual orientation in NL. That rings true to me as another Dutchman who owns inline skates (though only for three years).

Well there's a more fundamental dependency we don't have an answer to -

Is it common in either language (or perhaps English is used in this context) to make fun of things that disgust you by calling them gay? Growing up in the Midwest of the US in the early 90s, I knew to call things 'gay' if I wanted to discourage my friends from doing them much earlier than my Christian parents allowed me to find out the secret of males/females having different genitalia. (A much younger neighbor boy finally leaked the secret to me when I was 12.)

it's easy for people to look at 90's/2000's vernacular and assume a level of explicit bigotry that simply was not necessarily present. kids will always be drawn to an easy shorthand to use as a pejorative, preferably one that distinguishes them from earlier generations and makes their parents mad. they will probably start using the term through osmosis without even understanding its webster definition because that won't be their definition. gay/fag has basically been superseded by cuck/cringe/simp etc and those terms will similarly be replaced by something else within 5 years but functionally all these terms end up fulfilling the same purposed which is very quickly divorced from their actual dictionary meaning, should one even exist.

Not sure. We all knew what it meant when I was a kid in the 90s. That doesn’t mean that people were thinking homophobic thoughts every time they called something gay. But the underlying idea that being gay was icky and bad was perfectly well known to all of us at the time.

Society finally seems to have figured out that using ‘gay’ as an insult is homophobic and wrong. However, on the way to that realization, we did have to go through a long period of various groups of people insisting that they had their own special definitions of ‘gay’, ‘fag’, etc. that allegedly had nothing to do with the ordinary meanings of these words. It retrospect I think it’s clear that protests of this sort were all entirely specious (with the exception of young kids who simply didn’t know what they were saying).

There is a surprising amount of homophobia in Friends - possibly one of the most famous TV shows of all time.

Like the extensive racism in Fresh Prince, the homophobia in Friends is brushed aside because "it was the 90s"

Yes in Sweden I did it in 1990 even though I grew up in an evironment were being homosexual was normal. Still being gay was not cool in society, and they were gravely mistreated. We still have a long way to go.

To come to OPs defense, I also used the term gay a lot as a negative word growing up. I never knew any gay people, we just used it as an alternative for softy. My parents never explained what being gay meant, I had no openly gay relatives. I understand now it is painful for gay people and I probably did know some, they just laid low, partly because of using gay as a negative. Needless to say I don’t use the term like that anymore. But it was never consciously anti-homosexuals. Like Eminem who did a duet with Elton John to prove his point. Doesn’t make it right of course. I apologize for using the word. I also used to think nothing of black face, even defended the tradition, now I changed my mind.

You spent >3 hours a day just commuting? I can't imagine doing that. What did you do on the train?

Read, work, speak to people, look out of the window, drink some tea, nothing at all - there are many ways to spend time in a train. The commute would have been just as long (if not longer) by car but that would be time wasted instead of time for myself. Seeing those traffic jams from behind the train window (in the morning, by the time I went home the evening rush was already over) just was the icing on the cake, imagine sitting there in a tin can, waiting for the tin can in front of you to move, with another tin can behind you waiting for you to move...

If my commute were 3 hours, regardless of mode, I'd either move or find a new job.

I did, eventually, first by going to Canada and Alaska to paddle the Yukon down to the Bering strait, then to Sweden 'cause I met a Swedish girl. Had I not met her I'd have moved to Canada instead, that was my original plan. But... the job was fun, it paid well, I was single, I bought a house which I sold for twice the price after 6 years (before I moved to Sweden) so in that respect everything worked out as intended. I would not do this at this time and place given that I'm not single, I have children, I live on a farm in the woods and I have gigabit fibre which makes it possible to reach the world at the speed of light...

In Germany you can buy a yearly subscription for your daily commute train and that comes with a reserved seat and table and power plug for charging your laptop. From my observations, people are usually finishing powerpoint slides and answering emails during their commute.

I had a Dutch "OV Jaarkaart", a pass which is valid in all forms of public transport in the whole country, at any time. No reserved seats and no power plugs in the 90's of the last century, laptops were not as common as they are now and I got quite a few looks when I hooked up a Sony mobile brick to mine to remotely dial in to my box in the IT cave we called home. I usually wrote articles and proposals, hacked on random stuff or tried to build software I'd found on freshmeat.net or elsewhere.

> You spent >3 hours a day just commuting?

Sad to say but a lot of people have car commutes in that range. The Bay has tens of thousands of "supercommuters" whose commute is 90mn or above.

In Europe train commutes in that range are probably more reasonable: you can sleep in the train (super common for the early HSRs), or it can count as part of your work-day (e.g. handle your mail or whatever, a good train seat often works just as well as an office desk).

I've known quite a few people who worked in large cities but wanted to live in the countryside (or at least in smaller cities, way out from even what's usually considered suburbs), they'd take regional or even high-speed train into and out of paris. Not necessarily cheap (especially if you take HSR), but frequent rider and (usually) company contribution made that surprisingly realistic.

Not the GP, but I used to commute two hours each way for college in Mumbai (including a switchover and long walks to/from the train stations). Used some of that time to finish assignments if I got a seat!

More likely twice a week: at the start of the weekend when going home to parents (and their washing machine), and at the end of it when going back to uni.

Nope, 5 days a week, left home around 07.00, came home around 21.00. I even had a washing machine all of my own together with a house to put it in. I actually had a washing machine as a student as well, it was old but it worked - until a house mate destroyed it, that is.

What did you teach that washing machine? :)

When I lived in the Mission in San Francisco 10 years ago, I found rollerblades to be the best way of traveling medium distances in the city (e.g. to the Civic Center). I didn’t have a safe place to store a bike, busses are super slow (and if I’m going longer distances, I can take them off and hop on a muni). I never heard of the homophobia angle either.

‘Homophobia’ is the standard term in English for prejudice against gay people. It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations).

> It does not mean ‘fear of homosexuals’ (regardless of etymological considerations).

It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual". There are backwards people. The stigma that some may ascribe, is rarely removed. If they are in a position of power, this can hurt you professionally or socially, despite modern moral standards.

Fear of being perceived as a homosexual is a type of homophobia, but homophobia is not necessarily a fear of being perceived as a homosexual.

I don't think most people are arguing about that. Some post that puts forth "it doesn't mean this it means that" can be charitably added to with additional interpretation rather than "wrong. it's THIS". Dead-end true-scotsman argument.

I think you’ve got slightly the wrong end of the stick. No-one thinks that rollerblading went out of style because people were afraid of gay people. So the OP’s inaccurate (or at best overly narrow) assumption regarding what ‘homophobia’ means is leading them to misunderstand the claim about what happened. These days the term ‘homophobia’ is very rarely used to refer to a literal phobia of gay people.

(The OP said ‘fear of homosexuals’, not ‘fear of being perceived as homosexual’.)

Except I am literally responding to your very specific claim:

> It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual".

It doesn’t mean that. It can refer to that, but that is not what homophobia means.

"Homophobia" also refers to more generally negative attitudes about homosexuality, not just the fear the name suggests.

To add to this, -phobia suffix is used to express aversion, not just fear. For example, hydrophobicity.

It's definitely an American thing.

The primary cause of hating disco in the 1970s was that it was gays, blacks and latinos who were associated with it. And that and corporatization of music by the very same boomers that's kept disco dead in the US since. And yet the REST of the world kept disco and reincarnated it into several genres of electronica.

So I wouldn't be surprised.

I was a skater from '85-'89 in the San Fernando Valley.

I remember there being a narrow lane of what was cool... most activities that weren't skateboarding weren't, because it was a lifestyle, and if you weren't fully dedicated to it and had a good sense of what was currently accepted in the brands/decks, clothing, how you setup your board, etc, you could quickly be labeled a poseur. And this was a moving target. If you skated a Hawk board in '85 it was okay... but by '87, you should have been riding Santa Monica Airlines, and legacy brands were not cool. By '89 it was H-Street and having an SMA deck could be a questionable choice.

Some of my friends and I bought some rollerblades as they hit the scene but didn't really get into it in any meaningful way, just riding in our neighborhood and at the local skating rink. We wouldn't be caught riding them out in the wider public lest we could be seen and ridiculed by one of the other skater gangs in the area.

I used to be a street skater in the mid nineties in a small German town. Was pretty cool, doing all the street skating stuff. And we made sure to not be associated with "Rollerbladers", the guys and girls (obviously girls were different so) using the stoppers to brake. It stopped being cool so, no idea why exactly. Hell, we even had people with home made half and quarter pipes in their backyards back then...

That sounds like, instead of those skaters being free individualists or rebels, they were excessively controlled commercial consumers.

If so, how did that happen, in that case?

That sounds like a riddle. Do the trendsetters control fashion, or does fashion control the trendsetters?

It's probably a complex dynamical interaction.

The fact that the favored brands kept changing though, suggests to me that the corporations weren't exactly in control (otherwise the first winning brand would have presumably preferred to permanently monopolize the market).

Why does fashion of the kind "this is the look right now" and "that look is so last season" exist?

To what degree would we do fashion naturally, if there weren't parties looking to exploit fashion dynamics for selfish advantage?

Dr Seuss explained it in "The Sneetches", it's all about status signalling.

> if there weren't parties looking to exploit fashion dynamics for selfish advantage?

What parties are those, the elites using fashion to signal higher status, the people selling the elites the latest fashion, or the underdogs trying to catch up to what the elites are wearing so they can attain high status too? Aren't they all following selfish motives?

The shift usually was to newer, smaller, more underground I guess companies with the best up and coming skaters. Skate mags/vids were a big part of this. There was always a sense of transition and growth, esp for street as people did more aggressive things.

So yes, there was a commercial aspect to it, but from a marketing sense, it was driven by being iconoclastic, being super in tune with where the industry was heading and style/trends/tricks/skaters was heading.

Being a rebel is chucking away societal norms, and I do feel that was how most skaters felt back then… you were definitely in a bubble.

I suspect that it has to do with any trend that gets too big, and the only antidote is to make the rules into a moving target. This happened with punk rock when I was into that. At some point, the punk bands rebelled against punk fashion, and started showing up in worn but otherwise regular looking street clothes.

inliners got a reputation for waxing the absolute shit out of spots which is considered a somewhat major party foul, especially in the more cloistered, local centric skate scenes of the 90s and early 2000s. bmxers were disliked for similar reasons; pegs absolutely destroy ledges. there is also the perpetual problem of access to a limited resource, i've observed my dad going through similar flame wars concerning motorized and non motorized access to backcountry trails, albeit he called hikers the trail gestapo rather than fags. i imagine similar cultural clashes can be observed around lake and beachside hobbies and the tensions between skiiers and snowboarders, bolt vs trad climbers, etc are well documented. skateboarding has always been run by and for 16 year old boys, which is the way it should be, and they labeled these things with the vernacular they knew. if it's any consolation, that kid with the shaved head & blind jeans who called you a fruitbooter in 1995 probably called his dad, his biology teacher and anyone else within earshot names that were several magnitudes worse.

also in a final twist of irony, skateboarding's transition into an olympic sport with leagues and rules has put it under the control of world skate, a rollerblading organization.

>https://skateboarding.transworld.net/news/from-bad-to-worse-...

That reminds me, absolutely everything had loads of wax when those Soap grinding shoes were popular too lol

Yeah, I think the fruitbooting label killed it more than just that one joke.

> Skaters started calling rollerblades "fruit boots" and that killed it for a lot of people who didn't want to associated with something seen as weak and "gay".

Their problem, a lot of fellow queer people rollerblade and they have a hell of a time.

It's actually extremely funny how homophobes will stop having fun specifically because something gets coded as queer. Like they're deliberately cutting off their nose to spite their face.

I think people who don’t want to be called gay are homophobes. It seems like you implied that though. It’s very normal to not want to do things that make you unpopular.

> I think people who don’t want to be called gay are homophobes. It seems like you implied that though.

If someone stops doing a hobby just because they are being called gay, that is homophobic, yes. Someone who is not homophobic wouldn't give a shit, and wouldn't view being called gay as implicitly bad.

If people started insulting them in a non-homophobic way, it is unlikely that that would be viewed as a reason to stop the hobby by many people. In fact, in 'nerd culture' the insults are viewed as a badge of honour of sorts -- these people do not stop programming, electrical engineering, and hyperfocusing on Star Wars just because they are being insulted. This largely only happens with hobbies that are considered gay or otherwise 'feminine', because being called one of those are viewed as worse than just being insulted, and the reason for that is implicit homophobia.

There's a good tangential argument here as to the social and cultural forces that led to 'blading' being dropped en masse: https://toldandretold1.medium.com/the-great-blading-bubble-h...

Or maybe they just don't want people to be mean to them. If someone kindly tells me I do something that seems gay, but is otherwise kind to me, I probably wouldn't care. If someone is calling me gay to be mean, there's probably other mean things they're doing too, and I won't like it.

Do you mean "I don't think"? The rest of your comment makes it seem like you do.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it was. I remember not wanting to rollerblade much after my friends started getting into skateboarding for that reason. That and they were inconvenient because you had to carry your shoes around with you or the rollerblades once you changed to your shoes. It was easier, and cooler looking, to carry a skateboard. I do remember enjoying them though. They were fun to rip around on.

I did grow out of skateboarding though, then that longboarding craze came out and I never really got into it.

Funny enough, these days, I'd probably be more willing to go rollerblading somewhere than skateboarding if I had the chance.

I had no idea, how stupid.

This makes me want to get a pair now.

Skateboarding has a culture of hating anyone else having fun and liking something that is not "properly difficult". Now they hate scooters for being "too easy".

And it is ridiculous every single time.

Scooter hate also isn’t new, they were popular in the very early 00s

When I was young, skateboarding was considered something only kids did, something you grew out of. Of course, the boards in those days were pretty primitive, just roller skate wheels on fixed axles.

It's definitely an American thing. It did not stop me from roller blading here in Europe, but it's always in the back of my head.

Proof: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/tvshowbiz/video-1217603/Th...

I bladed A LOT when I was younger, still take it out sometimes.

And your argument is new to me ( Belgium), I've never witnessed any harassment.

> also it was viewed as a "gay" activity in a much more homophobic time in society.

There's hockey on rollerblades, I'm sure there's nothing "gay" about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roller_hockey

There is, I'm sure plenty of roller hockey players are gay.

That said, though roller hockey uses rollerblades, I would view it as a separate hobby from roller blading.

I'm surprised I've never heard of this, but looking back,... it fits.

Back in the late 90s, myself and a few friends popped on our first pair of inlines[0]. I think years of attending "skating parties" as school events designed to give parents a day out and kids an opportunity to be a problem made switching from quads to inlines very easy. We discovered we could much more easily pull of various tricks on inlines that were more challenging in quads due to the range of ankle motion that inlines allow.

My friends and I became a bit obsessed. At one point, I dropped $240 for a set of high-end indoor ABEC-9 bearings. I owned several sets of wheels with different hardness/size and some nice wrist guards and knee/elbow pads, the latter used only when trying to learn tricks that were obviously challenging -- the rule is that it is far more cool to do something dangerous in a manner that maximizes injury if you fail, I guess (no helmets -- that was way uncool!). Kind of amazed I didn't end up with a closed-head injury as a kid with that thinking... I did land a concussion at one point.

I can say somewhat reliably that, at least where I'm from, I don't recall anyone ever indicating that the reason they don't skate is because "it's gay![2]", or specifically pointing out that "I must be gay because I use inlines" -- not that having the "SO GAY" thrown around at me was all that unusual. I don't think you could have guy friends in HS in the 90s without a constant barrage of "you're gay" accusations.

I think the hurling of "gay" had a lot to do with: It takes a reasonable amount of skill to learn -- and there are a reasonable number of people who will give up. As popularity increases, the number of people who get frustrated increases. Not wanting to be left out of a trend, they employ shame/reverse-fanboi-ism to knock those who have mastered it/enjoy it down a peg and encourage them to do activities that the shamer can participate in.

There was a bit of "parent's make it uncool" to it, too. My 50 year old dad took up inline skating for a year. But I think it's more than just "when old people start doing it, it's uncool". This happened in my HS in the 90s with skiing. Where I live, ski/snowboard clubs in HS are common (despite having very little worth skiing on other than an abundance of snow). I watched during High School as skiing became "uncool" (in my HS, I'm sure it was "gay!") -- far more than half of those in ski club were snowboarding. Snowboarding was a much less expensive way to get on the slopes. Parents pushed their kids that way when discovering that purchasing a pair of usable (new[3]) skis, boots, poles and bindings was twice as much as the proliferation of lower-end boards that we started seeing early on. And the nerdier kids tended to have wealthier parents and tended to buy skis. It's, arguably, more difficult to learn to ski, as well[4].

It happened with hover boards, though for different reasons... almost the opposite. They used to be very expensive, but then a mess of them were dumped in the US. Enough of them caught fire to give the whole category a bad name and many had a design aesthetic that would universally appeal to a 12-year-old girl, but nearly nobody else. You'd think it would be possible to ride a device like this and not look like a person with too much disposable income and is so lazy that they'll risk explosion over walking but I haven't seen anyone on a segway-like-hoverboard (Ginger!) that didn't result in me thinking that, myself. This would have been a device pretty much made for a guy like me -- I was initially excited when the prices were reaching $300, but by then the bottom fell out and I had no interest in ever owning one.

I own/love my OneWheel (Pint), which seems like a hoverboard/e-scooter/skatebaord but is in a category on its own. I'm wondering if these will (or haven't already) landed in the category of "uncool". I believe there's potential for it, but there's a few things that are unique about these that I can't say confidently I have any idea what the future holds. They're expensive. They're really strange to learn to ride -- everyone I have taught has said the same thing "10-15 minutes of feeling like you will never be able to learn this thing, followed by an almost immediate jump to confident riding" (shortly thereafter, confidence exceeds actual ability, you nose-dive, and don't ride it for a little while/have a quick trip to the ER).

The only differences with this product and others that were fad-worthy is that the age of riders is extremely variable. I've met a lot of riders in my area -- many are older than 40, most above 30, one is 70[5]. I rarely see someone riding one (regardless of age) without a helmet. I think it has one major inoculation to the incoming "LAME!" label. People make the mistake of thinking this thing is "self-balancing", easy to ride/master and safe. I'd be tempted to respond to the challenge by offering my board up with a simple "It's self-balancing -- wanna give it a try before knocking it?" and then posting the results to YouTube. That's a challenge that doesn't work with inlines.

FWIW: if my kids are any indication, "That's so gay" is the thing that's being shamed. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of homophobia among the older boys in HS, but I felt pretty good when my son's friend called a video game "gay" and my son turned right around and said "it's the GAYEST!" rolling his eyes, shutting down his friend -- my oldest is 6'2" and is popular with the girls at his school. While you may never really know at this age, I don't believe he's ever questioned his sexuality. And he's a really good kid -- certainly not innocent of these kinds of things, himself, but very clever and has a good heart -- it made me a little proud watching him shame his friend trying to shame him using a slur.

[0] I'm being pedantic but Rollerblade brand skates were pretty shoddy, even staying way away from the skate-shop high-end inlines -- there were very few that had aluminum frames, all used the lowest end ABEC-5/7 bearings (nobody puts good bearings in, even today) and K2 made a much more comfortable boot.

[1] "Girls only like guys who have great skills!" - Napoleon Dynamite

[2] The author's observations of the late 90s, at least where I lived, is accurate -- "gay" was the chosen slur for anything that was "extremely uncool".

[3] The smart ones scoured Salvation Army stores (no Craigslist), purchased a banged up set that still beat the rentals, and took it to a ski shop to get sharpened/serviced. My mom was smart ... I had $30 skis that were amazing.

[4] This was not my personal experience, but I jumped to skiing for a reason -- I learned very quickly to ditch the poles. I was very confident on inlines by this point and an adjustment in thinking made me realize that inline skating and skiing involve the same balancing skills/muscles. I had not been into skateboards, and had learned to balance while moving sideways.

[5] And he's a bit of a terror on it -- I have broken ribs and taken some falls that, at 70, would have stood a chance of killing me.

The decline of (popularity) Aggressive Inline is talked about in this documentary “Barely Dead” (https://youtu.be/DArRi_PooDc). Spoiler alert: it has to do with being canceled by the X-Games, which reduced exposure, which reduced new kids coming on the scene.

Really, it just went underground. There are still aggressive skates being produced by many companies, with a wide selection of wheels, frames, etc. There are even contests still happening; they just look different than they once did. Many of them are tours of skate spots in a city, mob style.

The surge of cheap video equipment also means that there’s no end of filmed video parts on YouTube with insane grind combinations, “stunt” gaps, and a progression of difficulty that can only be described as “jaw dropping.”

That documentary was the first thing that came to mind. That and Jon Julio, crazy guy.

another part of this that is important imo is that inline was in a large degree absorbed by its more successful analog: freeskiing.

What is freeskiing? I have never heard that term

Edit: googled it, and it appears to be a snow sport... not sure how that would be a competitor to rollerblading?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeskiing

Maybe they meant “free skating”? Which is an aggressive style, but far less technical. Think Parkour on big (80-90mm) wheels and fast movement from point to point.

“Aggressive Inline,” alternatively, is normally going to involve “sessioning” a couple obstacles on the street, or a skate park. You might slide a hand rail 50 times trying a variety of tricks before moving to the next spot.

The free skater will just speed past, possibly “stair bashing” (riding down the stairs) or outright jumping over them.

freeskiing::inline. the tricks and the motions are the exact same, you can just go bigger/faster/higher and there is more money in it. i can only speak anecdotally but pretty much all of the of the 'serious' rollerblade kids i knew growing up went over to competitive skiing because that's where the opportunities were.

For a lot of people there was an intermediate step in there. Ski boards (aka ski blades) were super popular with the rollerblading crowd and suffered a similar fate as rollerblading (I remember being called a fruit booter a number of times on my ski boards). It was in the X-Games before skiing was, but they eventually just cancelled ski boarding and pretty much all the pro's went on to ski, and that was more or less the last nail in the coffin for the sport. It's actually way more dead than rollerblading, as it didn't really just move "underground". People figured out that twin tip skis were actually much better at nearly everything than little 100cm ski boards.

Do you have any links? I am still unable to find anything besides snow versions when googling.

I had been quad skating since the 80s during the day for recreation, and then Sunday nights for dance skating, jamming, not figure skaing. Roxy would have skate nights too. It was a blast. I started blading in the early 90s, and would head up to NYC Central Park with my ex-wife to the skate circle to dance all day Saturday and Sunday, and blade home to our apartment in Hell's Kitchen through side streets and avenues in traffic. Interesting recollection: nobody on quads or blades were wearing helmets or pads except for noobs. I have never had more than bruises and scrapes from the skateboarding, quad skating, or blading in my life. My injuries are mainly from falls at height. I learned early on how to roll when I fell off of homemade skateboards, bikes, skates, etc. I have gone through three pairs of blades, and I just bought a new pair of quad jam skates. I can dance on both. I have skated on blades in Montreal, Macau, various US states. When I was dance skating in Macau in 2007 and later, China there were not many bladers, or they were only doing laps or fitness skating. Now, I see some great skaters on blades doing some really cool moves on YouTube all over SE Asia. I would say it has taken off there while lulling in the US. I grew up in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and dance, especially dance skating, has been a special thing in my life ever since. The community is amazing all around the US. I still go to a rink in NJ with my family now, and I hope to get out on Thursdays and Sundays for adult skate night more often. It's a blast! I am in my late 50s and love to groove. No more doing the long stairway at Central Park though! I tried jam skating with a blade on my left foot and a quad skate on my right foot while living in Las Vegas at Crystal Palace, the one on Boulder not Ranchero. Try it before you knock it!

I'm curious how you would hang out with your ex-wife.

Edit: seems like I didn't manage the tone here. I didn't mean it as any kind of insult. I've just genuinely never heard of anyone getting along with their ex partner in this way, so I am curious to know more about the dynamic

It’s implied that at that point they were still married.

Correct. I am fortunate to have a good relationship with my ex-wife to this day; it has been great for our children too. I am one of the lucky ones!

Not PC, but I love Bill Burrs take on rollerblading: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VmMAE0za2-w

He connects the demise of rollerblading to homophobia

I use to rollerblade in the 90s. I never heard of this at the time I couldn't have possibly cared less if I had.

IMO the problem is I rollerbladed for 3 years and I never learned to stop properly. I basically had to fall on grass or cruise. IMO it died because it wasn't a good hobby for the average person. A skateboard doesn't have a speed problem like rollerblades. A bike has nice easy breaking system.

It was a giant 90s fad that was not a good idea for the average person. I loved them and wouldn't even consider getting a pair now based on the almost certainty of taking a massive spill.

> A skateboard doesn't have a speed problem like rollerblades

Nonsense, utter nonsense.

It’s easier to both bail (jump off) and control speed (by dragging your foot or doing power-slides) on a skateboard.

So yes, skateboarding does have a speed problem but it’s easier to control for.

Dragging your foot on a skateboard leaves your other foot planted on the board, meaning the board is vulnerable to catching on any crack or edge while carrying most your weight, which will send you tumbling.

You can drag your foot exactly the same way to lose speed on skates by dragging one perpendicular to the direction of travel, while your other foot is still perfectly capable of jumping you over any cracks or edges since the skates are strapped to your feet.

I'll admit it's easier to never go too fast for comfort on a skateboard, by simply not riding the skateboard; you get off and walk on shoes. Which is a problem for rollerblades. But that's kind of irrelevant beginner territory isn't it?

Once you're competent enough to be riding either at speeds above a run, the skateboard has significant speed governing challenges, as do rollerblades.

I street skated for years and never became competent enough to use power-slides for governing speed on anything but the most ideal uniform asphalt surfaces. To propose that as some kind of accessible braking method strikes me as disingenuous at best. For most, attempting that'll be a spectacular prelude to a broken clavicle.

To shed some lights on why power sliding is so unreliable, doing so requires to be familiar the surface on which you’re attempting it. Being familiar with it means that you basically failed to and fell down multiples times before getting it right, which already requires a good skill level.

And you cannot assume that power sliding on a surface will be similar to another one that looked the same because a slight change of humidity, dust or grease may totally change the outcome and transform the slide into a hang up that will throw you at the floor pretty hard.

So if you combine a really thin margin of error with the inability to confidently execute it on new surfaces, it makes powersliding a pretty unreliable way of braking unless it’s an emergency, in which case jumping off the board is much easier.

Meanwhile, you can power slide at will in the skate park because you know the surface by heart, and it’s easy to get it consistent by how many times you just rode it.

Your point is valid. Power sliding on the street, with speed, is definitely for advanced skaters. Particularly for the reasons you mentioned (unpredictable surfaces).

See my other comment.

>Dragging your foot on a skateboard leaves your other foot planted on the board, meaning the board is vulnerable to catching on any crack or edge while carrying most your weight, which will send you tumbling

You're doing it wrong. If you catch a crack with your weight planted dead center of your board (which is how this is done) then you're already in dangerous territory. Speed is not your issue - the terrain (or your lack of proper technique) is.

>I street skated for years and never became competent enough to use power-slides for governing speed on anything but the most ideal uniform asphalt surfaces. To propose that as some kind of accessible braking method strikes me as disingenuous at best.

Disingenuous? How rude. That's how me and my friends did it. Maybe if you were below advanced-intemediate level then power-sliding to control for speed might seem impossible (but it isn't - that's the beauty of skateboarding). I will concede it's an unreliable method because of the variance of the surface (which the other commenter mentioned). It does come with risks and requires sufficient skill.

Curiously, your comment left out the obvious thing I mentioned. You can jump off the damn skateboard. It's one of the very first things you learn.

You can jump off.

My 8 year old does it every day. You know what he and his sister do when they get going too fast on 'blades? Look for a grass patch and hope for the best.

You seem to be slighted by the mere suggestion that one measly aspect of 'blading is harder or requires a different approach.

I skated for two decades, and worked in the industry for over half of that. If there's one thing I learned it's that skaters are funny creatures. Especially when it comes to beefs with their "adversaries" like rollerblading, BMX and scooters.

It really makes me chuckle.

No, absolutely not. If anything, having controll on skateboard is harder pretty much no matter what context. And you have zero control over where the board goes once you abandon it on top of it - meaning you are more dangerous for anyone else.

You're mistaking my comment for saying that skateboarding is easier. It certainly isn't.

I'm only saying that, placed at the top of moderately sized hill, a skateboarder has more options available to him/her to control for speed.

Like simply jumping off.

And my point, after trying both, controlling speed on skateboard is harder. It does bit make it better sport nor anything like that.

Any sport on a competitive level is hard. Including running. The skateboarding has the property of not that much control and ease of loosing it. (Leads to injuries).

Like, trying to run out of skateboard does not work in higher speed. It is good solution for small speed, but once you go faster then you can run, it gets ugly. Meaning, injuries look very ugly. And the skateboard is going God knows when risking to hit someone or something (old person, stroller with baby, car). It is just not safe once you don't control the thing.

Your point is only valid for speeds faster than you can run.

I don't think that qualifies you to say "No, absolutely not" to my previous point when you really mean "except under extreme speeds".

I've also "tried both". I skateboarded for two decades and worked in the skateboard industry for over half of that. I'm now teaching my 8 year old to skate. He feels way more comfortable than on his rollerblades because it's way easier to bail out.

The skateboard hitting something else is not relevant to the point being discussed.

Speeds slower then you can run are slow in both cases and no issue to control in both cases. It is not like it would be difficult to control speed on Rollerblade and you stop falling on them pretty fast. Falling on Rollerblades is quite rare after compete beginner stage.

As bonus point, a single pebble or crack won't throw you down on Rollerblades the way skateboard does.

> The skateboard hitting something else is not relevant to the point being discussed.

It is massively relevant to the control in speed issue. The risk of hurting someone or something else matters.

Suggesting that anything less than running speed is relatively safe tells me that you have zero clue about the types of injuries involved in either activity.

The vast majority of inline skating injuries are forearm (typically wrist) injuries. This is usually from falling and putting ones arm(s) out to break the fall. This happens every single day at driveway speeds - Inline skate injuries at high speed (faster than you can run) are comparatively rare.

This whole sub-thread reeks of toxic skateboarder machismo. I lived around it long enough to recognize it (heck, I used to do it too). Now I just laugh.

I wonder if you could make some kind of handheld brake lever cable system for inlines. That’d be sweet.

Specifically the one famous joke (that even made it onto The Sopranos)....

What is the hardest thing about roller blading?

Telling your parents you're gay.

I never knew a joke could change the course of history.

Lower back tattoos were popular amongst young women in the 90s. Then the term "tramp stamp" caught on like wildfire and the practice came to an abrupt stop.

> Then the term "tramp stamp" caught on like wildfire and the practice came to an abrupt stop.

In Germany, the same happened, but via the term "Arschgeweih" ["ass antler"].

For the readers who understand German: there also existed a song "Bye Bye Arschgeweih" by Ina Müller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIY1SZ_boEQ

(the song title is of course a pun on the refrain line "Bye-bye, Miss American Pie" of the song American Pie by Don McLean)

Ass antler. That is hilarious.

I just found out that the variant "arse antlers" actually seems to be used in Britain (source: https://deen.dict.cc/?s=Arschgeweih).

It is always disappointing when bullying campaign works.

Yeah, the world needs more tramp stamps and arse antlers

No, the world needs less people who go out of their way to bully others. There is nothing wrong with tatoo on lower back, it does not matter whether it is needed or not.

The issue is that some assholes just could not stomach those women having something nice, so they needed to bully them out of it. And these kind of assholes have too much influence.

But why was rollerblading ever associated with homosexuals to begin with? As one who did not know anyone in the 90s who was both a rollerblader and an out gay person, is it a "yeah, but looks gay" thing? I dunno, seemed like one of those things one says when they can't afford rollerblades, or can afford them but sucks at it and gave up.

My recollection is that the flamboyant gay rollerbladers zipping around places like Venice Beach became a meme of sorts.

Also in Malcolm in the middle, the father teaches Malcolm rollerblading, and uses this kind of flamboyant clothing and the camera emphasizes the tight clothes.

There was also a window where "gay" meant "uncool."

> 2. (slang, derogatory) Used to express dislike: lame, uncool, stupid.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gay#Adjective

To teenage boys where I grew up the '90s, "don't be gay" was just a standard egg-on challenge, interchangeable with "don't be a pussy." We weren't exactly in touch with our feminine sides. Your supposed masculinity was proven by doing things more idiotically dangerous than your friends. Only danger could lead to teenage glory. (See: Jackass). We had a saying for it: "Balls and stupidity." Teenage boys are like 2-year-old dogs before they get snipped. Rollerblading just wasn't dangerous enough. Especially with a bunch of pads on. Also, older people started doing it. You'd see lawyers rollerblading to work holding a latte. That more than anything probably killed it for teenagers.

After living in Spain and watching teenage boys do mindlessly dangerous moto dirtbike tricks for audiences of girls on the street, I had an insight that this was probably how Bullfighting started... some kid daring another kid to go stab a bull, and him doing it for attention from girls. And that sport is still heavily associated with machismo.

One other thing on the macho side - like, my mom roller skated when she was young, and even she got a pair of roller blades. You can't really be dangerously cool doing something your mom does.

My intuition from my scene was simply that skateboarding was the cool kid thing to do, and if it wasn't skateboarding it must be lame. That stigma had it's application on BMX, scooters, even different types of skateboards weren't free from the mockery of skateboarders. It's not skateboardings fault, it was just the culture. I like to think it's changed and thanks to the internet you can always find people doing what you like.

Back then all I had was rateaskater.com to share the sport with.

> or can afford them but sucks at it and gave up.

It’s actually the opposite. The term originated with skateboarders. Rollerblading was seen as (a) too easy and (b) lacking any sort of “culture”.

rollerblading had a lot of associations to sub-activities from prior cultural zeitgeists like rollerdisco that are frankly, very silly. it was also more respectable and sport-like in the eyes of the general public, and following the teenager's universal laws of cool: if your parents and grandparents do it, it's not cool.

figureskating

Well, jokes have changed the course of history in far more important circumstances and the fates of nations of millions - so simply making a passtime out of fashion is not much...

What jokes have changed the course of history? It would make a good book.

There's a long list of comedy that affected politics, from Aristophanes critiques of the Pelloponisian war (and obsfuscating relativism introduced by philosophers, which contributed to the charges against Socrates), to Jonathan Swift's "Modest proposal" aimed at then prevalent policies against the poor and/or Irish, US (Twain and others), and Europlean humorous writers and playwrights with considerable influence in their contemporary affairs (from Shaw to Karl Krauss), all the way to modern comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin affecting free speech laws (all the way to the Supreme Court), and tons of similar examples worldwide.

And we shouldn't forget one of the biggest jokes of the 20th century, Chamberlain.

Bill Burr was blaming that one specific joke for the demise of blading. Can you think of an example where a single joke has changed the course of history in a significant way? I don't doubt the impact humour has had. It is the favorite method that our rulers use to feed us propaganda.

Thankfully, ever city I've moved to has a roller hockey league. It's a nice cheap alternative to ice hockey, typically 1/2 or less of the cost. Here in DC we have multiple leagues and weekly pickup games, you can find us Wednesdays in front of the white house: http://www.whitehousehockey.com/

Roller skating and inline skating have been gaining popularity for the last five years or so. I took it up (sort of again) in my late thirties, due to my son being invited to a roller skating birthday party, and discovered how much I enjoy it as both a challenge and Zen-like experience of focused concentration on both nothing and 'everything going on around me'.

I only do it at a rink and in that context I love it. I look forward to it in a way that makes me feel like a child, so much so that it makes me question my own maturity / adulthood, but nowhere near enough to suppress that enthusiasm.

I'm currently learning to skate backwards, and enjoying the total inability to learn it theoretically, you can only improve by doing, and at my age it has to be done slowly and incrementally because injuries mean you have to wait so long until the next time you can go again - so there's a brake on the speed of improvement.

I really still feel that childish excitement about going skating.

> so much so that it makes me question my own maturity / adulthood, but nowhere near enough to suppress that enthusiasm

Part of maturing is realising that a kindred spirit is something to cherish. Trying to maintain a facade of maturity is what becomes immature.

FYI, that's not what "kindred spirit" means.

So it isn't!

I had assumed it was evolved from the the germanic word for children, kinder, but it looks like it evolved from the Old English word kinraden, which meant related in lineage more or less.

We still have kin in English

I know what you meant, cheers :)

Oh, come to an ice skating rink some time :) And please hit me up if you do so in Belgium.

I wrote a bit about ice skating / figure skating here. You might find some inspiration there: https://tildes.net/~talk/xoh/the_one_thing_i_wish_someone_ha...

Still hundreds of us in London going out every week and my mate’s skate school has FLOURISHED during lockdown with online lessons being taken up by ice skaters, locked out of rinks everywhere…

When I played ice hockey, roller hockey seemed pretty popular (never tried it myself) if nothing else than a way to do more of something a bit similar, since ice time is pretty limited (by rinks being few and far between, and mostly not used for hockey) here.

(Haven't skated since coronavirus, hadn't realised missing it so much until your comment.. I'd only just managed to get in with a new team's rec session too, having not really played or even skated much after graduating.)

Hey where do you recommend skating in London? Also, what blades would you recommend for a noob? Been looking at FR X or FR 2 but have no idea what I’m buying really

Not the person you're replying to but my advice would be to first make sure you know what type of skating you're going to be doing, because city skating/freeskating has different needs to fitness skating.

If you're looking at freeskates then you can't really go wrong with FRs, Rollerblade's RB series or maybe some Powerslide skates. Just check how wide your feet are because they can fit very differently, even within the same brand the RB skates are quite wide and Twister Edge skates are narrow.

Ideally try them on and get a feel for what's most comfortable for you, you can swap out the frames and wheels for something better later on, and usually the liner too.

Hyde Park, Battersea Park, join the easy Sunday Stroll at 14:00 every week, no idea about skates, but make sure they're comfortable!

My experience was quads are way, way easier to learn and skate on than inline. Give them a try too maybe.

See also windsurfing, snow blades, fat biking and a bunch of other sports that were briefly the next big thing.

Some of this is just the nature of fads but an interesting case can be made that, with the rise of the internet sports and decline of local shops the instruction infrastructure isn't there anymore: https://fredhasson.medium.com/how-the-internet-killed-windsu...

Obviously some sports are thriving but many of them have figured out a way to maintain a local presence despite online sales. Ie bike maintenance focused shops, the preference for locally shaped boards in surfing, ski and bike lift tickets, climbing gyms.

Fat biking is dead now? I see them everywhere.

They were defiantly a fad 2015 ish with sales booming. They are still around and popular where they make sense but the number of available models and sales have dropped back...still a ton out there obviously though.

There are a bunch of e fat bikes being sold at the moment as part of the e bike trend...who knows how long that one will last.

Do yourself a favor and wear wrist guards when you skate or snowboard. A fall on an outstretched hand (FOOSH) can easily rupture your scapholunate ligament. This is an injury that often cannot be repaired, and eventually leads to arthritic degeneration called scapholunate advanced collapse (SLAC). The standard of care for SLAC currently involves fusing the wrist bones, which of course means you can't no longer move your wrist. So wear your wrist guards!

> "It's hard to look good on skates. Once you get good, you'll look good, but there's nothing you can buy that will make that easier. It's a balance point that has to be learned and earned."

What about the whole Heelys fad?

The same critique applies to skateboarding, and that seems as popular as ever.

I bladed and still skateboard.

What made blading lame is having to carry around a pair of shoes if you want to go anywhere. Otherwise you're like the guy clicking around the coffee shop in your clip in bike shoes and tights.

I have a pair of 5-wheel skates which clip to a (special) pair of boots. Those boots looked a bit like motorcycle boots, the skates have a hard shell which is strapped over the boots. This is a practical solution to the shoe problem unless you're looking for something more fashionable.

Look up “Doop” skates. I have a pair of three-wheeled (100mm monsters) doops that I can step into somewhat like snowboard bindings. I much prefer my roller hockey skates most of the time, as the ankle support on Doops is almost nonexistent, but after the first couple minutes each time you adjust and can go for a while. I don’t know if this is true for all of their models, but mine disassembles each skate into a boot and a wheels+rail section, meaning it’s very easy to pack them in luggage for a trip.

Rollerblades could have become more popular if all parks had pavement instead of gravel tracks.

Been that guy. What's the problem? I mean I can see the problem with walking into a shop wearing rollerblades, but what is wrong with bike shoes?

It's incredibly uncomfortable. I don't want my cleats to score up someone's floor so I end up walking on the side-edge of my feet. And every step makes inordinate amounts of clicking so that I feel like I'm a hot girl in heels walking on tile, drawing attention to myself.

And let me tell you, drawing attention to myself while I'm sweaty and wearing bike clothing is the definition of uncomfortable.

I don't race and so having optimal power transfer isn't important to me. I do like cleats though, so I ended up standardising on SPD across all my bikes (including road).

I have a pair of Vaude Sykkel shoes. They're leather, super comfy, look great (IMO) and the cleats are recessed: when I walk around the cleats don't make contact with the floor.

https://www.vaude.com/en-GB/Women/Shoes/Bike-Shoes/Sykkel-Bi...

Depends on the shoe. I have definitely marred wood floors with SPDs and Shimano lace up CX shoes. Looked like someone took a hammer and smacked it at an angle in random places on the floor.

I thought much like you that SPDs were recessed enough not to make contact. I was wrong.

> Depends on the shoe.

That's definitely true and something to bear in mind.

I generally don't wear outdoor shoes (of any kind) in my own or other people's homes, which is where this sort of situation is most likely to arise. Commercial establishments (shops, hotels, pubs, offices) tend to have sufficiently hardwearing floors for this to not be a concern. I'm usually more worried about bringing in mud than about damage to floors.

Then get mountainbike shoes, which have the cleats recessed into a proper sole. You can walk normally without any clicking...

Don't get me wrong, I'll just take them off and ruin my socks because walking with your toes pointed up is killer on the ankles. I didn't realise it was something worth being self-conscious over.

I'd be more concerned about lounging around a coffee shop with spandex revealing all I've been given.

More of a ristretto-and-go kind of moment, I would think.

Heelys wound up recalled and banned in schools over safety issues with the shoes themselves - as opposed to the lack of helmets.

Now there is this:

https://kickspeedrollerskateshoes.com/

This would look so much better, if the wheels were hidden by the sidewall when collapsed inside... they'd look like normal sneakers when worn inside, and then "bam!", skates!

Same applies to skiing. And surfing. Countless activities that are all about complex movements at speed.

I don’t think that point is relevant.

According to the excellent roller doc "United Skates" the venues are closing due to rent increase.

https://www.bustle.com/p/the-hbo-documentary-united-skates-s...

So much talent and so much passion for the activity in that great documentary.

Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon on a bike pulling Kip on online skates ... https://youtu.be/eprEOkxJ2Eo

I went to the skate park with my son (in the Netherlands) it was crowded but all the kids were on these [0]. There were some skateboarders but I was the only on on inline skates… (I’m 39).

[0]: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=stunt%20steps&iax=images&ia=images

This makes a lot of sense to me. Steps (and to a degree skateboards) have a much more forgiving learning curve than inline skates. When they slide out from under you, you can just jump off and land on your feet. When inline skates slide out from under you, you tend to fall hard. What's surprising is that inline skating ever gained any popularity at all, not that it fell out of favor.

I also bought a skateboard with my son but it’s pretty hard, the skates you can use on the road and make some KMs/miles, a freestyle skateboard is much harder to get good at in my experience. The steps seem to be much easier to get started with indeed… But I’m biased.

No proof, but I think that their short lived popularity is what killed roller rinks. Everyone wanted to inline at the roller rink, but you can't really skate slow in inline's - so they eventually banned them. So everyone wanted to inline, but couldn't do it in the rink so they stopped going. Then a lot of them closed before the popularity waned.

Spoiler: Does not answer the question.

Brief history of inline freestyle rollerblading in Ukraine. It had declined as well, but head a peak much later than US.

2003-2008 -- this was rise period of skating. Primarily in Kyiv, but also Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Odessa

2006 -- Sebastian Lafarge creates SEBA brand and Seba FR1 boot. For some reason it becomes #1 choice for "pro" skaters in Ukraine. Maybe because it is well suited for freestyle lifestyle? Anyway, more and more white-black boots had appeared.

I think French and Russian existing roller cultures greatly influenced the whole Ukrainian movement.

2008-2013 -- "boom" of inline skating in Ukraine. During this time originated several different skater subgroups:

* yamakasi -- as a tribute to movie "Yamakasi", where tracers gather together to watch sunrise from high point. Skaters chatted which hill of Kyiv they plan to watch sunrise, skated whole night, gathered in one place and watched the event. Those meetings were sometimes up to 100 people.

* Wizards (catchskating) -- basically "freeze tag" on inline skates. It turned out to be a good team sport, and more accessible than inline hockey. Common teams were 2 catchers VS 5 runners and 3 VS 7. There were compettions, Luhansk and Donetsk teams were best there. I think this game originated from Russia

* Season opening -- yearly spring event when weather becomes warm enough for skating, and people from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia gather together in Kyiv for grand mob skating. I think record goes to 1000 skaters of all ages.

* Night riders -- freeskating empty streets at night was common and even had weekly schedules. Bikers sometimes participated too

* Downhill -- Kyiv has many hills, so people quickly learn the fun of downhill. We had teams, night downhill trainings, maps of good and bad DH, and so on.

* all kinds of tricksters -- slalom, slides, jumps. This was copied from russian and french FSK tournaments. (at time Kyiv had very few skateparks)

2014+ -- war happened and we lost Russia, Luhansk and Donetsk teams. This probably was the most disrupting event for whole movement. Ban of Vkontakte had cut many contacts and communities.

The somewhat fringe downhill rollerblading scene is pretty epic, with 100++kph races [1] and some nice technical descents [2]. What is interesting is that it made a somewhat resurgence in the past 5 years after disappearing from the downhill scene for a few years.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I46SP1Uc7ek [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfAHj04HHQo

In Russia quad rollers (with suspension like skate's one) are almost unheard of. And rollerblades (in-line) is very popular in big cities, with schools, clubs, etc.

If you’re in SF, there’s a rink in GG park by 6th ave on the north side. There’s always music playing, it’s a good time. Very popular

And if you’re into roller hockey we play pickups at Dolores Park rink on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings. (18th and Church closest intersection)

SF also has the Church of 8 Wheels at like Fell and Fillmore.

Interestingly, roller blading is moderately popular on the lakefront trail in Chicago.

I bike the trail almost daily, and I see a decent number of people out on blades each time. It’s nothing like the 90s, but I always think about how fun it looks as I ride by.

This brings back memories of the Friday Night Skate in SF in the 90s (still going but not weekly I don’t think). Started out after the 89 earthquake on the closed sections of the freeways and continued as a skate through downtown. As a neat anecdote, it was regularly attended by Tsutomu Shimomura, the guy whose team caught Kevin Mitnick. A number of other folks from the hacker/phreaker scene were regular attendees too.

For me, it seemed like a lot of people I knew got injured on rollerblades vs biking or running. Never gave it much thought but is it inherently more dangerous?

Bike wheels (and feet) are effective across a wide variety of surfaces. Skates have small wheels, so even a stray pebble can knock you to the ground.

I’ve been looking into buying a pair of roller blades for the past month or so. Any recommendations?

Never really roller skated aside from a couple of roller discos but used to play ice hockey so should be easy enough. I’ve discovered a nice scene in London for this, lots of different ethnicities and ages roller skating/blading and usually always good music and vibes. Looks like a lot of fun

Checkout inlinewarehouse. FR Skates, Powerslides are great. FR was made by previous Seba skate creator. The three wheel skates are the way to go if you are at an intermediate or greater level.

FR skates are the best currently out there IMO

When I moved to America I was given a pair of Rollerblades and nearly got myself killed. It required a skill I could not safely master.

Toronto traffic moved me from a bike to blades. On a bike you are totally at the mercy of the driver coming up from behind. With blades I could skate facing traffic and transition to the sidewalk or boulevard if oncoming traffic was too close. Also blades are harder to steal than a bike locked up where you can't keep an eye on it while at work.

When I was a child I loved to rollerblade. I stopped when I moved and there wasn't a lot of pavement.

Now I walk some of the parks around Houston. There's plenty of people using a diverse set of leisure/exercise activities. I see more rollerbladers than rollerskaters on the bike paths. Rollerblading isn't dead.

It sucked to be cycling on a shared path with rollerbladers. They’d take up the whole lane. I’m glad they’re gone.

It also sucks to be a single rollerblader on a multi-use path with a gang of bikers who can't seem to understand they're taking up both lanes designed to be used to travel in both directions.

Nobody knows how to use anything even resembling a road.

Agreed on both your and the OP's point. MUPs seem to bring the worst in some people who do not know how to be considerate.

Roads should be broad. Like in northern Alberta roads. Great skating.

I see this a lot on some leisure area in Berlin here (the old airport Tempelhof). The problem is that there usually is a big difference in skill level betwen cyclists and rollerbladers. Cyclists are normally quite experienced in what they do, and can control their space usage pretty well. Rollerbladers only do it once a week at best, and stumble around like drunk teenagers, going very wide and slow. A skilled rollerblader wouldn't really need more space than a cyclist.

A roller blading stride takes more width than a cyclist by a bit because you push back and out otherwise you aren't very efficient.

Well yeah depends also on the cyclist, if they are going rather quiet or out of the saddle. The main issue is the super wide and unpredictable path that inexperienced skaters take.

This only applies to people still learning how to skate. I used to rollerblade all around manhattan. A good skater takes up as much room as a pedestrian, but is moving much faster, can zip in and out of crowds like pylons, and use edgework to accelerate without the largesse strides. It’s incredibly fun as a rollerblader’s mobility is infinitely greater than a skateboard .

In my case I borrowed my skates to a friend in '98, who then shortly after moved quite far away without returning the them.

I was at that point though where after having fallen numerous times, the skates were destined for long term storage

The one time I tried it, I couldn't keep upright. The lack of edges (vs. ice skates) really threw me for a loop. I'm not all that great on ice skates, either, but I can stay blade-side-down on them.

You fall quite a lot when learning, my hands were very sorry.at the end of the day when I first learned. (I was 11 though)

Still big in NY https://www.youtube.com/c/BladeInNY/

Rollerblading was popular with the Millennial generation. It died when we got our driver's licenses.

it became really popular in Oakland since the pandemic started. When things first shut down in 2020, there was nothing to do but hang out at the lake. The parking lot at the boathouse turned into roller blade scene. I also see folks roller blading in the bike lanes sometimes.

There were a few years in the early 90s when I probably rollerbladed more than I walked.

Funny this should come up.

I'm now in San Diego near the beach, where there are many miles of boardwalk, perfect for blading. First thing I did was buy a pair of skates (k2 84 boa). I love going out in the early evening to watch the sunset.

As I skate by with a big smile on my face, I often hear tourists say they should get some.

Interestingly, rollerblading has become trendy again in Melbourne, Australia.

I live in Melb and have not seen a blader for ages.

More common near Exhibition Building

I stopped because the injuries from wiping out started to add up.

Anything in particular to look out for? Thinking of starting but don’t want to get injured

I stopped because if I did it too much my knees really hurt.

I always assumed that the movie Airborne killed it.

2017

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