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Get u some wheels my g, would be great to see some content of u learning, if you want any advice on what skates to get hollar at Ur boy, there's really only two major shops in the UK for rollerblades and that's Slik Willie's in London or loco skates in Brighton. Bless g, and hope to see u on wheels soon😁
As a skateboarder who goes to a lot of skateparks I can say that at least now in 2023 no skaters hate rollerbladers being at the park. rollerbladers are always so nice and cool!
in the mid 90's it's true, the skateboarders HATED us, but it was often a street skaters thing. Us ramp skaters/riders of all kinds got along really well. Inline and BMX got along pretty well too. Then scooters came along and everyone hated them. Now scooters seem to run the place. Weird seeing a full grown adult doing scooter tricks, but its been around that long now the kids aged up
Not just the 90s as someone who does both I can say from my point of view I saw a lot of hate from the skate community to anything that wasn’t a skateboard basically, it got more toxic than that even people would complain abt kids at parks like go skate the fckn street dude the parks here so the kid can learn in a safe environment not so u can bs 200 instagram clips in a single day
In the 90's, the hatred was real. Skateboarding had a history, there were older guys in their 30s, who'd skated since the 70s, or even 60s... But rollerbladers just popped up out of nowhere. They were little kids, who had no idea about etiquette, not snaking or dropping in on someone else's run. My buddy broke his arm, after some rollerblader dropped in on him, despite being told not too. Looking back, I guess it was probably insecurity/projection, too- We saw rollerbladers, the same way as the rest of the world saw US- Annoying little kids following a pointless fad, who were always getting underfoot, and wore weird, gimmicky clothes. Even before the rollerblader thing (which was pretty open hatred), there was a milder rivalry between skaters vs BMXers, that would sometimes flare up into fights and stuff (altho mostly those two groups got along Ok). But that just seems to be the way with youth subcultures- You always have some nearly-identical group, who you hate with a passion; punks vs skinheads, punks vs skaters. Goth vs emo, emo vs scene kid. Kind of like how the worst religious hatred isn't one religion vs a totally seperate religion; it's Catholic vs Protestant, or Sunni vs Shi-ite.
yeah, met one the other day. he was fucking insane doing all these tricks, looked almost like he was dancing. got chatting, told him i found it cool how he was so amazing at such a difficult sport to which he replied that skateboarding is harder cus you have to balance something under your feet. he was definitely being humble, haha. saw him waxing the edges of a block and was like W T F! respect rollerbladers, some of the shit you pull off is insane to me
the funny thing is it's the skateboarders that mess up all the actual street lines at parks by deciding to grind one little box that happens to cut across five lines
Scooters are even worse. Even when skateboarders and inline skaters trying to grind a quarter coping. The scooter kids have their scooter sticking out of the coping. ... Urghhh..
@@aussiemoolay8589 I think it's important to remember we all started off as kids at some point, and probably got in the way... But there is a difference between kids who ride because their parents want them out the house and kids who actually put effort in and progress, I think that should be appreciated... But yes, I'm sitting here as a mid 20 yo scooter rider and saying, kids do very often get in the way... It's the dude that shows up with the RC car that boils my blood lmao. There is one thing that scooter riding has over skateboarding, nobody stays in the sport who joined to impress girls or try and be cool or edgy, litterally noone, because it's seen as just about the least cool thing you can do, so the people you meet do it for genuine passion, no posers, just genuine people...
As someone who just bought a pair of rollerblades last week, I think everyone else's sentiment about "people are just doing what they like" fits me pretty good. Along with nostalgia
Used to be rollerblading a LOT as a kid. What killed it to me, is that you could not go anywhere inside. With a skate, you can always jump off, hop into the store, grab a drink in a bar, do whatever... with rollerblades you were barred from going anywhere but the street.
Agreed!! A lot of stores in Seattle has allowed me since I ask before going inside the stores.. but hey, you can always carry a super light pair of shoes :)
When sports "die" they often just become a lot more core, the passionate riders stay and the trend-followers leave. Lots of respect for the riders still doing it
That's the truth. I'm still amazed at what's going on in rollerblading today. I always check in from time to time to see what's up. The 90s were a weird time with rollerbladers and skateboarders. I remember all the skateboarders giving rollerbladers a hard time at the skatepark. Then all of us on rollerblades would put our shoes on and be just as good on a skateboard.
@@louiecmancuzo2903 Very wierd time. You were made fun of hardcore for rollerblading. If you weren't cool you were made fun of. Very competitive times. We did just that, Stopped the acid and farfegnugen grinding, put on shoes and became good at skateboarding in order to fit in. My friends and I would still blade when we could but eventually stopped all together. Paul Rodriguez, Mikey Taylor, "Justin Case who was better than all of them but also the biggest asshole, which made him even cooler at the time" Matt Taylor, Spanky, Van Wastell all frequented our local park(Newbury Park/ Thousand Oaks) and if you weren't skateboarding you were getting in the way, made fun of and or kicked out.
Yes dude it still is fun. To be honest the negative perspective that people have has kind of died down, but of course there are still some people who will fuckin make fun of you if they see you in a pair hahaha.
Winger would have had one of the biggest albums of that time were it not for Beavis and Butthead. The animated duo made Winger un-cool and their album sales plummeted as a result.
Hell yeah man. I stopped skating around 2000, and just picked up a new set at 44yo. Mostly because I was really good then, and my kids want to learn to roller skate. If I'm taking the kids to a skating rink, I'm bringing my inlines. 🤙
I lived through the whole rollerblade thing. 80’s skating, 90’s rollerblade, then skating again. And TBH rollerblading was fun. The whole “rollerblades are gay” thing killed it for sure. But today, when all kids are gay, maybe rollerblades will return.
I tried rollerblading once on Venice Beach. Some girl yelled "look at the rental fruit boots". I promptly returned those fruit boots to the vendor and never touched them again.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Plus, it's NOT as fucked and socially stigmatized to be gay so that Outta help to. I don't know why he gave a Reactionary meme take about ppl having a aversion to it due to ppl associating it with being gay or femininity and their need to be a stereotypical "masculine" being. Absolutely a number of ppl are that stupid and HAVE to present themselves in the most extreme way or feel some type of way or shame. There are still ppl who feel they need to be the breadwinner, and some won't even date men who aren't.
Interesting video. Just a theory: Roller blades were too durable so there was less money in them. Skateboards wear out and break constantly, so companies selling them can constantly resell the same product. Roller blades? Unless the person who bought them was an extremely hardcore user chances are they'd outlast their interest in using them. Which meant that once those companies had sold roller blades to all the potential users sales were dead, which meant sponsorships were dead, which meant the media frenzy fuelling the whole thing was dead.
Well how about we sell them environmentally friendly and sustainable rollerblades now? You know recycled plastic and all, that's a hip thing to do! Right?
A bunch of us are getting back into/got back into aggressive inline and wizard skating during or just after covid. Nostalgia, more money, need to get outside, etc, all are driving a resurgence of sorts. Still a small community, but tight and stoked.
What killed in-line skating for me, was shops, schools, busses etc. banning them. They were a hassle to put on and take off, and I didn't want to carry shoes in a bag everywhere I went.
Son, by your logic downhill racing would be a dead sport. You can’t do it without a van full of gear and £10k worth of equipment. Carrying a bag is a hassle? I have a bag for my helmet bag.
Agreed: they were too much hassle to put on and take off. For me it was compounded by there not being much smooth pavement or concrete to skate on (in my neighborhood) and it chewed the heck out of both wheels and bearings while shaking my fillings loose. Too inconvenient and too expensive.
I love how a sport never completely dies it just goes underground and the people doing it are the hard core enthusiasts that do it purely for the love of it
They'll make a comeback. More and more people are becoming less concerned about what's "cool" and enjoying the things that are fun and make them happy.
Im 19 now, grew up with rollerblades, and still love them. If you put me on regular quads, I wouldn't have any idea what to do... As of today, I'm going to my local indoor rink and trying quads, but I love blades especially for the ankle support. It'll never fully die
@@SapiaNt0mata It doesn't need the X Games. Kids don't watch TV these days anyway. I envision a fusion of rollerblading slalom and roll bounce. If you take the ice skating team competitions, put them in rollerblades and make them choreograph their way around obstacles in the rink, you get something complex and new. It might not be guys pushing the sport this time. It might be girls.
I recently began ice-skating (being someone who once rollerbladed a lot) because I wanted at least one or two winter physical activities I can get into. In the middle of ice-skating, for the first time ever, the question popped in my head "Wait... whatever happened to rollerblading?!" and now I am here...
Whatever happened to ICE skating? With the climate getting warmer, plenty of kids are missing out on skating because rivers, lakes, and ponds are no longer freezing like they used to.
@@bruzote In the 1990s Columbus Ohio got a ECHL hockey team before NHL. After that they opened up 3 indoor ice rinks and another in Springfield. Now in Minnesota there's a ice rink in every back yard
I was in college in CA back then, and what I remember why a lot of regular people (not pros or hard cores) swapped out their blades for skateboards was that when they were out and about, you could jump off your boards and go into a store or whatever, but with blades you were stuck, outside usually, as every public building (CA) had a sign on the front door saying "No Rollerblades." This was a pretty big deal.
The circle I hung around in the early 2000s we did it all. Skated, bladed, and biked. Do what you like to do and have fun doing it. I never understood the beef. Awesome little documentary.
I love doing it all as well. I remember road biking clothes with the tight shirts shorts and shoes looked weird to people and now it’s odd when someone is not wearing the gear. Blades are fun but for cruising around town and going into coffee shops or restaurants or bars, skateboard is just so much easier
Growing up during that period I always felt like rollerblading was a lot more fun as a casual thing, while skateboarding always seemed more like a 'sport'. Especially when snowboarding started to become popular, and they kind of share how to 'feel'.
Yeah, I still have a pair (that almost never get used), I skateboarded too. It's easier to do tricks with skateboarding, you're not trapped/strapped in. Rollerblades are faster than skateboarding, but not even close to a bike. So they're in this kind of middleground where they don't do anything particularly well, and even in this video, other than rail grinding, there's not a lot in the way of doing tricks.
Same, but after seeing those professional rollerblading clips in the beginning, i was blown away! Vert rollerblading looks harder and scarier than vert skating! Like how do they land so well on two separated, skinny and round surfaces? There’s gotta be ankle breaks all over the place!
Same here at 41, just got back into skateboarding, and immediately got that itch to throw on rollerblades again!! As much as I love skating, there's something WAY more fun about rollerblades, almost like Parkour. I'm literally shopping on ebay right now, I can't believe how cheap a set of blades are.....I'm buying now before things sky rocket. I recently asked my buddy if he wanted to go skateboarding, and he actually said Nah, I have rollberblades, which is crazy....so I think it's about to make a surge come back.
@@michelleD9461 what i didn't realize is how people can dance in reg rollerskates. saw a girl on.... maybe a YT short... she had a 4'x4' piece of flooring and was going to town. till then, i didn't realize how much you could do in a small area like turns and small circles and whatever you'd call runningman but on wheels. kinda made me want to get some, tbh. didn't realize you could use them outdoors either, as i have NEVER seen anyone do that. thought only inlines were street skates. personally i always kinda liked disco though it was before my time. i woulda been doing roller disco for sure LOLL
Around 1998, our local skatepark was full of BMX'ers. A few friends and I were at the skatepark and saw this blader turn up and absolutely rip up the half pipe as we'd never seen before. Never saw him again but his legacy lived on through us, as I and 5 others instantly went out and got skates. Within a year we were entering local competitions and within 2 years, I and one other friend qualified for a West Midlands regional comp. If only video tech were more accessible back then cause we were a proper little team, tearing up streets, creating little challenges and travelling the country to various venues, sometimes sleeping rough just to make the most of the trip (as we could only go on a Saturday and Sunday due to school). I kick myself often for not documenting everything we did. It was sick, and all I have to show from that time is a pic of me inverted about 6ft above the coping on a 12ft vert ramp (Can't even see my face as I was facing the other way 😂🙈). My girl at the time was a skateboarder (she had a few moves in her locker 😅). We used to go back and forth with the banter but was always cool as we both enjoyed the skatepark scene. Not sure why I'm reminiscing on here, but it was good times and rather wholesome, given that many of our other friends were doing nothing. It felt purposeful. If you're a youngen reading this and and want to try something nobody else is doing, get your skates on, you'll have a blast.
I'm 36 and bought my first rollerblades a week ago. I remember the last time I used to blade was when I was 12 years old. I want to really learn how to do this for real. It looks extremely fun.
I have been skateboarding since 1975, I have skated at hundreds of skate parks all throughout America. With that said, no matter what people think, no matter what people say, I’ll say it, it doesn’t matter what you’re riding on at the skate park, as long as you’re out there having fun doing it!!!
When I was a teenage in the 90s, the rollerblade scene in NYC was blowing up. Barely any skateboarders. I swear once tony hawk on ps1 dropped, skateboarding took off. I blame tony hawks game lol.
Yeah I'm from NYC. I remember starting with skating.. skate key was fire. Then rollerblading took off.. And everyone i know that started skateboarding was after Tony hawk lol . I did have a skateboard as a kid way before the game came out though
I remember as a skater crapping on rollerblades and there people in the 90s. We called them fruit boots. Now looking back, I realize they were just as dope as freestyle/BMX, or skating. It’s very entertaining to watch and I wish the best for it’s reemergence.
Yup. I was a fruitbooter. But a also could skate a little and rode BMX bikes. I'll admit that learning a majority of tricks of rollerblades. Tend to be a lot easier than skateboarding. But when you're incorporating handrails and gaps on rollerblades. Some of that stuff been to.be respected.
@@I_like_turtles_67 My peer group all started with skateboards. None of us could ollie to save our lives. One guy showed up on blades and cleared a at the library. Next thing you know we all had blades and built a quarter pipe. Then the indoor skate park opened and we were hooked. After 20 years off, I just bought a pair of Roces M12's and am back to skating. I was surprised how much the skills stuck around.
When grinding started, bladers would take skateboard wheels, shave them down and replace the inside 2 weels with them. This is the "anti-rocker" set up. Around the same time there was a pair of skates that came with a flat metal spanner that fit perfectly between the inside wheels on the outside of the frame. This would become the grind plate. I think it's really cool how early inline skaters would modify their skates in this way to be able to do new tricks.
Had some rollerblade lighting blades before 1995, can't remember the year though. Mostly did my paper route on them. Never learned any grinds but remember their names, like the Christ grind, and that's all I remember now that I try.
I wS fortunate to be in the early generation with aggressive inline. We made our own grind plates and even repositioned our frames to have more grind space. I miss the diy days!
I did the urban skating back in the day and I loved it for the speed, weaving all over while gliding over everything and you have so much control over what your body is doing. You need a strong core, legs,butt and total symmetrical strength.
Essentially blading never got their Tony Hawk or Rodney Mullen, ZBoys etc. That one icon that transcends the sport and keeps pushing it into the mainstream and keeps growing and inspiring the next generation the way skating did.
Brian Shima was going to be that guy but less mainstrem attention meant less sponsors and less money. Shima had a nasty injury and never came back but you're spot on with your comment
I’ve been blading for abt 4 years and it’s the best decision I made. It’s smf all the ramps and rails are so exhilarating and I hope that if it blows up again, people get to feel that same feeling
there's one reason inline skating will never die for real: it feels just as good as it looks. you move on your own two feet, but it's like you're wearing floating 7 mile boots. i have a road bike, the most efficient way to get around without a motor, i have a longboard, and i love taking it for a spin sometimes, but strapping on my blades is what i get giddy about
storytime: i was 16 when xgames dropped inlineskating. i remember vividly eurosport had a short segment presenting how dangoures inline-skating actually was - as a goodbye. i was about 10 when i started inlineskating and 2 years later i started to do some royales and ufos. i still have my 2003 roces graal (allblack, zipper cover and laces). what struck me hard and what i will never forget is the hostility i recieved from skateborders - as kid i would just run away. but as i started developing and entering teenagehood i started having my own crew of friends... these meet-ups with skaters bacame str8 up heavy brawls. there was not a skate day without a fight. heavy fights sometimes. scared into my memory is when a guy in inlineskate in full speed jumped, lifted legs up, slamming - wheels first into skaters ribs, dude never got up. and many instances where my friends would fall, and skaters would reck then with boards while the dude is on the ground. i still believe there are still some spots in my hometown where skaters can not come. to this day, i have a bit of a odd feeling when i am surrounded, or passing skaters, an unease, dislikement, nobody understands why rolerblading was dropped from xgames when the pros were in their peak. and their skillsets and atheticism was on pair with skaters, and it was all managed in such a short term. skaters needed 50 years to get where we did in just 10. i recently seen some videos of skaters and inlines doing things together, and to be fair for me... well, it was hard to digest. but the thing is that inlineskateing never died. the fad dropped, so a random joe stopped buying pairs, which is anyhow good. it died in usa and uk. i am often i paris, and there they fucking do tricks for money on street - and it is so impressive what they do. most of the youtube channels we have about rollerblading are french, spanish, portugeese, canadian, with a stuttering skater being a "newcomer" from usa. i just recently seen the usd istambul tour 2015 and even newer vids - and fuck - one can see how the style totally changed from the 2006-7 (when i saw the last demo) and it is way more about having fun, then actually having an attitude, which is great - the chris farmer - the meantime vibes, but better. i stopped skating around 2012 when i moved to a new country, i took them with me - but studying was a priority and then i just forgot to reactivete. i recently replaced the 4x60 frame for a with 4x100. and i am back on them, although i do not do rails no more, i am taking inspiration from the leon the wizard and i am just enjoying a good smooth ride. bye now. p.s. wtf. you just enter the store with rollerblades.
The great thing about inline skating, is the fact that it actually increases the fitness of the casual user. I was amazed at how I could last a full day of skiing during winter, after buying my first inline skates and skating along the beaches in LA. Good times!
I’m reading this and just now I realise that people can’t go a full day up in the mountains on their skis lol. I am quite young though so that might compensate for my lack of actually training. But when it comes to skiing I just keep on going
It's a very physically demanding sport. When I skated for the first time after 20 years, and only for 1h, I couldn't get out of my car normally for the next 3 days. Due to massive muscle strains. 🤣🤣🤣
It always boils down to what gets promoted and sponsored. In the 90's everything in "alternative" sports was blowing up. Freestyle skiing was gaining traction and with that snowboarding got popular and before you knew it, X-games was huge, Red-bull was a household name - and neither of them really promoted in-line skating. I think a big part of it also had to do with video games and the fact that Tony Hawk pro skater was epic.
I agree. Popularity of anything is heavily influenced by money and media and vice versa. I still rollerblade at 36. Just not aggressive skating. It’s a fun and healthy hobby I plan to do into my 60’s.
Skater culture in the late '90s, promoted by pop punk bands like Blink 182, also played a part I think. Rollerbladers were not included in that culture.
Media for sure, the first time I finally drank the famous Red-Bull I nearly spit it out, I will never understand who would want to drink that sugary piss water.
I remember attending high school in America for the first time during the early 2000s and one of the gym activities was rollerblading. I was the only one who didn't know how to skate, and was just puzzled that the school itself just expects everyone to already know how, even a blind kid.
The craziest thing I remember about rollerblading here in Canada is that there's a national supermarket chain called Superstore and in the 90's all the people who worked there (with the possible exception of the cashiers) wore rollerblades. Yes, people doing price checks and putting things back where they go on shelves would be rollerblading around the store at considerable speeds. I was a small child at the time so didn't think all that much of it, but looking back that was incredibly bizarre, and I would think that the staff must have had really sore feet and legs by the end of the day. The 90's were wild.
That's ripe for lawsuits. "YOU BUMPED INTO ME, AND I ACTED LIKE I WAS RUN OVER BY A TRUCK!" For me, the 90s were bicycles, roller skates and Nintendo 64.
The employees at Sonic drive-ins used to wear skates and would skate your food out to your car. I remember being there once as a kid and seeing one of the waitresses trip as she was taking out a big order on a tray - several burgers, fries, and probably four drinks. Poor girl ended up dumping it all over the hood of somebody's car lol.
38yr old here who got their first pair of blades in 1994. Having grown with the in-line skating timeline and experienced it for real, it’s absolutely spot on. I knew the majority of the backstory, yet I still found is massively interesting, you really have a way with telling an engaging story to those that are educated in the sport, but also those who may have never skated in their life. Despite my aching joints, I still love going out and thrashing around town, and I love your videos also. Keep it up! 🙌🏼
I started rollerblading last week. Been doing it every day, can't get enough. It is very liberating for someone who lives in a city. It's faster than walking, but more tiring than cycling but i don't mind. It's good aerobe training.
I don't really remember how the beginning of my skating was because i started using it since I was a kid, but pretty sure that you won't feel tired when you get used to it and adjust it in the right way at all.
I was one of those kids in the 90s/early 00s that was BIG into rollerblading. I didn't have the skill to do "aggressive inline" or vert skating, but I was damn fast and leaned into that with an expensive $600 pair of custom fitted 5 wheeled Rollerblades with "micro-bearings". I skitched all over Chicago in those and all up and down the lakefront bike path, either as fast as I could propel myself, or skitching on bicycles and cars in the street. My parents hated that I loved it, but by then I was 16 and working so I was spending my own money on it and they had no recourse to take it away from me.
I got into the aggressive inline and we used to skate Chicago street. Would take the Metra from the south side. Got hit by a cab on Wacker drive, and almost fell into the lake grinding at Navy Pier. After almost 20 years off I bought new pair of Roces M12s after my 1994 Tarmac CE's frame exploded. I got back into street and vert (with more caution and care) than my 15-17 year old self had back in the 90's.
@@gizzardretizzard I'll admit I was one of those fan bois who thought Rollerblade brand was the only good brand and never even gave K2 a second glance. I should have, cuz I missed out.
@@somedude4805 that spacer in the mid was essential to take the grind game to the next level. Anyone hating just never tried it out cause I could never hate the fun I had on those suckers.
I think the reason it massively overtook skateboard in the 90's was because it's quite a bit easier to become somewhat proficient on skates than a skateboard. Most skayers will tell you it took 8mos, a year sometimes, to have good consistent ollies. Basically jumping with the board. Imagine not being able to jump up onto a 10" curb with roller skates for nearly a year.
Now that you point it out, if that were the case I have to question whether it could take off as well if that were the case. You can always pickup the skateboard for a moment to climb/step over something, with skates a steep staircase becomes an obstacle.
If you enjoy flipping things around with your feet that much, wouldn't a soccer ball or one of those little "hacky sack" things save you a little 💰 over the price of a skateboard?
@@meself349 I think you're replying to the wrong comment thread buddy. That's not at all relevant nor comparable here. Also, a hackysack is way easier to do tricks with and doesn't compare to balancing upon a moving object. Much less doing tricks while traveling.
@@Firesgone It depends on the obstacle. If it is just a curb, it is easier to step onto it with skates rather than pick up the skateboard and then put it down again. If you have an actual staircase or rough terrain skates become a real pain. For casual use, it is those small annoyances that determine which is preferable. When I was a teenager/ young adult, skates or skateboard were not practical for every day usage for me so they were purely a recreational (ie "show off") thing.
Roller blades also were a valid and fun tool to actually move longer distances though. I did not just use them for little tricks but to move between places. That's why i'm surprised they vanished so completely.
I used to rollerblade like it was my job in the 90s when I was a kid. It was my favorite thing to do. As I got older, naturally I just moved away from it and now in my late 30s, I can't even remember the last time I strapped on a pair of inline skates. In my early 20s, I remember going on my first ski trip. Because of this obsession with rollerblades as a kid, it lead to me picking up ski blades. Anyone that was good at rollerblading, go snow skiing this winter and rent a pair of ski blades. I bet you will be flying down black diamonds after your first day on them. I'll still shred like I was 16 on those things and it feels so natural. It's like the feeling of those rollerblades never left.
funny I ended up on blades as well and still ride them now at the snow...the only older kook on the hill and the teenagers hoot and yell from the lift like short skiis are outrageous, they are just short skiis, they feel like skiis to me but they are annoying to move through the line. I really believe in a big way that most people just want to fit in quick and not be unique so if they see some stoned snowboarders trip out at a guy with short skiis they are afraid to try it. It's just like right now, everyone is afraid to stand up for logic so they wear masks and take un-tested drugs just cause they say everyone else is doing it, not me baby, I'll wear spandex with blades before I'll adopt this latest fad!
Born in 1987 in Riverside California and I started sk8ing in 1993... The sk8er blader beef was REAL!!! We got outnumbered quickly, but the sk8er mindset and atmosphere was built to last! 🤘
Flow Skate and Bill Stoppard got me into skating. They ain't about doing the gnarliest tricks, they are about cruising the cityscapes through the trickiest routes without breaking the flow and it looks magical. It's my third year on skates and I love it. Doesn't matter to me that it's not 'in'.
flow skate is teaching me all the fundamentals i never had as a kid, but the stuttering skater is actually the channel that made me pull the trigger lol
Yep just started rollerblading this week due to their videos. It just looks fun and so far, between falls, im having a blast. It’s nice having a fun goal and being out of breath achieving it
as a kid of the 80s and 90s i do have to say that 90s fashion is definately starting to re-emerge. i haven't changed anything about the clothes i wear, but i would be let into a club now and i wouldn't have been 10 years ago.
For me it re-emerged because I now got offspring who's at the age I was in early 90s and it's something we can occasionally do together, I wonder if that's an explanation for a whole broader group of people too... the 25-30 yr gap would make sense.
@@andrewzaborowski9685 it would be a useful piece of anthropological research to check out. might even be able to identify generational trends that follow a pattern that goes back further than modernity.
Aggressive inline skate is super fun and rewarding. It doesn't have the media, culture and big market support but it is way better like this to be honest. It's only done by passionate people. That's what matter the most really
This comment tends to assume that having some sense of media presence will kill the culture. When in reality there will always be a core market to every sport and it only helps the core pay riders enough to do what they love, they don't have to conform...
@Daniel Lorenz hit a second hand store. People always buying skates and never using them. They end up giving them to good will or something. I got new skates for like $10.
Funnily enough he mentions Chris Edwards... Chris is a very nice guy and responds to almost anybody on social media if you ask him questions. I always remember one skateboarder saying to me "you rollerbladers are crazy... If you fall you still got them skates on... If we bail we can land on our feet but you just asking for pain"
A few huge reasons as i see it: - first time buyers would receive a sub-par experience due to the out of box product....and if your first attempts kind of suck, lots of people just gave up on it. - low grade wheels (mostly spokes, little rubber), which gave a horrific ride...very bumpy. - stock bearings were utter garbage...you had to open them up and do a full WD-40 job on em... very few knew how to do this or that they had to. - lots of brands that were really crap... first experiences can ruin something for most. if you didn't have someone there to show you how to properly set stuff up, odds are, you'd hate it.
Agreed; low grade wheels and bearings are the issue since the good ones were (and still are) prohibitively expensive for lower class folk. I remember when I was young and had a crap pair, I thought the sport was really difficult. Then when I popped on my cousin's pair of Roller Blades, I could suddenly move way better.
fully agree. back when i was younger i tried to rollerskate and it really sucked balls. then i tried it with the 4 wheel one and it wasnt any better and i basically gave up on it. its quite sad honestly as videos of it looked really fun and it would be probably really fun if it werent that hard to learn.
I agree here, too. I was an aggressive rollerblader. My big issue is the wheels have a wear and tear on it. The last time I wore rollerblades, my actual wheels have wear on it so much the "sear" on one side. I also share the pain of carrying them, their "fit," the last time I tried wearing them? It was uncomfortable because my feet is too big for it today. I'm not gonna spend $100 on new sets of them. I love rollerblades. Awesome for what they are. I'm 40, so that's out.
Shows what I know. Never knew rollerblading died. I’ve been doing it for 30 years or so. Never watched the pros and did t realize they took it off the X games. Mind blown.
While it might not have many if any competitions or shows, it’s definitely not dead. A skate park for rollerskates and rollerblades opened up nearby my home around last week and it’s packed full of skaters. Never knew how many people near me skated and how many were legit pros. I love it there because of the variety of skill levels and ages. There were super young kids (below 10, around 7) all the way up to adults that were absolutely showing up the park with their skills; but there were also first-time skaters at the same ages. Such a friendly and humbling place full of people willing to help each other out.
Been rollerblading almost the same amount of time, learned when I was 4-5 years old still have my fitness and my aggressives and my ice hokey skates as well, I would go to rinks no matter what state I lived in, and I would always find a decent amount of people skating. So to me it never died.
I seen inliners on inlines jumping across entire roads. I have the Oxelo Hardshell TriSkates and Rollerblade Macro Soft Shell boots (For Real Men Only) 🤣
Thing i like about rollerblading is that it's really close to parkour and you still can do parkour elements in rollerblading. I often go to practice backflips,websters etc. on my feet and then go to streets and shock riders by doing flips down the stairs. It's quite a cool feeling!
Well, there is that, some of the more extreme flip is done on Mega Ramp, the shortest 1260 air is done on quarter pipe. On blading, you can only swing your body up on a jump unless you manipulate the core so to clear the gap using flip trick requires decent momentum. As for basic air trick on blades, we have grab and grab less category. It’s much cooler to see people doing Misty Flip over a gap with a parkour artist doing a gainer together.
Rollerblading did not decline because it fell out of favour with teen skateboarders. The industry failed to pitch to the broader audience who were actually not even aware of aggressive skating at the time. The millions of people skating, were doing it on the streets and trails, not parks.
First, it's a mistake to call it skating or street skating because skateboarding is on a whole different level when it comes to difficulty. Trying to use the same vernage opens up bladers to ridicule. Secondly, most people would rather be Goodall a really hard activity like skating or surfing vs being great at much more easy activity like blading. Blading should've never left the boardwalks.
Here in São Paulo, Brazil, every park you go anywhere there are people with rollerblades and there's always people learning. I'd go as far as to say there's more people on rollerblades than on skateboards. It's def not in the media anywhere, but a lot of people are still doing it.
Yeah, I get the feeling this youtuber is basing a lot on what he sees in the UK, which has never really had a strong skate culture of any sort. Places like Canada with a strong ice skating and/or ice hockey culture still have lots of rollerblading in the summer.
Sao Paulo is not a parameter. People ride on some strange longboards there, some unusual stuff. It doesn't mean rollerblade is still a thing. Both roller blade and skateboarding as they were in the 90s are dead. The counterculture, subculture stuff has changed to mums taking their infants to skateboard classes. We try to convince ourselves that this or that time is not dead, but they are... some elements of it might survive and morph into the new context but don't come back as it was
O lance do rollerblade é que vc não precisa se preocupar de cair do skate, o negócio não sai da sua perna a não ser que vc dê um jeito de arrancar o negócio. De uma certa forma, eu me sentia mais seguro, como se o patins fosse parte da perna, então dava mais apoio. Nesse caso eu acho que é mais interessante pras pessoas. Eu sempre quis tentar andar de skateboard, mas nunca consegui convencer meus pais a me arranjar um quando eu era moleque. Tb curtia BMX, mas nunca usei um tb, fiquei só na bicicleta. Eu não era de fazer manobra com nada, eu curtia andar ou fazer corrida. O máximo que eu fiz com rollerblade foi jogar hockey inline no ginásio. Tinha usado um par de blades com roda de silicone. Eu odiei pq grudava nas superfícies e era uma merda pra fazer slides, drifts e curvas. Parecia que as rodas estavam colando no chão, a aderência era boa pra pegar velocidade, mas não dava agilidade alguma. Primeira vez que eu tentei dar uma daquelas paradas de lado. CAPOTEI LINDO, parecia um acrobata de porre. Foi hilário! Mais hilário ainda que eu não me machuquei em nada, só deu susto e fiquei tonto.
Just turned 40 a couple weeks ago. I was an aggressive skater in my teens. It was super fun. I'd wake up at like 8-9 on a Saturday and drive to the skatepark and just skate until the sun went down. Always fun to see who would show up. We had a bunch of bike guys and skateboarders. We got along ok for the most part but the skateboarders DID get mad at us because they said we overwaxed the rails. Oh well, definitely have the fondest memories from those times.
I just picked up rollerblading about a month ago. Just went on Amazon and ordered a pair because I wanted to learn something new since I saw a video of rollerblading on instagram. I’m so surprised that it’s not very popular because it’s SO MUCH FUN. I’ve spent about an hour a day everyday since I’ve gotten them and I can’t get enough. It’s “lame” to some but I think it’s one of the coolest sports. Doing my best to keep it alive! (Quick note is im 22 and grew up in the west US so rollerblading was never popular around me while growing up)
Just to let you know, we didn't carry around shoes when we skated. If we went to a store to get a drink we just took the skate off and wore the boot thing inside the skate lol. Ahh I miss the 90's...😭
Ain't never did aggressive inline... I am more of a distance rider.... They seem really practical to me..... There is a wide veriety of types of rollerblades. I like the wide wheels with a lot of stabillity and more glide.
I was considering signing up for the x games right around the end of the 90's, aggressive inline was a big part of my life. I lost count of how many times I lost all the skin on both knees from taking jumps that were way too large, lol.
Hey Jimmy, 90s amateur blader here o/. I was heavily enveloped in the alt sports of that time. Skateboarded, bladed and was also around bikers. Skated with a lot of pros in all the sports. In the passionate, more pro side of the sports there wasn't any beef really. At woodward we would skate, board and bike together and give props. It was more of a media thing and something "posers" would talk about. After all these years I have a theory of why it really did lose popularity and that is due to the design and mechanics of aggressive rollerblading. Rollerblades were still in the early years of design. The tricks were made up off boots not originally designed to do the tricks. Blades were modded and then later designed to grind and be better for that style of skating. If you know skating and biking, skateboards have flip tricks and grinds on the truck and board. Bikes have flip tricks and grind on pegs. Well, rollerblades are different. Half of the trick vocabulary are called "top side". Which means you have to get on top of the object you are grinding. Which requires you to bend you leg extremely and put unnatural pressure on it. It feels really cool when you are young, limber and pull it off for the first few times. But, it's just very bad form and it hurts to do. But, the design and method of blading really never changed. The tricks and falls of rollerblading are much more damaging to the body than it may look. Holding uncomfortable grinds like that. Not only top side, but backwards or alley oop topside. I feel like future design and tech will bring new life to the sport. When we can have frames that automatically lock and shift so we can grind without killing our legs and ankles. With that I feel like a reinvention of the trick vocabulary will happen too. I recently started thinking about the sport after about 15 year break and this really made a lot of sense to me.
As a 30 something who came back to blading after 18 years off, I love it more than ever. The community is incredible and I’ll skate until my legs fall off.
Just got back from my session trying out my new tri skates. Been skating since around 6 and I’m now a few months from 26. Fell HARD 2 times today both times in front of people. I got right back up like nothing happened lmao It’s so much fun I don’t even care about the mishaps. I plan on buying my future kids skates just to see if they like it. Don’t know what I’d do without skating which sounds wild but it’s freeing as heck! It’s never too late to get back
I actually kind of miss it too, lots of memories. Skating backwards in circles around a highschool girlfriend who doubted my ability to teach her. Thinking it was basically a requirement to remove the back brake and just drag your foot trashing wheels. I think the last time I had a pair on I went over the hood of a car that pulled up way too fast on a blind corner. Be worth trying it out again, curious if my ankle can handle it now after a nasty break.
Roller skates became incredibly scarce during the pandemic, too, as people looked to skating as a way to be active, alone or at a decent distance outside. I don’t think you can underestimate that factor in regenerating all kinds of skating.
Similarly the pandemic has seen an uptic in cycling since you're distant from everyone else you're riding with, but your'e still otuside doing and getting much needed excersize. Plus everyone fucked up in judging the market so there is this HUGE assed supply chain bottleneck.
Yeah , I got into all types of skating during the pandemic. Didn't even skate as a kid. Now I ice skate , inline skate , roller skate and longboard at age 37. I also got into biking again.
I'm only 25, but I remember going to the rink or the park every weekend and you'd see almost every kid from school at one of the two. Now it's 2023 and my coworker laughed when I asked if he wanted to go skating. Oh well, another Sunday alone at the park is fine by me.
Just want to add that in the late 90s, a lot of roller rinks were getting shut down in the states. So a lot of kids who would have been exposed to it didn't get a chance, I'm a 34yr old skateboarder and use to love going to Hammer Skate. 😭
Same thing in Belgium for me, most skateparks just closed out so we had to do it in the street, and we'd constantly either get security or cops sent at us or simply adults berating us for destroying property/doing too much noise. There were also a few punk kids who would try to berate us in skateparks, but once they saw you were able to pull out actualy tricks (or even be better than them at skateboarding) they'd go quiet real fast. Around 15-17 years old I eventually got tired of having to struggle so much just to enjoy such an amazing sport, I never understood to this day why no sport center ever had ramps and official skateparks, as small as they would be. Be it BMX, Skateboarding or Roller, those sports are really worth doing and supporting, as they have an endless room for creativity and fun. Had I a Skatepark closeby, I'd still be skating today (I'm 34 now).
@@Teeveepicksures Yup I was a goalie all thru school and the rinks that had wooden floors wouldn't let me skate on them. I'd have to sit out away games because I couldn't skate quads good enough.
MANNNNN this took me back to '99. 10 years old with a pair of k2s depleting my mom's candle collection to try and grind concrete parking blocks and handicap rails.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16, 17
My buddy rollerbladed in it's hay day and explained that pro level got so ridiculous that you'd nearly need to die to go pro. Once that became unobtainable people lost motivation. You ended up in a body cast before you ended up with a sponsor.
This isn’t true at all. A lot of dudes I skated with in Charlotte were sponsored by razors. I mean the dudes with pro boots were insanely good but some weren’t. The best dudes were superhuman.
All extreme sports are life threatening, they wouldn't be extreme if they didn't. Only people wanting to avoid being hurt lose their motivation when they figure out the real nature of a practice, others are attracted by this same fact because of the thrill risks provide. There's only one reason about rollerblade decline : it was an over exploited economical bubble that broke when money went in the next trend (scooters).
As a suckerblader in CA in the 90’s I can confirm there’s some truth to this. I was at the xgames in San Francisco on the pier when Tony Hawk landed the 900 for the first time. It was amazing. Aggressive in-line didn’t have that magic anymore. The kids were just too good. The idea of working on a really hard trick existed at the individual level, but not at the sport level anymore. At the peak it seemed like all the time you’d hear about (or see) some 12 year old doing some trick combo on in-lines that should only be possible in a THPS game. It might not want to make you stop skating, but it did remove aspirations. I’d need to start a wicked meth habit to even have a shot at doing that one day and by the time I learned it some other kid would have already done something even crazier. By the time they pulled in-line from the xgames it was a bummer, but it kinda felt right. The stuff the pro fruit booters could do was insane, but at some level we knew skateboarding took more skill. It took more talent to make a board do that stuff than having wheels tied to your feet. One is like walking/running with flair, the other is manipulating an object with mostly your feet, often in mid-air, that physics doesn’t want to stay near you.
Your buddy is 100% right. Rollerblading died in the late 2000's after Bittercold Showdown 10. After this event everything chilled out.. because people were literally out there dying. This is basically the damn Woodstock of rollerblading and it's never peaked higher than this. ua-cam.com/video/R9Qk-sTUHYE/v-deo.html
essentially, we got old. but in my 40s, i'm getting a pair and i'm going to blade to work. my kids will have their minds blown when they see me on them.
Granted the numbers aren't what they were in the 90's, but having experienced the highs and lows of the past 30+ years I can honestly say that rollerblading culture has never felt stronger.
We are back even Aggressive skating. We ARE THE ZOMBIES. We are back...and can group of zombies in a different places be killed? Probably not...if we spread...we are alive...but if we don't find anyone...even zombies can die......UNTIL........
When sports "die" they often just become a lot more core, the passionate riders stay and the trend-followers leave. Lots of respect for you and the riders still doing it
The only reason I'm not rollerblading everywhere nowadays is that around me are just mountains and dirt roads. In the 90's I used to skate across the Brooklyn Bridge, up to Central Park, make the circuit, and skate down into the subway and on to the train to get home. I thought of them as a cheap practical means of transportation to get around the city. I remember skating up Park Ave one day and running into one of those rubber mats that they put out over the sidewalk leading into some swanky hotel. The mat stopped my skates dead, and I had to do a pretty radical tuck up of my knees to avoid a face plant. I JUST made it, landing on the other side, and an Australian voice behind me, probably a customer of the hotel, said "Oh! Good save!". That's a memory that will be with me forever.
@@AndysNuWorld No, I had no tricks or talents. In fact I remember huffing and puffing around the park and some guy (someone said a pro off-season hockey player) breezed past me skating backwards. Humbling. No, I was just a Wall-Streeter skating on the weekends --a simple pleasure for me, not a life calling.
In 2023 no skaters hate rollerbladers being at the park. rollerbladers are always so nice to see..btw really good and informative video..well done new sub ♡
I remember growing up in the 90s with my skates on all day, then the 00s came and i got stuck in skateboards and longboards for 20 years because as a kid, you don't want to be laughed at for not following the trend train... Last year i bought back a pair of inlines and i couldn't be happier, finally found my inner peace as a longboarder-roller at 30 years old
I think that's the natural progression for most of us as I followed the same path years ago. We're Fruitbooters until it becomes overly taxing or we start a family and then we move on to longboarding, then possibly pivot back to FBs before we wreck out Sh**.
@@somesweetguy i took my skates to the recently built pump tracks nearby (not a single one in my country until 5 years ago) and all the kids in their scooters were absolutely amazed watching me fly in my inlines, i'm pretty sure the trend will come back and hit harder than ever
I remember when I broke my leg at 13 years old performing a unity grind. My mom was sooo pissed but I did had shitty skates and that’s what really the caused of the injury. Two years later I picked up K2 skates and the rest was history. Still to this day I always love skating and was recently thinking to get back on.
@@vangard1127 The advantage of now vs the 90's. Being able to be picky and get reviews on these things. I say if nothing else give it a try. Maybe it won't work out and you'll feel beyond out of place. Maybe it will. Won't know til you try.
I have a pretty good theory about why it died. Towards the end of the 90s and beginning of 2000s, skating rinks closed up. Unlike other similar sports like Skateboarding and Snowboarding, most kids got their exposure to rollerblading at a skating rink. These used to be a popular place for younger GenX and older Millennials to hang out when they were in middle school and early high school. Young kids would go there, play arcade games, do some skating, and see some older kids using rollerblades. When those skating rinks closed up and were torn down, there was no more new blood for rollerblading. Think about it this way, how many kids do you all see in regular roller skates these days? Not many there either.
I can find myself in this. The scene was also very acceptant of newbies, just to hang out casually or get more into the hardcore scene. We just hang out in the sun, smoking stuff we shouldn't and enjoy long evenings in the rink. At our rink they did not judge and everyone was welcome, it was simply a nice place to be. Skating or not.
Well, to be frank... You no longer see kids in skates or kids at all. Most kids are usually coped up inside, with skaters of any kind bring rarer and rarer.
I think another reason why people don't blade too much is because they're afraid of looking bad when they start out.... having skateboarded in the past and also being a rollerblader now I know how you look when you're starting out blading... you're flailing around and you can feel pretty stupid. People will even laugh at you, try to trip you, and make insulting comments. I've had all of that and much more in the beginning. I dealt with all of that but I kept going. And nobody laughs anymore. But when you're starting out skateboarding even if you can't do anything fancy you can just stand there on that board and roll around and people won't laugh at you or f*ck with you too much.
I just dug put my old rollerblades to get back into the swing of things again after a few years. I’m only 24, almost 25 but I still knew like 30 other kids in highschool who had pairs and a bunch of others who only used them at skate rinks when we went on school trips and stuff.
I’m deffo a ‘lockdown’ rollerblader, got into it in feb 2021 due to boredom and man I have been so hooked ever since. Can’t tell you what a difference it has made to my mental health, I don’t see myself giving up until I’m too injured to do it any more. I think it’s such a shame how beef still exists to some extent between action sports. It’s a lot better, I don’t get shit from skateboarders very often, but different disciplines don’t mix very much. And it drives me insane when bladers and quad skaters complain about being shat on by skateboarders and then hate on people on scooters, like come on man, do you not see the irony there? I think all action sports are great, I wish everybody using skateparks just mixed a bit more and gave each other props, even if they don’t fully understand the weird move you just did or why it’s impressive.
The scooters aren’t the problem. The problem is the kids riding the scooters that can’t follow basic courtesy rules at the park and put everyone at risk.
@@CristinaF_LTHP this might be true, but I find that a lot of kids are like that no matter what they’re using. And yeah it’s annoying and dangerous, but they’re kids, they’ll learn (granted some parents are deffo to blame about their total lack of attention when the kids are extremely young). I do find, probably because they’re associated with small kids, that there is a wider lack of respect for scooter riding as a sport, even when the people riding them are perfectly respectful of the skatepark rules.
It died for me in the mid 90s because my family moved from an urban concrete jungle to rural bum-fuck of nowhere lol. Our neighborhood didn't even have sidewalks! Now my kids are getting invited to skate rink bday parties, I rented a pair of inlines and I got addicted again lol. 30 years since I skated and it really is like riding a bike! I'm waiting on my new blades to be delivered right now. 😂
I remember being friends with 3 bladers in the 90s. And they got hell at the skate park. They were all insane tho, and helped push my own skating. When we all joked, it was jokes. They were my friends. Other skateboarders took it as a war. For me, they were skaters. Cause they were the same as us, just different wheels. Plus, they were great filmers 😍
"If there's anyplace on Earth that people will pay stupid money for the latest trend, it's California." That quote alone makes this a great video. I took up Rollerblading in 1992 in my late 30's. Played hockey a few times, but mostly just cruised around. Never go into the extreme stuff. BTW, just bought a new pair last year at age 66. Feels nice to glide around. I mainly watched this video because of the sport I took up 6 years ago at 61, Pickleball. It's been the fastest growing sport in the U.S. for several eyars now, and some people (mainly frustrated Tennis players, as Tennis loses a million or so players a year to Pickleball.) say it's just a fad and will peter out, or it's just for old people. (It's VERY popular among older people as it's a good workout in a competitive sport that has a really low injury rate.) It will be interesting to see what happens, but at least one company, Lifetime Fitness, certainly thinks it will last, as it is putting almost a BILLION dollars into building courts, and converting Basketball and other courts into Pickleball courts. I think it's going to just get bigger and bigger, but I may be somewhat biased as I love the sport so much. If you haven't tried, it ,DO. It's geat fun!
Exactly me in 1993, but I didn't rollerblade because it was 'trendy', I just wanted an alternative form of exercise and an excuse to hang-out at the beach. It ended when my skates fell apart, and I was too cheap and lazy to replace them. Anyway, by that time the homeless started taking over the beach, so I guess I didn't miss anything. I took up hiking instead.
I just want you to know that your comment had me smiling the whole time lmao. Shoutout to you for still kicking it gnarly style as an old man imma have to hope I'll be doing the same lol.
"The skills of these guys in the ninties" *proceeds to show clips from the 01-05 hammer era, when inline was already "dead". The numbers of "participants" are BS too, those numbers include every one that simply tried on a pair of skates in that given year. Rec, fitness, hockey and aggressive. In the 90s, it was very rare for bladers (as in the "aggressive" ones this video is largely about) to out number skateboarders at parks and popular spots, I started skating in 96 in Socal. Still skate, cause you know what, its fun and great exercise if you can avoid breaking your wrists. We didn't quit, we just had to go to college and get jobs.
Right. And I think it's absolute fine to include every style of skating into the numbers. As long as its the same with the others. Inline skating is not only agressive. It's recreational, slalom, speed, downhill, wizard, asult(city) etc :) ♥️ But yes, ultimately the sport never really died at all.
In my eyes, tiktok and youtube shorts have helped recreate the niche hobby society or love for unique things by the algorithm and the internet. It's really cool to think about.
My recollection from the time is that skateboarders/skateboarding culture did indeed incessantly mock and harangue rollerblading without mercy to the point that few people wanted to be associated with it anymore. That's the vibe I remember.
It was just less unique and authentic than skateboarding. Especially since in the 90s we got so many cool skateboarders people just started making fun of inline skating, or rather specifically this street style of aggressive inline skating. Normal roller blading was still alright
I've been skateboarding for 21 years. I remember everyone giving them shit and calling them 'fruit booters' but they were jumping down like 17 stair sets. Ridiculous.
I was a skater too and the fruit booster phrase did them in rofl. They would always get ragged on but looking back they did some bad ass shit honestly.
will never forget my Roces 5th element.... i tried to get a pair last year, (i'm size 13, slight wide) borderline impossible... even end up getting a size 15 would not fit. end up gifting them oh yeah!.. and watching Brink! every time it was up!
as a long time snowboarder, this sounds scarily similar to the ski vs snowboard beef thats been going on since the 80's only difference is that in the snow world neither one has gone away yet
Haha I didn't notice until I read your comment. And you're absolutely right. 1:35 They, like so many other successful companies, just copied an existing product and marketed the hell out of it as their own.
I understood it to mean that they improved upon something that wasn't successful in its first incarnation. I saw one of these inline skates in a used sporting goods store in the mid 70s, and it looked impossible to use.
@@coleford6197 We rollerbladed back in the 90s as a family. After ice skating for years after that, I wanted to get the inline skates with a curved wheel base, so they don't all touch the ground at once. This better matches an ice skate's slight curvature, allowing for easier swiveling of your foot while on the ground. With normal inline skates you have to lift your foot to turn very much. This is another of these improvements that come after people get experience with them.
The guy in the video kind of glazed over that part. My understanding was the early inline skates took your conventional roller skate style wheels and just put them in a row. So they were a little more clunky and were made for going more in a straight line like cross-country skiing. And the brothers who created rollerblade wanted something that performed better for playing hockey on concrete and so they redesigned the frame that held the wheels and as I understand it trim down the width of the roller skate wheel and rounded it off on the edges so it was more like the wheels on an inline skate we see today. And it made it possible to corner more and be more agile with the skate. And then they ended up getting a connection to I believe it was kryptonic to have wheels made that were more the design they were looking for. Same as using a variation on a ski boot as the basis for their skate because it was simpler to get that produced than the hockey style boots which required a lot of stitching and hand labor. The rollerblade boots as they came out more popular we're a lot of molded components so ease of production. But yeah to the point they basically saw somebody else with a idea of the inline skate and improved upon it
Umm. Bro, as an aggressive inline skater from 97 to 2005. I remember specifically it was the release of Tony Hawk Pro Skater that destroyed our game. There was no history or foundation for Rollerblading to fall back on when sponsors and major market branding was important. Mr Hawk totally was the catalyst in my world. Skateboarding had a massive history in America at that time. I loved that game and never skateboarder ever, other than when I was a kid....but I could smoke those blades anytime.
Rollerblade was huge when I was a teenager. I have to say the main reason my group of friends went back to skate boards was the fact that you couldn’t go into stores with blades on and I lived in Death Valley so skating around all day with a backpack on with a pair of shoes in it was not a great option.
I believe skating is growing healthily these days. I noticed some chronological errors, and lack of some important characters in the history of the sport such as Fabiola da Silva 8x X-games medalists and Carlos Pianowsky who raised the level of tricks in the early 2000s. Anyway, I really liked the video and being able to remember the story of my favorite sport! Congrats!✌🏼
I’m an ugh fan of rollerblading since to years now Im so grateful for your little documentary it showed me new blading icons to admire thank you !! I sea that blading is growing again to and I sincerely hope that the time will let us to overpass all these old rivalries between skateboarders and bladers
Nice.. I also still have mine from back then.. I slap them on when I take my kids to the roller rink in my city. Some good old, family skating time. Legs aren't what they used to be though.. lol
Really enjoyed this clip. One inaccuracy, IMO, is that when you showed the footage of people ripping with the line "because there was so much money it incentivised rollerbladers to push and push" - those clips were almost all from the later 2000's, when the money was GONE from rollerblading. People did push when there was money in it, but i'd argue that people pushed even harder AFTER the money was more or less gone.
Yeah I've been skateboarding for almost 30 years. Some of the craziest things I've ever seen have consistently been by rollerbladers. Yes because they're particular toy vehicles are attached. They have no choice but to fully commit to everything or they're going to get bodied. This video is getting us all hyped up to skate so all you older Bros/person's be careful wear pads. I would say have fun but we all know your gonna have fun.
Ya I was out of the scene by then because of real life stuff like the military. In the 90's though we were pushing pretty hard like that but not to that extreme degree where you were asking to spend the rest of your natural life in a wheel chair. Can't believe it got to that extreme degree of recklessness. They must have been getting paid a ton of money to pay for all those medical bills. I bet now they regret it cause all that damage catches up with you when you get past 40 that's if it didn't kill them.
Rollerblade is a brand, and *inline skating* is doing just fine. I aged out of that but once upon a time it was my primary transporation. I could skate in traffic and one car came up to me once to let me know I was going 32 mph.
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Yes
Me
Thanks bro
Get u some wheels my g, would be great to see some content of u learning, if you want any advice on what skates to get hollar at Ur boy, there's really only two major shops in the UK for rollerblades and that's Slik Willie's in London or loco skates in Brighton. Bless g, and hope to see u on wheels soon😁
Need to mention Rene Hulgreen when talking about inline in the 90s- coold video :)
As a skateboarder who goes to a lot of skateparks I can say that at least now in 2023 no skaters hate rollerbladers being at the park. rollerbladers are always so nice and cool!
in the mid 90's it's true, the skateboarders HATED us, but it was often a street skaters thing. Us ramp skaters/riders of all kinds got along really well. Inline and BMX got along pretty well too. Then scooters came along and everyone hated them. Now scooters seem to run the place. Weird seeing a full grown adult doing scooter tricks, but its been around that long now the kids aged up
Not just the 90s as someone who does both I can say from my point of view I saw a lot of hate from the skate community to anything that wasn’t a skateboard basically, it got more toxic than that even people would complain abt kids at parks like go skate the fckn street dude the parks here so the kid can learn in a safe environment not so u can bs 200 instagram clips in a single day
In the 90's, the hatred was real. Skateboarding had a history, there were older guys in their 30s, who'd skated since the 70s, or even 60s... But rollerbladers just popped up out of nowhere. They were little kids, who had no idea about etiquette, not snaking or dropping in on someone else's run. My buddy broke his arm, after some rollerblader dropped in on him, despite being told not too.
Looking back, I guess it was probably insecurity/projection, too- We saw rollerbladers, the same way as the rest of the world saw US- Annoying little kids following a pointless fad, who were always getting underfoot, and wore weird, gimmicky clothes.
Even before the rollerblader thing (which was pretty open hatred), there was a milder rivalry between skaters vs BMXers, that would sometimes flare up into fights and stuff (altho mostly those two groups got along Ok).
But that just seems to be the way with youth subcultures- You always have some nearly-identical group, who you hate with a passion; punks vs skinheads, punks vs skaters. Goth vs emo, emo vs scene kid.
Kind of like how the worst religious hatred isn't one religion vs a totally seperate religion; it's Catholic vs Protestant, or Sunni vs Shi-ite.
yeah, met one the other day. he was fucking insane doing all these tricks, looked almost like he was dancing. got chatting, told him i found it cool how he was so amazing at such a difficult sport to which he replied that skateboarding is harder cus you have to balance something under your feet. he was definitely being humble, haha. saw him waxing the edges of a block and was like W T F! respect rollerbladers, some of the shit you pull off is insane to me
The scooter took the hate
"rollerbladers were seen as kids that would get in the way"
Scooter kids: "hold my juicebox"
the funny thing is it's the skateboarders that mess up all the actual street lines at parks by deciding to grind one little box that happens to cut across five lines
Scooters are even worse. Even when skateboarders and inline skaters trying to grind a quarter coping. The scooter kids have their scooter sticking out of the coping. ... Urghhh..
@@DistrictWitch ya well it’s called a skate park for a reason
@@aussiemoolay8589 I think it's important to remember we all started off as kids at some point, and probably got in the way... But there is a difference between kids who ride because their parents want them out the house and kids who actually put effort in and progress, I think that should be appreciated... But yes, I'm sitting here as a mid 20 yo scooter rider and saying, kids do very often get in the way... It's the dude that shows up with the RC car that boils my blood lmao.
There is one thing that scooter riding has over skateboarding, nobody stays in the sport who joined to impress girls or try and be cool or edgy, litterally noone, because it's seen as just about the least cool thing you can do, so the people you meet do it for genuine passion, no posers, just genuine people...
@@mgproryh true
As someone who just bought a pair of rollerblades last week, I think everyone else's sentiment about "people are just doing what they like" fits me pretty good. Along with nostalgia
Same. I just bought a pair myself, and I'm about to turn 40
I just bought a pair myself!
@@Uppermost_1 Ditto! I used to blade tons when I was a teenager. Bought a pair last year and been skating again since - I turn 40 in August.
I've been skating around the neighborhood and having a great time my dudes 😎
@@wretchedknave5740i‘ll turn 40 next august, got my skates yesterday
Used to be rollerblading a LOT as a kid. What killed it to me, is that you could not go anywhere inside. With a skate, you can always jump off, hop into the store, grab a drink in a bar, do whatever... with rollerblades you were barred from going anywhere but the street.
Maybe because it was gay too?
@@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWiinope not at all . Gay , straight and everything in between we all had fun ! 😬
NT deep shit @@DJ_POOP_IT_OUT_FEAT_LIL_WiiWiikeep on hating, WompWomp
Agreed!! A lot of stores in Seattle has allowed me since I ask before going inside the stores.. but hey, you can always carry a super light pair of shoes :)
So true! I remember being in a mall and I couldn't enter a single store
When sports "die" they often just become a lot more core, the passionate riders stay and the trend-followers leave. Lots of respect for the riders still doing it
I feel as if the word rider doesnt work here at all.
Big respect man, peace from Barcelona
Fruit Booters
That's the truth. I'm still amazed at what's going on in rollerblading today. I always check in from time to time to see what's up.
The 90s were a weird time with rollerbladers and skateboarders. I remember all the skateboarders giving rollerbladers a hard time at the skatepark. Then all of us on rollerblades would put our shoes on and be just as good on a skateboard.
@@louiecmancuzo2903 Very wierd time. You were made fun of hardcore for rollerblading. If you weren't cool you were made fun of. Very competitive times. We did just that, Stopped the acid and farfegnugen grinding, put on shoes and became good at skateboarding in order to fit in. My friends and I would still blade when we could but eventually stopped all together.
Paul Rodriguez, Mikey Taylor, "Justin Case who was better than all of them but also the biggest asshole, which made him even cooler at the time" Matt Taylor, Spanky, Van Wastell all frequented our local park(Newbury Park/ Thousand Oaks) and if you weren't skateboarding you were getting in the way, made fun of and or kicked out.
I’ll never forget my disappointment as a kid when I asked for rollerblades and got a pair of roller skates instead.
😪
actually I was better at roller skates than rollerblades but I still asked for rollerblades cause it was a newer thing and more fashionable.
Quad skates are vastly superior to in-lines, I'll never understand how anyone who has tried both could opt for in-lines!
@@paladestar9758 Inlines are swifter than quads and better suited for tricks imo. But whatever floats you boat.
@@paladestar9758 I tried quads and found them way too clunky so I stick to inlines. I did learn ice skating first so that might be why
All I remember about roller blading in the 90’s is having a shitload of fun. It was fun! Why does everything have to be in terms of cool or not cool?
the idea of "cool" is very frustrating
Because sex.
Yes dude it still is fun. To be honest the negative perspective that people have has kind of died down, but of course there are still some people who will fuckin make fun of you if they see you in a pair hahaha.
Winger would have had one of the biggest albums of that time were it not for Beavis and Butthead. The animated duo made Winger un-cool and their album sales plummeted as a result.
@@surgickalstrike or maybe it was their mildly pedophilic lyrics 🤣
It’s 2024 and I’m 31 and just started rollerblading again. Haven’t done it since 2004.
You are a fg!
Hell yeah man. I stopped skating around 2000, and just picked up a new set at 44yo. Mostly because I was really good then, and my kids want to learn to roller skate. If I'm taking the kids to a skating rink, I'm bringing my inlines. 🤙
@@giavanti0003 I'm 40 and just bought a pair two weeks ago. It feels so good to rollerblade again just for fun and a bit exercise.
Damn. I’m 38 and just getting back to it after 20 years too 😂. Are we in the mid life crisis 😂
Same here! Great workout I love it
I lived through the whole rollerblade thing.
80’s skating, 90’s rollerblade, then skating again.
And TBH rollerblading was fun.
The whole “rollerblades are gay” thing killed it for sure.
But today, when all kids are gay, maybe rollerblades will return.
LOL
I tried rollerblading once on Venice Beach. Some girl yelled "look at the rental fruit boots". I promptly returned those fruit boots to the vendor and never touched them again.
What a comment hahahahaha
@@1scurtis Probably because your skates were those crappy plastic ones that vendors use to rent.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Plus, it's NOT as fucked and socially stigmatized to be gay so that Outta help to. I don't know why he gave a Reactionary meme take about ppl having a aversion to it due to ppl associating it with being gay or femininity and their need to be a stereotypical "masculine" being. Absolutely a number of ppl are that stupid and HAVE to present themselves in the most extreme way or feel some type of way or shame. There are still ppl who feel they need to be the breadwinner, and some won't even date men who aren't.
When I see a really insane roller skate or skate board stunt I’m just amazed how they survived long enough practicing that trick to actually do it.
Back and front flips off BMX ramps as high as a six-story building.
Not hard actually it’s called balance
@@blueazure9658 not hard? we get it bro you’re cool or whatever
@@blueazure9658Oh.
@@blueazure9658you’re not cool
Interesting video. Just a theory: Roller blades were too durable so there was less money in them.
Skateboards wear out and break constantly, so companies selling them can constantly resell the same product. Roller blades? Unless the person who bought them was an extremely hardcore user chances are they'd outlast their interest in using them. Which meant that once those companies had sold roller blades to all the potential users sales were dead, which meant sponsorships were dead, which meant the media frenzy fuelling the whole thing was dead.
Well how about we sell them environmentally friendly and sustainable rollerblades now? You know recycled plastic and all, that's a hip thing to do! Right?
I'm surprised youtube allowed this comment, let alone give it any likes. Wonder how long they'll have the truth up.
@@DzinkyDzink Ha! Good point. Make them out of cardboard and recycled toiletpaper to save the planet.
@@lukesutton4135 I doubt youtube is in bed with big-rollerblade :P
haha facts I recon
A bunch of us are getting back into/got back into aggressive inline and wizard skating during or just after covid. Nostalgia, more money, need to get outside, etc, all are driving a resurgence of sorts. Still a small community, but tight and stoked.
What killed in-line skating for me, was shops, schools, busses etc. banning them. They were a hassle to put on and take off, and I didn't want to carry shoes in a bag everywhere I went.
good point... if dogs can now enter virtually every establishment, certainly skates can.
Son, by your logic downhill racing would be a dead sport. You can’t do it without a van full of gear and £10k worth of equipment. Carrying a bag is a hassle? I have a bag for my helmet bag.
@@darkwetntight910 It was never a sport for me, it was a way to make mundane things like shopping or going to a friends house cooler and more fun.
Agreed: they were too much hassle to put on and take off. For me it was compounded by there not being much smooth pavement or concrete to skate on (in my neighborhood) and it chewed the heck out of both wheels and bearings while shaking my fillings loose. Too inconvenient and too expensive.
@@ambrogi1982 service dogs only.
I love how a sport never completely dies it just goes underground and the people doing it are the hard core enthusiasts that do it purely for the love of it
Soul skaters
Like breaking.
Sport never dies, its only the process of filtering out the people who only do it because of the hype
...and eventually it comes back en vogue, then a bunch of people pretend they've always been into it.
Gen Z: „For the love of it … …. … does this get me likes or is this just a waste of time?“
They'll make a comeback. More and more people are becoming less concerned about what's "cool" and enjoying the things that are fun and make them happy.
They’re already making a comeback! People are going back to doing inline skate tricks and roll bounce dancing
it will grow, but not even half of what it was. without a sports like x games it won't be as it was.
Im 19 now, grew up with rollerblades, and still love them. If you put me on regular quads, I wouldn't have any idea what to do... As of today, I'm going to my local indoor rink and trying quads, but I love blades especially for the ankle support. It'll never fully die
@@SapiaNt0mata It doesn't need the X Games. Kids don't watch TV these days anyway. I envision a fusion of rollerblading slalom and roll bounce. If you take the ice skating team competitions, put them in rollerblades and make them choreograph their way around obstacles in the rink, you get something complex and new. It might not be guys pushing the sport this time. It might be girls.
I ordered mine and they came a week ago
I recently began ice-skating (being someone who once rollerbladed a lot) because I wanted at least one or two winter physical activities I can get into. In the middle of ice-skating, for the first time ever, the question popped in my head "Wait... whatever happened to rollerblading?!" and now I am here...
Yes when I got older , I tried ice skating. Loved it. I thought ice skating is alot easier than roller skating, roller blades or skate boarding
Whatever happened to ICE skating? With the climate getting warmer, plenty of kids are missing out on skating because rivers, lakes, and ponds are no longer freezing like they used to.
@@bruzote In the 1990s Columbus Ohio got a ECHL hockey team before NHL.
After that they opened up 3 indoor ice rinks and another in Springfield. Now in Minnesota there's a ice rink in every back yard
X games also dropped climbing
have you tried doing a method grab in ice skates? just kidding
I was in college in CA back then, and what I remember why a lot of regular people (not pros or hard cores) swapped out their blades for skateboards was that when they were out and about, you could jump off your boards and go into a store or whatever, but with blades you were stuck, outside usually, as every public building (CA) had a sign on the front door saying "No Rollerblades." This was a pretty big deal.
Sounds like Covid solved this problem.
Lll all
Yeppp this is what I always have in my mind too.
I remember that funny how they still have that sign up every where
blading is for the most core of skaters. we dont care what ppl think. we do it bc its fun.
The circle I hung around in the early 2000s we did it all. Skated, bladed, and biked. Do what you like to do and have fun doing it. I never understood the beef. Awesome little documentary.
Same, agreed
I love doing it all as well. I remember road biking clothes with the tight shirts shorts and shoes looked weird to people and now it’s odd when someone is not wearing the gear. Blades are fun but for cruising around town and going into coffee shops or restaurants or bars, skateboard is just so much easier
Yes same here.
I’m on the camp that rollerblades have the fuss of putting on and off. Tried them a few times, didn’t like the inconvenience and I went back to biking
@@ccricers If you are bar hopping along a beach boardwalk, taking the skates on and off can be a real PITA.
Growing up during that period I always felt like rollerblading was a lot more fun as a casual thing, while skateboarding always seemed more like a 'sport'. Especially when snowboarding started to become popular, and they kind of share how to 'feel'.
Yeah, I still have a pair (that almost never get used), I skateboarded too. It's easier to do tricks with skateboarding, you're not trapped/strapped in. Rollerblades are faster than skateboarding, but not even close to a bike. So they're in this kind of middleground where they don't do anything particularly well, and even in this video, other than rail grinding, there's not a lot in the way of doing tricks.
Same, but after seeing those professional rollerblading clips in the beginning, i was blown away! Vert rollerblading looks harder and scarier than vert skating! Like how do they land so well on two separated, skinny and round surfaces? There’s gotta be ankle breaks all over the place!
Remember snowblades? That happened just before snowboarding Little skis LoL
@@eggfart05 To be honest, no I didn't remember those at all. I had to google it, then when I saw them I remembered, oh yeah that was a thing.
The roller blade boot goes to like mid calf and protects the ankle from being broken @@robertseptim3579
I'm 40 and I just bought a pair of rollerblade two weeks ago. It feels so good to skate again. For fun and execise.
Same here at 41, just got back into skateboarding, and immediately got that itch to throw on rollerblades again!! As much as I love skating, there's something WAY more fun about rollerblades, almost like Parkour. I'm literally shopping on ebay right now, I can't believe how cheap a set of blades are.....I'm buying now before things sky rocket. I recently asked my buddy if he wanted to go skateboarding, and he actually said Nah, I have rollberblades, which is crazy....so I think it's about to make a surge come back.
Yeh I just started again to skate with my daughter
50 here and just got some roller skates, the skill level now is crazy. I’m loving the energy and freedom of it.
@@michelleD9461 what i didn't realize is how people can dance in reg rollerskates. saw a girl on.... maybe a YT short... she had a 4'x4' piece of flooring and was going to town. till then, i didn't realize how much you could do in a small area like turns and small circles and whatever you'd call runningman but on wheels. kinda made me want to get some, tbh. didn't realize you could use them outdoors either, as i have NEVER seen anyone do that. thought only inlines were street skates. personally i always kinda liked disco though it was before my time. i woulda been doing roller disco for sure LOLL
Around 1998, our local skatepark was full of BMX'ers. A few friends and I were at the skatepark and saw this blader turn up and absolutely rip up the half pipe as we'd never seen before. Never saw him again but his legacy lived on through us, as I and 5 others instantly went out and got skates. Within a year we were entering local competitions and within 2 years, I and one other friend qualified for a West Midlands regional comp. If only video tech were more accessible back then cause we were a proper little team, tearing up streets, creating little challenges and travelling the country to various venues, sometimes sleeping rough just to make the most of the trip (as we could only go on a Saturday and Sunday due to school). I kick myself often for not documenting everything we did. It was sick, and all I have to show from that time is a pic of me inverted about 6ft above the coping on a 12ft vert ramp (Can't even see my face as I was facing the other way 😂🙈). My girl at the time was a skateboarder (she had a few moves in her locker 😅). We used to go back and forth with the banter but was always cool as we both enjoyed the skatepark scene. Not sure why I'm reminiscing on here, but it was good times and rather wholesome, given that many of our other friends were doing nothing. It felt purposeful. If you're a youngen reading this and and want to try something nobody else is doing, get your skates on, you'll have a blast.
I'm 36 and bought my first rollerblades a week ago. I remember the last time I used to blade was when I was 12 years old. I want to really learn how to do this for real. It looks extremely fun.
Thanks for sharing, I relate to this big time.
My little guy is getting into skateboarding and biking, tbh i forgot about skating, those old 90s-2000s skate videos are ridiculous.
100 likes
its a cool story bro x) its funny how we tend to tell these old grandpa stories on youtube :D anyway i really like it (no sarcasm)
“They even had a rollerblading game”. Neglects to show the greatest rollerblading game of all time, Segas Jet Grind Radio.
Nah aggressive inline
@@YoDz-117 I was just about to say that
Skitchen was the best
That was that dreamcast game right? I always wanted to play that 1.
@@mikesim6589 still own my Dreamcast and still play it. 🤫
I have been skateboarding since 1975, I have skated at hundreds of skate parks all throughout America. With that said, no matter what people think, no matter what people say, I’ll say it, it doesn’t matter what you’re riding on at the skate park, as long as you’re out there having fun doing it!!!
It was the urethane wheels that changed stakeboarding in the early 70's. Those old clay wheels were a bitch.
Anyone riding a horse at the skate park? 🤔🙃
I agree. I loved watching my mates blade. They went hard and took some nasty slams. Respect at the park was earnt and they earnt it.
Say that to my heelies, punk!
Show me something rollerbladers did that they didn’t rip off from skateboarder’s
I'm 40 now . And use to roller skate in the 90s . Just ordered new rollerblades .. looking forward ! 🎉
mid-life crisis in full swing.
When I was a teenage in the 90s, the rollerblade scene in NYC was blowing up. Barely any skateboarders. I swear once tony hawk on ps1 dropped, skateboarding took off. I blame tony hawks game lol.
Yes it was that I reckon too
The dead Kennedys
*took off **again**
Fruit booters
Yeah this was a big reason. Probably the biggest reason.
Yeah I'm from NYC. I remember starting with skating.. skate key was fire. Then rollerblading took off..
And everyone i know that started skateboarding was after Tony hawk lol . I did have a skateboard as a kid way before the game came out though
I remember as a skater crapping on rollerblades and there people in the 90s. We called them fruit boots. Now looking back, I realize they were just as dope as freestyle/BMX, or skating. It’s very entertaining to watch and I wish the best for it’s reemergence.
Yup. I was a fruitbooter. But a also could skate a little and rode BMX bikes.
I'll admit that learning a majority of tricks of rollerblades. Tend to be a lot easier than skateboarding. But when you're incorporating handrails and gaps on rollerblades. Some of that stuff been to.be respected.
@@I_like_turtles_67 For sure!
I had friends that would Diss bladers because they rode wood. It was all laughs though
@@I_like_turtles_67 My peer group all started with skateboards. None of us could ollie to save our lives. One guy showed up on blades and cleared a at the library. Next thing you know we all had blades and built a quarter pipe. Then the indoor skate park opened and we were hooked.
After 20 years off, I just bought a pair of Roces M12's and am back to skating. I was surprised how much the skills stuck around.
Bladers are still around. And no one hates on us at the parks now a days. I'm almost 40.
When grinding started, bladers would take skateboard wheels, shave them down and replace the inside 2 weels with them. This is the "anti-rocker" set up. Around the same time there was a pair of skates that came with a flat metal spanner that fit perfectly between the inside wheels on the outside of the frame. This would become the grind plate. I think it's really cool how early inline skaters would modify their skates in this way to be able to do new tricks.
Yeah as a kid I took out the both middle wheels, so I it looks like I'm one of the cool kids that can grind
Interesting
Remember colored Randy Roadhouse grind wheels? 😎😁
Had some rollerblade lighting blades before 1995, can't remember the year though. Mostly did my paper route on them. Never learned any grinds but remember their names, like the Christ grind, and that's all I remember now that I try.
I wS fortunate to be in the early generation with aggressive inline. We made our own grind plates and even repositioned our frames to have more grind space. I miss the diy days!
I did the urban skating back in the day and I loved it for the speed, weaving all over while gliding over everything and you have so much control over what your body is doing. You need a strong core, legs,butt and total symmetrical strength.
Essentially blading never got their Tony Hawk or Rodney Mullen, ZBoys etc. That one icon that transcends the sport and keeps pushing it into the mainstream and keeps growing and inspiring the next generation the way skating did.
Brian Shima was going to be that guy but less mainstrem attention meant less sponsors and less money. Shima had a nasty injury and never came back but you're spot on with your comment
That’s all he needed to say not a 20 minute video
@@cartercarter3484 True
@@styrojeff who?
Because there is nothing that innovative you can do with wheels strapped to your feet.
as a modern rollerblader, and a teen who wasnt aware of this "death," thanks for making this video. its nice to see that we are coming back
cheers.
Fr. I turned 21 this year and picked uo the blades for the first time. Been at it for 6? Months now
I’ve been blading for abt 4 years and it’s the best decision I made. It’s smf all the ramps and rails are so exhilarating and I hope that if it blows up again, people get to feel that same feeling
Legit, same. I had no idea that it used to be a big thing either because it always seems that no one talks about it or know what it is-
roller blades are trash, you need a unicycle
there's one reason inline skating will never die for real: it feels just as good as it looks. you move on your own two feet, but it's like you're wearing floating 7 mile boots.
i have a road bike, the most efficient way to get around without a motor, i have a longboard, and i love taking it for a spin sometimes, but strapping on my blades is what i get giddy about
Ain't it the truth.
So it's roller skating with your knees together like some kind of awkward bird. Got it.
He's talking about inline u wierdo it's dead asf
except a unicycle is literally superior to everything else
@@Blox117 Cross country ballet pointe rules all other sports.
storytime: i was 16 when xgames dropped inlineskating. i remember vividly eurosport had a short segment presenting how dangoures inline-skating actually was - as a goodbye. i was about 10 when i started inlineskating and 2 years later i started to do some royales and ufos. i still have my 2003 roces graal (allblack, zipper cover and laces).
what struck me hard and what i will never forget is the hostility i recieved from skateborders - as kid i would just run away. but as i started developing and entering teenagehood i started having my own crew of friends... these meet-ups with skaters bacame str8 up heavy brawls. there was not a skate day without a fight. heavy fights sometimes. scared into my memory is when a guy in inlineskate in full speed jumped, lifted legs up, slamming - wheels first into skaters ribs, dude never got up. and many instances where my friends would fall, and skaters would reck then with boards while the dude is on the ground. i still believe there are still some spots in my hometown where skaters can not come. to this day, i have a bit of a odd feeling when i am surrounded, or passing skaters, an unease, dislikement, nobody understands why rolerblading was dropped from xgames when the pros were in their peak. and their skillsets and atheticism was on pair with skaters, and it was all managed in such a short term. skaters needed 50 years to get where we did in just 10. i recently seen some videos of skaters and inlines doing things together, and to be fair for me... well, it was hard to digest.
but the thing is that inlineskateing never died. the fad dropped, so a random joe stopped buying pairs, which is anyhow good. it died in usa and uk. i am often i paris, and there they fucking do tricks for money on street - and it is so impressive what they do. most of the youtube channels we have about rollerblading are french, spanish, portugeese, canadian, with a stuttering skater being a "newcomer" from usa. i just recently seen the usd istambul tour 2015 and even newer vids - and fuck - one can see how the style totally changed from the 2006-7 (when i saw the last demo) and it is way more about having fun, then actually having an attitude, which is great - the chris farmer - the meantime vibes, but better.
i stopped skating around 2012 when i moved to a new country, i took them with me - but studying was a priority and then i just forgot to reactivete. i recently replaced the 4x60 frame for a with 4x100. and i am back on them, although i do not do rails no more, i am taking inspiration from the leon the wizard and i am just enjoying a good smooth ride. bye now.
p.s. wtf. you just enter the store with rollerblades.
The great thing about inline skating, is the fact that it actually increases the fitness of the casual user. I was amazed at how I could last a full day of skiing during winter, after buying my first inline skates and skating along the beaches in LA. Good times!
I’m reading this and just now I realise that people can’t go a full day up in the mountains on their skis lol. I am quite young though so that might compensate for my lack of actually training. But when it comes to skiing I just keep on going
a whole day? lol your vacation doesnt last two weeks?
@@ohhi5237 nope, it actually lasts 3 weeks
It's a very physically demanding sport. When I skated for the first time after 20 years, and only for 1h, I couldn't get out of my car normally for the next 3 days. Due to massive muscle strains. 🤣🤣🤣
It always boils down to what gets promoted and sponsored. In the 90's everything in "alternative" sports was blowing up. Freestyle skiing was gaining traction and with that snowboarding got popular and before you knew it, X-games was huge, Red-bull was a household name - and neither of them really promoted in-line skating. I think a big part of it also had to do with video games and the fact that Tony Hawk pro skater was epic.
I know deep down you want to be a roller blade champ kid🤣
I agree. Popularity of anything is heavily influenced by money and media and vice versa.
I still rollerblade at 36. Just not aggressive skating. It’s a fun and healthy hobby I plan to do into my 60’s.
@@atomic2174 with those epic jumps down stairs you'll be a cool grand parent🤣
Skater culture in the late '90s, promoted by pop punk bands like Blink 182, also played a part I think. Rollerbladers were not included in that culture.
Media for sure, the first time I finally drank the famous Red-Bull I nearly spit it out, I will never understand who would want to drink that sugary piss water.
I always thought it would be cool if there were blades you could pop off and on your shoes, for whenever you had to go in a store.
Are you talking about Heelys? Always wanted some of those
There were rollerblades like that, they were called Xsjado. Nowadays USD sells them.
Pretty sure that exists
Check out Powerslide Doop skates!
@@unQuestionable69 Lmao when I was young I was so jealous of anyone who had heelys... remember soap shoes? I wanted those too lol.
I remember attending high school in America for the first time during the early 2000s and one of the gym activities was rollerblading. I was the only one who didn't know how to skate, and was just puzzled that the school itself just expects everyone to already know how, even a blind kid.
This is why I love youtube, proper retrospective and edited content you couldn't find anywhere else. Thanks for your hard work
I was thinking the same. You can find a quality video about practically anything
The craziest thing I remember about rollerblading here in Canada is that there's a national supermarket chain called Superstore and in the 90's all the people who worked there (with the possible exception of the cashiers) wore rollerblades. Yes, people doing price checks and putting things back where they go on shelves would be rollerblading around the store at considerable speeds. I was a small child at the time so didn't think all that much of it, but looking back that was incredibly bizarre, and I would think that the staff must have had really sore feet and legs by the end of the day. The 90's were wild.
That's ripe for lawsuits. "YOU BUMPED INTO ME, AND I ACTED LIKE I WAS RUN OVER BY A TRUCK!"
For me, the 90s were bicycles, roller skates and Nintendo 64.
I remember that, I thought it was pretty cool at the time!
The employees at Sonic drive-ins used to wear skates and would skate your food out to your car. I remember being there once as a kid and seeing one of the waitresses trip as she was taking out a big order on a tray - several burgers, fries, and probably four drinks. Poor girl ended up dumping it all over the hood of somebody's car lol.
A lot of supermarkets in Brazil still have employees wearing rollerblades, it's so cool
you can still find restaurants with rollerblading waiters in China
38yr old here who got their first pair of blades in 1994.
Having grown with the in-line skating timeline and experienced it for real, it’s absolutely spot on.
I knew the majority of the backstory, yet I still found is massively interesting, you really have a way with telling an engaging story to those that are educated in the sport, but also those who may have never skated in their life.
Despite my aching joints, I still love going out and thrashing around town, and I love your videos also.
Keep it up! 🙌🏼
Fruit Booter😂
Thats because you are still a Fruit Booter 😂
I started rollerblading last week. Been doing it every day, can't get enough. It is very liberating for someone who lives in a city. It's faster than walking, but more tiring than cycling but i don't mind. It's good aerobe training.
I don't really remember how the beginning of my skating was because i started using it since I was a kid, but pretty sure that you won't feel tired when you get used to it and adjust it in the right way at all.
I was one of those kids in the 90s/early 00s that was BIG into rollerblading. I didn't have the skill to do "aggressive inline" or vert skating, but I was damn fast and leaned into that with an expensive $600 pair of custom fitted 5 wheeled Rollerblades with "micro-bearings". I skitched all over Chicago in those and all up and down the lakefront bike path, either as fast as I could propel myself, or skitching on bicycles and cars in the street. My parents hated that I loved it, but by then I was 16 and working so I was spending my own money on it and they had no recourse to take it away from me.
Exactly the blades became a thing again for us kids during the peak of the early early 2000s pretty much died by 04
I got into the aggressive inline and we used to skate Chicago street. Would take the Metra from the south side. Got hit by a cab on Wacker drive, and almost fell into the lake grinding at Navy Pier.
After almost 20 years off I bought new pair of Roces M12s after my 1994 Tarmac CE's frame exploded. I got back into street and vert (with more caution and care) than my 15-17 year old self had back in the 90's.
I'll never forget my first pair of K2 Inlines. The extra boot to bring and that spacer rather a 6th wheel was essential in the explosion.
@@gizzardretizzard I'll admit I was one of those fan bois who thought Rollerblade brand was the only good brand and never even gave K2 a second glance. I should have, cuz I missed out.
@@somedude4805 that spacer in the mid was essential to take the grind game to the next level. Anyone hating just never tried it out cause I could never hate the fun I had on those suckers.
I think the reason it massively overtook skateboard in the 90's was because it's quite a bit easier to become somewhat proficient on skates than a skateboard. Most skayers will tell you it took 8mos, a year sometimes, to have good consistent ollies. Basically jumping with the board. Imagine not being able to jump up onto a 10" curb with roller skates for nearly a year.
Now that you point it out, if that were the case I have to question whether it could take off as well if that were the case.
You can always pickup the skateboard for a moment to climb/step over something, with skates a steep staircase becomes an obstacle.
If you enjoy flipping things around with your feet that much, wouldn't a soccer ball or one of those little "hacky sack" things save you a little 💰 over the price of a skateboard?
@@meself349 I think you're replying to the wrong comment thread buddy. That's not at all relevant nor comparable here.
Also, a hackysack is way easier to do tricks with and doesn't compare to balancing upon a moving object. Much less doing tricks while traveling.
@@Firesgone It depends on the obstacle. If it is just a curb, it is easier to step onto it with skates rather than pick up the skateboard and then put it down again. If you have an actual staircase or rough terrain skates become a real pain. For casual use, it is those small annoyances that determine which is preferable. When I was a teenager/ young adult, skates or skateboard were not practical for every day usage for me so they were purely a recreational (ie "show off") thing.
Roller blades also were a valid and fun tool to actually move longer distances though. I did not just use them for little tricks but to move between places. That's why i'm surprised they vanished so completely.
I used to rollerblade like it was my job in the 90s when I was a kid. It was my favorite thing to do. As I got older, naturally I just moved away from it and now in my late 30s, I can't even remember the last time I strapped on a pair of inline skates. In my early 20s, I remember going on my first ski trip. Because of this obsession with rollerblades as a kid, it lead to me picking up ski blades. Anyone that was good at rollerblading, go snow skiing this winter and rent a pair of ski blades. I bet you will be flying down black diamonds after your first day on them. I'll still shred like I was 16 on those things and it feels so natural. It's like the feeling of those rollerblades never left.
Get you a pair of skates and go to the park bet your ass you won’t be the only old guy there and you won’t regret it
funny I ended up on blades as well and still ride them now at the snow...the only older kook on the hill and the teenagers hoot and yell from the lift like short skiis are outrageous, they are just short skiis, they feel like skiis to me but they are annoying to move through the line. I really believe in a big way that most people just want to fit in quick and not be unique so if they see some stoned snowboarders trip out at a guy with short skiis they are afraid to try it. It's just like right now, everyone is afraid to stand up for logic so they wear masks and take un-tested drugs just cause they say everyone else is doing it, not me baby, I'll wear spandex with blades before I'll adopt this latest fad!
I started on 32. Now I'm 38 and I love it. Age is just a number.
deffo gonna take you up on this. Nice one.
@@whatyoudo9773 short skis 😃
Born in 1987 in Riverside California and I started sk8ing in 1993... The sk8er blader beef was REAL!!! We got outnumbered quickly, but the sk8er mindset and atmosphere was built to last! 🤘
Flow Skate and Bill Stoppard got me into skating. They ain't about doing the gnarliest tricks, they are about cruising the cityscapes through the trickiest routes without breaking the flow and it looks magical. It's my third year on skates and I love it. Doesn't matter to me that it's not 'in'.
flow skate is teaching me all the fundamentals i never had as a kid, but the stuttering skater is actually the channel that made me pull the trigger lol
right skating or wrong skating?
Yep just started rollerblading this week due to their videos. It just looks fun and so far, between falls, im having a blast. It’s nice having a fun goal and being out of breath achieving it
as a kid of the 80s and 90s i do have to say that 90s fashion is definately starting to re-emerge. i haven't changed anything about the clothes i wear, but i would be let into a club now and i wouldn't have been 10 years ago.
For real, my nephew now looks like someone I’d see at my high school.
For me it re-emerged because I now got offspring who's at the age I was in early 90s and it's something we can occasionally do together, I wonder if that's an explanation for a whole broader group of people too... the 25-30 yr gap would make sense.
@@andrewzaborowski9685 it would be a useful piece of anthropological research to check out. might even be able to identify generational trends that follow a pattern that goes back further than modernity.
Dork
Lol what.
Aggressive inline skate is super fun and rewarding. It doesn't have the media, culture and big market support but it is way better like this to be honest. It's only done by passionate people. That's what matter the most really
Fruit Booter
This comment tends to assume that having some sense of media presence will kill the culture. When in reality there will always be a core market to every sport and it only helps the core pay riders enough to do what they love, they don't have to conform...
@@Steezy_Mx and proud💪
Everyday. I'm on my skates everyday.
@Daniel Lorenz hit a second hand store. People always buying skates and never using them. They end up giving them to good will or something. I got new skates for like $10.
Funnily enough he mentions Chris Edwards... Chris is a very nice guy and responds to almost anybody on social media if you ask him questions.
I always remember one skateboarder saying to me "you rollerbladers are crazy... If you fall you still got them skates on... If we bail we can land on our feet but you just asking for pain"
A few huge reasons as i see it:
- first time buyers would receive a sub-par experience due to the out of box product....and if your first attempts kind of suck, lots of people just gave up on it.
- low grade wheels (mostly spokes, little rubber), which gave a horrific ride...very bumpy.
- stock bearings were utter garbage...you had to open them up and do a full WD-40 job on em... very few knew how to do this or that they had to.
- lots of brands that were really crap...
first experiences can ruin something for most. if you didn't have someone there to show you how to properly set stuff up, odds are, you'd hate it.
Agreed; low grade wheels and bearings are the issue since the good ones were (and still are) prohibitively expensive for lower class folk. I remember when I was young and had a crap pair, I thought the sport was really difficult. Then when I popped on my cousin's pair of Roller Blades, I could suddenly move way better.
This definitely mirrors my experience - I simply couldn’t do the things I wanted to with the cheap skates I had.
fully agree. back when i was younger i tried to rollerskate and it really sucked balls. then i tried it with the 4 wheel one and it wasnt any better and i basically gave up on it. its quite sad honestly as videos of it looked really fun and it would be probably really fun if it werent that hard to learn.
I agree here, too. I was an aggressive rollerblader. My big issue is the wheels have a wear and tear on it. The last time I wore rollerblades, my actual wheels have wear on it so much the "sear" on one side. I also share the pain of carrying them, their "fit," the last time I tried wearing them? It was uncomfortable because my feet is too big for it today. I'm not gonna spend $100 on new sets of them. I love rollerblades. Awesome for what they are. I'm 40, so that's out.
sebastian - wd40 is not a lubricant, its a water displacer and dirt attractant.
Shows what I know. Never knew rollerblading died. I’ve been doing it for 30 years or so. Never watched the pros and did t realize they took it off the X games. Mind blown.
While it might not have many if any competitions or shows, it’s definitely not dead. A skate park for rollerskates and rollerblades opened up nearby my home around last week and it’s packed full of skaters. Never knew how many people near me skated and how many were legit pros. I love it there because of the variety of skill levels and ages. There were super young kids (below 10, around 7) all the way up to adults that were absolutely showing up the park with their skills; but there were also first-time skaters at the same ages. Such a friendly and humbling place full of people willing to help each other out.
Ffs same for me 😂 keep rolling!!
Been rollerblading almost the same amount of time, learned when I was 4-5 years old still have my fitness and my aggressives and my ice hokey skates as well, I would go to rinks no matter what state I lived in, and I would always find a decent amount of people skating. So to me it never died.
Bought my Rollerblades 2 months ago, let's go
Damn. Bladekour is becoming a real thing 😀
Let's get it!
@@acteone Nobody wants to the things couse they get popular, that's what normies do.
I seen inliners on inlines jumping across entire roads.
I have the Oxelo Hardshell TriSkates and Rollerblade Macro Soft Shell boots (For Real Men Only) 🤣
Let’s bring it back baby
Thing i like about rollerblading is that it's really close to parkour and you still can do parkour elements in rollerblading. I often go to practice backflips,websters etc. on my feet and then go to streets and shock riders by doing flips down the stairs. It's quite a cool feeling!
Well, there is that, some of the more extreme flip is done on Mega Ramp, the shortest 1260 air is done on quarter pipe.
On blading, you can only swing your body up on a jump unless you manipulate the core so to clear the gap using flip trick requires decent momentum. As for basic air trick on blades, we have grab and grab less category.
It’s much cooler to see people doing Misty Flip over a gap with a parkour artist doing a gainer together.
So true!!!
Rollerblading did not decline because it fell out of favour with teen skateboarders. The industry failed to pitch to the broader audience who were actually not even aware of aggressive skating at the time. The millions of people skating, were doing it on the streets and trails, not parks.
There were no parks where I lived in the 90s.
as a kid it was s o easy to get robbed with blades on lol
No teen wanted to be called a fruit booter at the skate park, devastating nickname.
I was mostly doing it on malls for the smooth surface. Escaping the security guards was a blast 😂
First, it's a mistake to call it skating or street skating because skateboarding is on a whole different level when it comes to difficulty. Trying to use the same vernage opens up bladers to ridicule.
Secondly, most people would rather be Goodall a really hard activity like skating or surfing vs being great at much more easy activity like blading. Blading should've never left the boardwalks.
Here in São Paulo, Brazil, every park you go anywhere there are people with rollerblades and there's always people learning. I'd go as far as to say there's more people on rollerblades than on skateboards. It's def not in the media anywhere, but a lot of people are still doing it.
Yeah, I get the feeling this youtuber is basing a lot on what he sees in the UK, which has never really had a strong skate culture of any sort. Places like Canada with a strong ice skating and/or ice hockey culture still have lots of rollerblading in the summer.
Sao Paulo is not a parameter. People ride on some strange longboards there, some unusual stuff. It doesn't mean rollerblade is still a thing. Both roller blade and skateboarding as they were in the 90s are dead. The counterculture, subculture stuff has changed to mums taking their infants to skateboard classes. We try to convince ourselves that this or that time is not dead, but they are... some elements of it might survive and morph into the new context but don't come back as it was
@@XXXX-yc6wv So is that roller blading culture or ice skating culture which has spilled over to the summer? Sounds to me like the latter.
O lance do rollerblade é que vc não precisa se preocupar de cair do skate, o negócio não sai da sua perna a não ser que vc dê um jeito de arrancar o negócio. De uma certa forma, eu me sentia mais seguro, como se o patins fosse parte da perna, então dava mais apoio. Nesse caso eu acho que é mais interessante pras pessoas.
Eu sempre quis tentar andar de skateboard, mas nunca consegui convencer meus pais a me arranjar um quando eu era moleque. Tb curtia BMX, mas nunca usei um tb, fiquei só na bicicleta.
Eu não era de fazer manobra com nada, eu curtia andar ou fazer corrida. O máximo que eu fiz com rollerblade foi jogar hockey inline no ginásio. Tinha usado um par de blades com roda de silicone. Eu odiei pq grudava nas superfícies e era uma merda pra fazer slides, drifts e curvas. Parecia que as rodas estavam colando no chão, a aderência era boa pra pegar velocidade, mas não dava agilidade alguma. Primeira vez que eu tentei dar uma daquelas paradas de lado. CAPOTEI LINDO, parecia um acrobata de porre. Foi hilário! Mais hilário ainda que eu não me machuquei em nada, só deu susto e fiquei tonto.
Same in my country. There's barely any skaters but you see a few people on rollerblades - not as much as 20+ years ago but still.
Just turned 40 a couple weeks ago. I was an aggressive skater in my teens. It was super fun. I'd wake up at like 8-9 on a Saturday and drive to the skatepark and just skate until the sun went down. Always fun to see who would show up. We had a bunch of bike guys and skateboarders. We got along ok for the most part but the skateboarders DID get mad at us because they said we overwaxed the rails. Oh well, definitely have the fondest memories from those times.
I just picked up rollerblading about a month ago. Just went on Amazon and ordered a pair because I wanted to learn something new since I saw a video of rollerblading on instagram. I’m so surprised that it’s not very popular because it’s SO MUCH FUN. I’ve spent about an hour a day everyday since I’ve gotten them and I can’t get enough. It’s “lame” to some but I think it’s one of the coolest sports. Doing my best to keep it alive! (Quick note is im 22 and grew up in the west US so rollerblading was never popular around me while growing up)
instagram seems to be bringing it back
I'm 31 and started rollerblading a year ago and absolutely love it.
I tried rollerblading when i was 18, but felt safer using quad skates
21 and just picked it up too (6 months in.) Im from the Northeast tho
Which brand did you buy? Because I’m trying to get into it but idk which ones
Just to let you know, we didn't carry around shoes when we skated. If we went to a store to get a drink we just took the skate off and wore the boot thing inside the skate lol. Ahh I miss the 90's...😭
I was fully into aggressive inline as a teenager. This brought me back! I don't think any sport has risen and fallen as suddenly.
Ain't never did aggressive inline... I am more of a distance rider.... They seem really practical to me..... There is a wide veriety of types of rollerblades. I like the wide wheels with a lot of stabillity and more glide.
@Ricardo Sandoval Yep.... I really didn't roll for attention from guys or to announce that I was gay, but everyone calls us 'fruit booters'....
Me too i loved it so much but then it became so uncool and ppl would make fun of me so i had to stop 😢
Still have my inlines somewhere in my attic
I was considering signing up for the x games right around the end of the 90's, aggressive inline was a big part of my life. I lost count of how many times I lost all the skin on both knees from taking jumps that were way too large, lol.
I always thought of rollerblading like ice skates, but without the ice. I enjoyed just getting to get my ice skate fix during the summer
Hey Jimmy, 90s amateur blader here o/. I was heavily enveloped in the alt sports of that time. Skateboarded, bladed and was also around bikers. Skated with a lot of pros in all the sports. In the passionate, more pro side of the sports there wasn't any beef really. At woodward we would skate, board and bike together and give props. It was more of a media thing and something "posers" would talk about.
After all these years I have a theory of why it really did lose popularity and that is due to the design and mechanics of aggressive rollerblading. Rollerblades were still in the early years of design. The tricks were made up off boots not originally designed to do the tricks. Blades were modded and then later designed to grind and be better for that style of skating. If you know skating and biking, skateboards have flip tricks and grinds on the truck and board. Bikes have flip tricks and grind on pegs. Well, rollerblades are different. Half of the trick vocabulary are called "top side". Which means you have to get on top of the object you are grinding. Which requires you to bend you leg extremely and put unnatural pressure on it. It feels really cool when you are young, limber and pull it off for the first few times. But, it's just very bad form and it hurts to do.
But, the design and method of blading really never changed. The tricks and falls of rollerblading are much more damaging to the body than it may look. Holding uncomfortable grinds like that. Not only top side, but backwards or alley oop topside. I feel like future design and tech will bring new life to the sport. When we can have frames that automatically lock and shift so we can grind without killing our legs and ankles. With that I feel like a reinvention of the trick vocabulary will happen too. I recently started thinking about the sport after about 15 year break and this really made a lot of sense to me.
As a 30 something who came back to blading after 18 years off, I love it more than ever. The community is incredible and I’ll skate until my legs fall off.
As a 30 something that tried to get back into blading this summer after 10 years off, i envy the fact that your knees and ankles allow you back at it.
i'm also getting back to it after 10 years off 🔥
Just got back from my session trying out my new tri skates. Been skating since around 6 and I’m now a few months from 26. Fell HARD 2 times today both times in front of people. I got right back up like nothing happened lmao It’s so much fun I don’t even care about the mishaps. I plan on buying my future kids skates just to see if they like it. Don’t know what I’d do without skating which sounds wild but it’s freeing as heck! It’s never too late to get back
ua-cam.com/video/qdNHIoJ7HJE/v-deo.html
I actually kind of miss it too, lots of memories. Skating backwards in circles around a highschool girlfriend who doubted my ability to teach her.
Thinking it was basically a requirement to remove the back brake and just drag your foot trashing wheels. I think the last time I had a pair on I went over the hood of a car that pulled up way too fast on a blind corner. Be worth trying it out again, curious if my ankle can handle it now after a nasty break.
Roller skates became incredibly scarce during the pandemic, too, as people looked to skating as a way to be active, alone or at a decent distance outside. I don’t think you can underestimate that factor in regenerating all kinds of skating.
Similarly the pandemic has seen an uptic in cycling since you're distant from everyone else you're riding with, but your'e still otuside doing and getting much needed excersize. Plus everyone fucked up in judging the market so there is this HUGE assed supply chain bottleneck.
True. I could not find my size 10 in any skate brand. Blading is actually alive and well.
Yeah , I got into all types of skating during the pandemic. Didn't even skate as a kid. Now I ice skate , inline skate , roller skate and longboard at age 37. I also got into biking again.
Very true. Got my skates a year and a half ago and am currently part of two local skate teams.
Blaming the pandemic, YAWN.
I'm only 25, but I remember going to the rink or the park every weekend and you'd see almost every kid from school at one of the two. Now it's 2023 and my coworker laughed when I asked if he wanted to go skating. Oh well, another Sunday alone at the park is fine by me.
Just want to add that in the late 90s, a lot of roller rinks were getting shut down in the states. So a lot of kids who would have been exposed to it didn't get a chance, I'm a 34yr old skateboarder and use to love going to Hammer Skate. 😭
a lot of rinks wouldnt even allow blades, not unlike ski slopes tried to ban snowboarders at first
Same thing in Belgium for me, most skateparks just closed out so we had to do it in the street, and we'd constantly either get security or cops sent at us or simply adults berating us for destroying property/doing too much noise.
There were also a few punk kids who would try to berate us in skateparks, but once they saw you were able to pull out actualy tricks (or even be better than them at skateboarding) they'd go quiet real fast.
Around 15-17 years old I eventually got tired of having to struggle so much just to enjoy such an amazing sport, I never understood to this day why no sport center ever had ramps and official skateparks, as small as they would be.
Be it BMX, Skateboarding or Roller, those sports are really worth doing and supporting, as they have an endless room for creativity and fun.
Had I a Skatepark closeby, I'd still be skating today (I'm 34 now).
most rinks didn't even let us in, they wanted that rental money for their shitty roller skates
@@Teeveepicksures Yup I was a goalie all thru school and the rinks that had wooden floors wouldn't let me skate on them. I'd have to sit out away games because I couldn't skate quads good enough.
All around the world rinks were closing then.
MANNNNN this took me back to '99. 10 years old with a pair of k2s depleting my mom's candle collection to try and grind concrete parking blocks and handicap rails.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16, 17
@@spicydramarama852 And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32
I was 15 and hardcore into skating (skateboarding) in that year. Good memories. I miss my best friend. RIP Josh
Sweeet!!!!
@@spicydramarama852 Cope. We're all going to perish.
My buddy rollerbladed in it's hay day and explained that pro level got so ridiculous that you'd nearly need to die to go pro. Once that became unobtainable people lost motivation. You ended up in a body cast before you ended up with a sponsor.
This isn’t true at all. A lot of dudes I skated with in Charlotte were sponsored by razors. I mean the dudes with pro boots were insanely good but some weren’t. The best dudes were superhuman.
All extreme sports are life threatening, they wouldn't be extreme if they didn't. Only people wanting to avoid being hurt lose their motivation when they figure out the real nature of a practice, others are attracted by this same fact because of the thrill risks provide.
There's only one reason about rollerblade decline : it was an over exploited economical bubble that broke when money went in the next trend (scooters).
As a suckerblader in CA in the 90’s I can confirm there’s some truth to this. I was at the xgames in San Francisco on the pier when Tony Hawk landed the 900 for the first time. It was amazing. Aggressive in-line didn’t have that magic anymore. The kids were just too good. The idea of working on a really hard trick existed at the individual level, but not at the sport level anymore. At the peak it seemed like all the time you’d hear about (or see) some 12 year old doing some trick combo on in-lines that should only be possible in a THPS game. It might not want to make you stop skating, but it did remove aspirations. I’d need to start a wicked meth habit to even have a shot at doing that one day and by the time I learned it some other kid would have already done something even crazier. By the time they pulled in-line from the xgames it was a bummer, but it kinda felt right. The stuff the pro fruit booters could do was insane, but at some level we knew skateboarding took more skill. It took more talent to make a board do that stuff than having wheels tied to your feet. One is like walking/running with flair, the other is manipulating an object with mostly your feet, often in mid-air, that physics doesn’t want to stay near you.
Your buddy is 100% right. Rollerblading died in the late 2000's after Bittercold Showdown 10. After this event everything chilled out.. because people were literally out there dying. This is basically the damn Woodstock of rollerblading and it's never peaked higher than this.
ua-cam.com/video/R9Qk-sTUHYE/v-deo.html
essentially, we got old. but in my 40s, i'm getting a pair and i'm going to blade to work. my kids will have their minds blown when they see me on them.
The 90s was the best time to be a kid. It was just so dope. We didnt know what we had till it was gone😢
The 80's was better.
❤
I say 2000
I hear you brother 90's were the best
Granted the numbers aren't what they were in the 90's, but having experienced the highs and lows of the past 30+ years I can honestly say that rollerblading culture has never felt stronger.
Are the lows when you fell over?
Wizard skating style is reviving the industry
We are back even Aggressive skating.
We ARE THE ZOMBIES. We are back...and can group of zombies in a different places be killed?
Probably not...if we spread...we are alive...but if we don't find anyone...even zombies can die......UNTIL........
Be a the ones left are the real ones.
When sports "die" they often just become a lot more core, the passionate riders stay and the trend-followers leave. Lots of respect for you and the riders still doing it
The only reason I'm not rollerblading everywhere nowadays is that around me are just mountains and dirt roads. In the 90's I used to skate across the Brooklyn Bridge, up to Central Park, make the circuit, and skate down into the subway and on to the train to get home. I thought of them as a cheap practical means of transportation to get around the city.
I remember skating up Park Ave one day and running into one of those rubber mats that they put out over the sidewalk leading into some swanky hotel. The mat stopped my skates dead, and I had to do a pretty radical tuck up of my knees to avoid a face plant. I JUST made it, landing on the other side, and an Australian voice behind me, probably a customer of the hotel, said "Oh! Good save!". That's a memory that will be with me forever.
Did you run into Ryan Jacklone or any FR members lol
@@AndysNuWorld No, I had no tricks or talents. In fact I remember huffing and puffing around the park and some guy (someone said a pro off-season hockey player) breezed past me skating backwards. Humbling. No, I was just a Wall-Streeter skating on the weekends --a simple pleasure for me, not a life calling.
A ‘One-Wheel’ wld prolly be super-cool on ^that^ terrain
In 2023 no skaters hate rollerbladers being at the park. rollerbladers are always so nice to see..btw really good and informative video..well done new sub ♡
I remember growing up in the 90s with my skates on all day, then the 00s came and i got stuck in skateboards and longboards for 20 years because as a kid, you don't want to be laughed at for not following the trend train...
Last year i bought back a pair of inlines and i couldn't be happier, finally found my inner peace as a longboarder-roller at 30 years old
I think that's the natural progression for most of us as I followed the same path years ago. We're Fruitbooters until it becomes overly taxing or we start a family and then we move on to longboarding, then possibly pivot back to FBs before we wreck out Sh**.
@@somesweetguy i took my skates to the recently built pump tracks nearby (not a single one in my country until 5 years ago) and all the kids in their scooters were absolutely amazed watching me fly in my inlines, i'm pretty sure the trend will come back and hit harder than ever
I remember when I broke my leg at 13 years old performing a unity grind. My mom was sooo pissed but I did had shitty skates and that’s what really the caused of the injury. Two years later I picked up K2 skates and the rest was history. Still to this day I always love skating and was recently thinking to get back on.
Heck yea the k2 fatties right? I had a pair
Dude give it a go.
@@traderinthetrees1785 lmao Fattys, that’s right. Good times. ✨
@@singletona082 i think I will, just don’t know which skates to grab.
@@vangard1127 The advantage of now vs the 90's. Being able to be picky and get reviews on these things.
I say if nothing else give it a try. Maybe it won't work out and you'll feel beyond out of place. Maybe it will. Won't know til you try.
I have a pretty good theory about why it died. Towards the end of the 90s and beginning of 2000s, skating rinks closed up. Unlike other similar sports like Skateboarding and Snowboarding, most kids got their exposure to rollerblading at a skating rink. These used to be a popular place for younger GenX and older Millennials to hang out when they were in middle school and early high school. Young kids would go there, play arcade games, do some skating, and see some older kids using rollerblades.
When those skating rinks closed up and were torn down, there was no more new blood for rollerblading. Think about it this way, how many kids do you all see in regular roller skates these days? Not many there either.
shockingly, the skating rink I went to as a kid is still around. they did add a huge indoor play center, it took up almost as much space as the rink.
I can find myself in this. The scene was also very acceptant of newbies, just to hang out casually or get more into the hardcore scene. We just hang out in the sun, smoking stuff we shouldn't and enjoy long evenings in the rink. At our rink they did not judge and everyone was welcome, it was simply a nice place to be. Skating or not.
Well, to be frank... You no longer see kids in skates or kids at all. Most kids are usually coped up inside, with skaters of any kind bring rarer and rarer.
@@Estmaraver sadly 😞
I think another reason why people don't blade too much is because they're afraid of looking bad when they start out.... having skateboarded in the past and also being a rollerblader now I know how you look when you're starting out blading... you're flailing around and you can feel pretty stupid. People will even laugh at you, try to trip you, and make insulting comments. I've had all of that and much more in the beginning. I dealt with all of that but I kept going. And nobody laughs anymore. But when you're starting out skateboarding even if you can't do anything fancy you can just stand there on that board and roll around and people won't laugh at you or f*ck with you too much.
I just dug put my old rollerblades to get back into the swing of things again after a few years. I’m only 24, almost 25 but I still knew like 30 other kids in highschool who had pairs and a bunch of others who only used them at skate rinks when we went on school trips and stuff.
"obiously we named it senate becasue we wanted a name that sounded powerful but thats also corrupt" LOVE IT
Fruit Booter
cringe
@@babyduck9217 ok cool.
@@Steezy_Mx wood pusher
I’m deffo a ‘lockdown’ rollerblader, got into it in feb 2021 due to boredom and man I have been so hooked ever since. Can’t tell you what a difference it has made to my mental health, I don’t see myself giving up until I’m too injured to do it any more. I think it’s such a shame how beef still exists to some extent between action sports. It’s a lot better, I don’t get shit from skateboarders very often, but different disciplines don’t mix very much. And it drives me insane when bladers and quad skaters complain about being shat on by skateboarders and then hate on people on scooters, like come on man, do you not see the irony there? I think all action sports are great, I wish everybody using skateparks just mixed a bit more and gave each other props, even if they don’t fully understand the weird move you just did or why it’s impressive.
Dig it!
Well said my friend. Coming from a skateboarder. I've always respected other extreme sports especially aggro blading
The scooters aren’t the problem. The problem is the kids riding the scooters that can’t follow basic courtesy rules at the park and put everyone at risk.
@@CristinaF_LTHP this might be true, but I find that a lot of kids are like that no matter what they’re using. And yeah it’s annoying and dangerous, but they’re kids, they’ll learn (granted some parents are deffo to blame about their total lack of attention when the kids are extremely young). I do find, probably because they’re associated with small kids, that there is a wider lack of respect for scooter riding as a sport, even when the people riding them are perfectly respectful of the skatepark rules.
UA-cam novel bruh.
I've still got my Hoax VHSs and my Senate hoodie 🥲
Didn't expect you here. But pleasent none the less.
jfc I forgot about senate lol. Found my K55's and (beat to shit) razor flats during lockdown and took them out
I got rid of my senate hoodies but have been looking for a new one!
Lol, senate hoodie with some big ass public defender shorts and a bitchin wallet chain
Thats cause your a Fruit Booter 😂
It died for me in the mid 90s because my family moved from an urban concrete jungle to rural bum-fuck of nowhere lol. Our neighborhood didn't even have sidewalks!
Now my kids are getting invited to skate rink bday parties, I rented a pair of inlines and I got addicted again lol. 30 years since I skated and it really is like riding a bike! I'm waiting on my new blades to be delivered right now. 😂
I remember being friends with 3 bladers in the 90s. And they got hell at the skate park. They were all insane tho, and helped push my own skating.
When we all joked, it was jokes. They were my friends. Other skateboarders took it as a war.
For me, they were skaters. Cause they were the same as us, just different wheels. Plus, they were great filmers 😍
"If there's anyplace on Earth that people will pay stupid money for the latest trend, it's California." That quote alone makes this a great video.
I took up Rollerblading in 1992 in my late 30's. Played hockey a few times, but mostly just cruised around. Never go into the extreme stuff. BTW, just bought a new pair last year at age 66. Feels nice to glide around.
I mainly watched this video because of the sport I took up 6 years ago at 61, Pickleball. It's been the fastest growing sport in the U.S. for several eyars now, and some people (mainly frustrated Tennis players, as Tennis loses a million or so players a year to Pickleball.) say it's just a fad and will peter out, or it's just for old people. (It's VERY popular among older people as it's a good workout in a competitive sport that has a really low injury rate.) It will be interesting to see what happens, but at least one company, Lifetime Fitness, certainly thinks it will last, as it is putting almost a BILLION dollars into building courts, and converting Basketball and other courts into Pickleball courts. I think it's going to just get bigger and bigger, but I may be somewhat biased as I love the sport so much. If you haven't tried, it ,DO. It's geat fun!
Exactly me in 1993, but I didn't rollerblade because it was 'trendy', I just wanted an alternative form of exercise and an excuse to hang-out at the beach. It ended when my skates fell apart, and I was too cheap and lazy to replace them. Anyway, by that time the homeless started taking over the beach, so I guess I didn't miss anything. I took up hiking instead.
I just want you to know that your comment had me smiling the whole time lmao. Shoutout to you for still kicking it gnarly style as an old man imma have to hope I'll be doing the same lol.
@@thugnasty1021 Thanks you so much. It's so rare that anyone says anything nice on the internet.
@@pickleballer1729 Bro isn't that the truth!! Lmao you have a good day my friend
"The skills of these guys in the ninties" *proceeds to show clips from the 01-05 hammer era, when inline was already "dead". The numbers of "participants" are BS too, those numbers include every one that simply tried on a pair of skates in that given year. Rec, fitness, hockey and aggressive. In the 90s, it was very rare for bladers (as in the "aggressive" ones this video is largely about) to out number skateboarders at parks and popular spots, I started skating in 96 in Socal. Still skate, cause you know what, its fun and great exercise if you can avoid breaking your wrists. We didn't quit, we just had to go to college and get jobs.
Very informative
Right. And I think it's absolute fine to include every style of skating into the numbers. As long as its the same with the others. Inline skating is not only agressive. It's recreational, slalom, speed, downhill, wizard, asult(city) etc :) ♥️
But yes, ultimately the sport never really died at all.
fr its like including every single person rode a bike in street bmx
Yeah, skateboarders have always outnumbered rollerbladers like 5:1
Yep, I hear that rubbish about jobs getting in the way of a good time. Urgh.
In my eyes, tiktok and youtube shorts have helped recreate the niche hobby society or love for unique things by the algorithm and the internet. It's really cool to think about.
My recollection from the time is that skateboarders/skateboarding culture did indeed incessantly mock and harangue rollerblading without mercy to the point that few people wanted to be associated with it anymore. That's the vibe I remember.
It was just less unique and authentic than skateboarding. Especially since in the 90s we got so many cool skateboarders people just started making fun of inline skating, or rather specifically this street style of aggressive inline skating. Normal roller blading was still alright
You fruit booter
Fruit booters
@@gpolenik it wasn't unique in any way. All rollerblade tricks are ripped off skateboarding including the names .
@@Ant-813 Woodpusher
I've been skateboarding for 21 years. I remember everyone giving them shit and calling them 'fruit booters' but they were jumping down like 17 stair sets. Ridiculous.
Yeah literally "Fruit booters" was the first thing that came to mind here on the east coast lol.
Fruit booters and bin liners 🤣
I remember those phrases
I was a skater too and the fruit booster phrase did them in rofl. They would always get ragged on but looking back they did some bad ass shit honestly.
skateboard is trash get an euc
I mean its true...
It died because xgames back stabbed rollerbladers. It’s like getting dropped by Olympics so the money disappeared and the talent wasn’t shown on tv
You mean because rollerbladers but stabbed each other?
It's sad
X games should definitely bring it back.
will never forget my Roces 5th element.... i tried to get a pair last year, (i'm size 13, slight wide) borderline impossible... even end up getting a size 15 would not fit. end up gifting them
oh yeah!.. and watching Brink! every time it was up!
as a long time snowboarder, this sounds scarily similar to the ski vs snowboard beef thats been going on since the 80's
only difference is that in the snow world neither one has gone away yet
In Switzerland....after a surge of snowboarders in the 00s-10s Snowboarding is on a decline as many are switching back to skiing
Instead snow is going away now lol. Seriously though, snow sports are hella expensive.
@@liliana.6053 oh god ur tellin me lmao, i just spent 2k on new gear this year
@@liliana.6053 True. But being the first on top of the mountain, putting your marks in the snow at 8am is simply amazing.
@@BotWatts oh god I forgot the part where gear costs money too, I was only thinking about travel and passes.
I was so disappointed when aggressive inline got cut from the X-Games. I was 14 and suddenly had to find a new career path
if you hadn't quit you might've been the one to bring it back. we will never know
Your 14 you shouldn't have a career
Quitter.
you were 14 bruh no need to think of a career back then lol
@@steve00alt70 You do realise that majority of skaters started their careers in their young teens right?
Let me get this straight. They were inspired to create the inline skate, when they found an inline skate in a store.
Haha I didn't notice until I read your comment. And you're absolutely right. 1:35
They, like so many other successful companies, just copied an existing product and marketed the hell out of it as their own.
Just like LEGO.
I understood it to mean that they improved upon something that wasn't successful in its first incarnation. I saw one of these inline skates in a used sporting goods store in the mid 70s, and it looked impossible to use.
@@coleford6197 We rollerbladed back in the 90s as a family. After ice skating for years after that, I wanted to get the inline skates with a curved wheel base, so they don't all touch the ground at once. This better matches an ice skate's slight curvature, allowing for easier swiveling of your foot while on the ground. With normal inline skates you have to lift your foot to turn very much. This is another of these improvements that come after people get experience with them.
The guy in the video kind of glazed over that part. My understanding was the early inline skates took your conventional roller skate style wheels and just put them in a row. So they were a little more clunky and were made for going more in a straight line like cross-country skiing. And the brothers who created rollerblade wanted something that performed better for playing hockey on concrete and so they redesigned the frame that held the wheels and as I understand it trim down the width of the roller skate wheel and rounded it off on the edges so it was more like the wheels on an inline skate we see today. And it made it possible to corner more and be more agile with the skate.
And then they ended up getting a connection to I believe it was kryptonic to have wheels made that were more the design they were looking for.
Same as using a variation on a ski boot as the basis for their skate because it was simpler to get that produced than the hockey style boots which required a lot of stitching and hand labor. The rollerblade boots as they came out more popular we're a lot of molded components so ease of production.
But yeah to the point they basically saw somebody else with a idea of the inline skate and improved upon it
i really enjoyed your video bro. i was a skater back in the 90s and this video just make me so happy. Greetings from Hungary
Umm. Bro, as an aggressive inline skater from 97 to 2005. I remember specifically it was the release of Tony Hawk Pro Skater that destroyed our game. There was no history or foundation for Rollerblading to fall back on when sponsors and major market branding was important. Mr Hawk totally was the catalyst in my world. Skateboarding had a massive history in America at that time. I loved that game and never skateboarder ever, other than when I was a kid....but I could smoke those blades anytime.
^^^^^^^^^ THIS. I just posted this too. THPS had a huge impact.
and jet set radio will be the rise of blading again
Yeah that's what I thought too
Because rollerblading is insanely easy compared to skateboarding and it has 1% of the variation.
@@TheOffCycle I totally agree. Just wasn't my thing.
Rollerblade was huge when I was a teenager. I have to say the main reason my group of friends went back to skate boards was the fact that you couldn’t go into stores with blades on and I lived in Death Valley so skating around all day with a backpack on with a pair of shoes in it was not a great option.
I believe skating is growing healthily these days.
I noticed some chronological errors, and lack of some important characters in the history of the sport such as Fabiola da Silva 8x X-games medalists and Carlos Pianowsky who raised the level of tricks in the early 2000s.
Anyway, I really liked the video and being able to remember the story of my favorite sport!
Congrats!✌🏼
I dont think he’s old enough to know them and that’s why. Like Roadhouse hello
Tic tok definitely blew up the sport and roller skating/blading in general
hahahahhahahaha
Arlo Eisenberg on the birth of street skating, how it went down and how it's coming/come back! ua-cam.com/video/G3rY1HQuVZg/v-deo.html
Also the Mighty Ducks was pretty cool 😆
I’m an ugh fan of rollerblading since to years now Im so grateful for your little documentary it showed me new blading icons to admire thank you !!
I sea that blading is growing again to and I sincerely hope that the time will let us to overpass all these old rivalries between skateboarders and bladers
I still have my rollerblades from the 90’s. They came in handy 10+ years ago when my dog was young and had lots of energy.
Nice.. I also still have mine from back then.. I slap them on when I take my kids to the roller rink in my city. Some good old, family skating time. Legs aren't what they used to be though.. lol
Really enjoyed this clip.
One inaccuracy, IMO, is that when you showed the footage of people ripping with the line "because there was so much money it incentivised rollerbladers to push and push" - those clips were almost all from the later 2000's, when the money was GONE from rollerblading. People did push when there was money in it, but i'd argue that people pushed even harder AFTER the money was more or less gone.
Yeah I've been skateboarding for almost 30 years. Some of the craziest things I've ever seen have consistently been by rollerbladers. Yes because they're particular toy vehicles are attached. They have no choice but to fully commit to everything or they're going to get bodied. This video is getting us all hyped up to skate so all you older Bros/person's be careful wear pads. I would say have fun but we all know your gonna have fun.
Ya I was out of the scene by then because of real life stuff like the military. In the 90's though we were pushing pretty hard like that but not to that extreme degree where you were asking to spend the rest of your natural life in a wheel chair. Can't believe it got to that extreme degree of recklessness. They must have been getting paid a ton of money to pay for all those medical bills. I bet now they regret it cause all that damage catches up with you when you get past 40 that's if it didn't kill them.
Rollerblade is a brand, and *inline skating* is doing just fine. I aged out of that but once upon a time it was my primary transporation. I could skate in traffic and one car came up to me once to let me know I was going 32 mph.
Maybe someone pointed this out already, but Nike is named after the Greek goddess of victory, so it actually rhymes with the name Mikey.