This blog post is to educate new school rollerblades on the roots and history of aggressive rollerblading, and in my eyes, the lack of passion and the hate there is today for the lack of public recognition.
I’ve been aggressive rollerblading since the early to mid 90’s, since the pioneers of street skating, Chris Edwards and Arlo Eisenberg. My first pair of rollerblades was the Rollerblade Lighting TRS. These were the first pair of so-called aggressive skates that were still considered inline skates. There were no soul plates, backslide plates, grooves in the frames, but we locked on to anything and everything. My friends and I used to skate bike racks and build homemade rail setups with 2x4’s. My brother and I brought aggressive rollerblading to our hometown. Many friends tried it up until high school and then flat out quit. We never stopped.
I’ve either owned or skated the early attempts at what an aggressive rollerblade should be. Such skates include, Rollerblade Lighting TRS / Tarmac CE / Edwards Chocolates, the original Roces Magestic 12, Oxygen AR1.1, K2 Fatty Pro, some pair of original Salomon’s I can’t remember. I know there were more, but I can’t remember them all.
I used to edit videos straight off a VHS video camera directly to a VCR. It’s sad to say, but more than half the edits I see posted on YouTube these days look absolutely no better that VHS quality with editing worse than mine with the resources I had. I understand not everyone has the same skill level to make a quality video, but with resolutions such as 720p/1080p, you’d think people would be up to date by now. I also understand that people may not be able to afford this type of equipment, but if you are buying rollerblades and uploading footage to YouTube, you can afford a decent resolution video camera. Just to clarify, I am not hating on those less fortunate than I may have been when I was growing up as a young rollerblader, but I guess just like old folks get annoyed with younger generations for many reasons, I get annoyed with resolution that has come so far since my generation of VHS quality.
Where I am going with this is the fact that kids these days are trying to “Bring back Rollerblading” as a respected and public sport. For years and even still, aggressive rollerbladers are talked down upon mainly by skateboarders and just anyone who thinks it’s cool to call us “Fruitbooters”. I’ve never cared though, I love rollerblading and I always will.
I took a break from skating around 2005 until the summer of 2010. This was not for any reason other than work consumed my life. I bought the Razors Brian Aragon 3 skates. I was completely out of the loop with skates and just about everything rollerblading. I began skating almost every day over the past summer and started picking it up again extremely fast. I would go out to NYC a couple times a week to skate some new and old spots. I met a lot of new young skaters who are amazing for their age considering when I was their age, there were only a few tricks. I quickly picked up the change in skating style, from clothing to switch ups. I’m not as risky as I was when I was a teenager for obvious reasons.
I’ve learned of some popular rollerblading websites where videos are posted, people can leave comments as well as sell and trade rollerblade parts. This is pretty awesome since the only websites for rollerblading we used to have, were just a couple online shops.
This is where I get down to the main point of this blog. I grew up watching videos such as the Hoax’s and the VG’s, etc… (First off, if you’ve never heard of the ’93 rollerblading movie Airborne, you should learn your roots of rollerblading. Chris Edwards was a rollerblader/ice hockey player as well as the star’s stunt double. Though he was also the stunt double in a couple other movies, this was THE movie that featured aggressive rollerblading). Now back to the main point.
Not every rollerblader seems to have the same outlook on the sport as others do. This is the same for just about any sport. Some care about the money and others care about the passion. As I stated above, I met a lot of NYC rollerbladers over the summer of 2010. Many of these rollerbladers want to make documentaries. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if it were for the right reason. Many of these kids want to “Bring back Rollerblading” to such events as the X Games and I’m sure even as far as the Olympics. No offense, but these kids have no filming or creative skill whatsoever. They want to bring the sport back to the public eye and are trying every which way to get it seen. There are kids who own a decent to the best camera and shoot photos and videos. They post absolutely every photo shot throughout the day (good or bad). This does not make the sport look good. They film a day’s worth of skating at a skate park for instance and make a quick edit and post it to YouTube. This also does not make our sport look even remotely good. If you take a look at high profile extreme sports such as skateboarding and snowboarding, these film makers take pride in their skill.
Understanding your skill and utilizing others in your projects as necessary make all the difference. All these rollerbladers think they are the best and need no help from others. Get with the times people. It’s OK to ask for help or collaborate with others whose skills rock yours. I would love for the sport to be respected and brought back to the public eye, but I also don’t care. We had our time and people did not accept it. Yes, it’s been years since we were dropped, but that’s life. I am all for this sport coming back, but these kids need to learn the right way to bring this sport back.
STOP posting 360p/480p edits. STOP posting every picture and video shot. Understand what looks good and what doesn’t. Learn how to shoot/film/edit, there are so many resources for everything in this world today. When you want to watch the best in video, you watch Vimeo, not YouTube. If you want to bring this sport back, please do it in a respectful way, if not for yourself, do it for the old school rollerbladers. Have passion for rollerblading and its history, not just because you think you might make a buck. Give respect and you’ll earn respect is something I find is extremely lacking in the new age of rollerblading.
I watch tons of edits from kids around the world who kill their section and whoever is filming/editing own the passion for it. Getting sponsored used to be about making a skate edit and sending it into a company. These edits were the best tricks a rollerblader could do. Now, these same edits are just little spots thrown on YouTube for everyone to watch. This is awesome because now if a kid can’t afford to buy a professional made video, they can go online and watch and get motivated and learn new tricks, but then on the other hand, I recently read a blog post telling people to stop uploading Brian Aragon’s Game Theory section on YouTube. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with it. There are so many video posted, new and old that give motivation to kids less fortunate than those able to buy these videos. This is the new age of video resources and these rollerbladers should stop hating on pirated material. I would bet anything that these kids hating, download torrents and/or have illegally downloaded a movie or music. Everyone is a hypocrite in some way and for these kids to say it’s NOT OK to pirate rollerblading because it’s hurting our industry needs to recognize the world we are living in.
I’m not proofreading this post. I may have left out things I’ve wanted to say for a while, but during this write, this is what came to mind. Most likely no one will ever know who wrote this, so it really doesn’t matter.
What I would like to end this blog post with is this; I am proud to say that I grew up before there was a sport called aggressive rollerblading and I am proud to still consider myself a rollerblader, but for all the new school rollerbladers out there, learn the roots and history of this sport and when you have that passion for what this sport means to the old school rollerbladers, then continue this history and evolve the sport into something like no other sport out there. Bring us to new heights. Bring us to a level that blows the skateboarding industry out. Do it for the passion and no other reason!
.peace
