April 2017

I recently started listening to podcasts on my long commute to work. One of the best discoveries so far has been the “how to be unpopular” podcast. This podcast really dives deep into the rollerblading culture. Despite having skated for over 10 years, this is something I really knew nothing about. I've started to think a lot more about my own experience of skating, and thought this might be of interest to some people (a very minuscule number of people, but still…).

This is supposed to be a small history of the sport of “aggressive inline skating”, as experienced by me. For lack of a universal name for this sport, I will be calling it skating.

My first pair of skates were actually roller skates. Pink roller skates. The only ones left in my size but I didn't care! Allegedly it didn't take too long before I was playing on little homemade ramps on these. Age? Around 4 or 5. One memory is being told by a neighbourhood kid that I was using them incorrectly. Apparently you are supposed to keep both feet planted firmly on the ground and shuffle them forward and back.

Fast forward through the next years where we emigrated to New Zealand and back twice. Throughout this time I pretty much always had a pair of skates I think.

After moving back to NL around age 12 for some reason I got really into skating again. I used to be a real bookworm, and at some point I found a book on inline skating. This my have been my inspiration for going onto the “aggressive” path. There was a whole chapter outlining all these different grinds you could do.

I vaguely remember at some point seeing another kid bring his skates to school which had the middle wheels taken out.

At some point I did the same and on a little homemade grind rail learnt FS and BS. Over time I got a bunch of other kids skating and we'd go all over the place, especially to playgrounds and skate down the slide. I also learnt soul grinds around this time. Still on rec skates, they were some kind of shoe looking soft boot skate, and therefore had a pretty flat sole. I was taking my skates to school, and started skating to the skatepark pretty much every day after school. Eat dinner with my skates on and do some more skating later.

A bit later I got my first pair of aggressive skates! Roces Majestic 12, many sizes too big (but the right width!) The sport goods store was holding a massive skate clearance so everything was going cheap!

At the skatepark there were pretty much just skateboarders. There was another older kid who turned up a handful of times, would wax every coping and do a buch of backsides. I also had one street session when I ran into a bunch of “really old” skaters who were grinding a little brick wall in front of the mall I used to skate through.

A couple of years later when we moved back to NZ again I thought I was possibly the only inline skater in NZ for a long time. I still went to the skatepark pretty regularly, but over time my wheels were pretty much down to nothing. Eventually I bought some new wheels online, and when they were gone I bought a new pair of skates online, Razors Genesys!

Eventually I started looking for skate videos from NZ, and eventually discovered the NZ Rolling Facebook page. Turns out even in NZ skating used to be big, or at least a thing. Have had a few sessions with other bladers here and there over the years now.

In podcast 186 (check number) there is a conversation about how people past the initial boom got into skating (and a number of “sick edits” were mentioned).