Where Is the Love for Roller Skating?

2. later that day after Rob has been taken to hospital, I get barged off-course and hit the concrete end Of the rink fencing... balls-first!

DUDDEST RECREATIONAL TRANSPORT EVER, EXCEPT FOR SEGWAY.

I loved rollerskating as a kid - I had my own funky white disco boot pair with red wheels and a red stopper. I used to skate in my garage to perfect tricks and then go skating around my high school (which was right behind my house).

Plenty of spills, as you'd expect, but never broke anything or did any major damage.

Best memory ever is to skating about in the garage to Visage, who I'd never heaard before. Suddenly the thought that music could be somethign mysterious and strange was magical, and it's all sorta bonded with the skating.

you checked your purse? in a locker, i hope.

you checked your purse? in a locker, i hope.

um, no. it was a real coat check. since the neighborhood was so bad 6-7 years ago [lots of gang violence, even though it was right downtown], the people who run the rink [its owned by a church] treat it like a safe haven for children, and there are specific rules you must obey, such as no baseball caps and hooded sweatshirts whatsoever.

I never got over wanting my own white skates.

This is (a little bit) odd: I used to love rollerskating, but fell over and broke my arm when I was 9! "Whip It" was playing at the time, and I was trying to impress my friends my going backwards.

SKATE INJURIES: I busted my lower lip (got six stitches) and chipped my front tooth diagonally in half when some daft girl ran out in front me at the skating rink without skates and she startled and tripped me. They had to pull out flecks of blue paint from the concrete floor before they did the surgery. I could only drink Ensure for a month (it wasn't bad at all, surprisingly) and my lip downgraded from looking like a hamburger to just having a scar that's never really been noticeable. People are always surprised when I point it out.

I also scraped up the whole front of my body when I was seven skating in parking garage downtown because I couldn't turn fast enough going down a ramp and instead I smacked into the wall and almost fell four stories onto the sidewalk on Bloxham Street. The scraping was fine, though, but I could've easily ended up being decked by that wall to the point that I'd fly over it like a hipchecked hockey player...and then I'd probably be paralysed or dead.

http://www.stjohns-edinburgh.org.uk/uploads/images/mural_dec03.jpg

I went skating with my family yesterday. Absolutely classic. First time I'd been in 30 years. My wife still had secret skating moves from the 80s that I definitely didn't have, but I held my own out there. I'm going back as soon as possible. Apparently my daughter had a meltdown on the way to school this morning because they haven't invented a time machine yet so we could go back to yesterday and keep roller-skating.

Will be buying skates. The rentals were uncomfortable and they stink.

There was a woman there who looked exactly like the most recent pictures I'd seen of Carly Rae Jepsen, and I was mildly geeking out like "is Carly Rae having a low-key skate party at this rink in nowheresville maryland?" but I went and checked her instagram and she changed her hair up last week. But Call Me Maybe definitely got played.

If you opened this thread, you'd probably enjoy this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QboWIYgHpw

I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking roller rinks were a big thing for five minutes during the height of disco. Far from it. But they are on the endangered list at the moment--like so many good doumentaries, this one about's some part of the world dying.

(The trailer captures one part of the film, not the dying part.)

Went to an old school roller rink for a birthday party with a bunch of other 50 year olds. The playlist (Siouxsie, Pailhead, Nitzer Ebb, etc etc) kept me out there way longer than I should have been and we never reversed directions. Consequently, my left left got worked and finally failed me while “Cruel Summer” was playing. I fell and probably pulled a hamstring but still had a blast.