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E-mail StoryBladers battle back
Sport fights its lack of ‘cool factor,’ looks for appeal among athletes
| Friday, Aug 17 2007 5:00 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Aug 17 2007 9:29 AM
What comes to mind when you think of Rollerblading? Fitness-conscious twentysomethings? Kids at a roller rink? There’s another side to the sport in which skaters are just as likely to grind a rail or land a 360 as skateboarders, their more visible extreme sports counterparts.
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If looking for a place to skate, Mickey recommends scouting out locations with ledges, handrails or stairways.
Rollerbladers bring a ramp to the front of Matt Mickey's, in rear with hat, Intuition skate shop to practice downtown before going to Beale Park to rollerblade.
Matt Mickey does a soul grind at Beale Park. “Rollerblading is kind of like the stepchild of the action sports," Mickey says.
Matt Mickey, owner of Intuition skate shop downtown, spends time rollerblading with friends at Beale Park.
Aggressive inline skating has been fighting a battle of survival in recent years as mainstream popularity wanes. The most popular event when ESPN’s X Games began in 1995, the sport was dropped from the competition entirely in 2005.
“Rollerblading is kind of like the stepchild of the action sports,” said Matt Mickey, owner of local inline skate shop Intuition, characterizing the current attitude toward the sport.
Indeed, on a recent afternoon at the skate facility at Beach Park, there were many skateboarders and bikers but no Rollerbladers. When asked, skateboarders said that Rollerbladers “suck” and were “poseurs,” and the sport was “too easy.”
Local bladers know they’re fighting an uphill battle, but they don’t care. They are drawn to the sport for its flexibility.
“Anything you can think of in your mind, you can do, because your skates are attached to your feet,” Mickey said. “So it’s not like you’re pushing a skateboard around, or you’re riding a bike and you have to make the bike do tricks. The Rollerblades are on your feet.”
So why is it that inline skating has faltered while skateboarding has gained steam?
For one thing, skateboarding is older. The sport traces its history back to 1950s-era surfers who decided to try their moves on land. By contrast, inline skating’s extreme sport form originated in the ’80s after the skate was popularized.
And though its history is short, skating already has image problems. While skateboarding naturally inherited surfing’s hip, rebellious reputation, inline skating has decades of roller-rink wholesomeness to overcome.
“The initial immediate style we gave off wasn’t cool,” said Ryan Northway, a friend of Mickey’s who has been skating with him for years.
Meanwhile, skateboarding has amassed an energetic following with stars like Tony Hawk, who have become household names and spawned video game franchises.
“Skateboarding is too popular,” noted Derrek Noel, another local skater. “It’s too trendy, and that’s why a lot of people like it. Because you can sell it easier.”
Northway, 25, said it took awhile for inline skaters to produce a coherent package of style points — clothes, gear, attitude — that matched the skating lifestyle. But perhaps they have gone too far. Many people would find it difficult, he said, to distinguish between a skateboarder and an inline skater. And like skateboarders, Rollerbladers often skate whatever they can find, be it a stairway at a school or a ledge at a park, to the frequent displeasure of residents and business owners.
Still, Rollerblading has earned some converts. Marcel Dove, a 20-year-old who has been skating for six years, said the style and movement of Rollerblading made him switch from skateboarding, and he’s never looked back.
“At first there was some animosity,” Dove said of skateboarders’ reactions to his change of heart. Eventually, though, he converted some of those buddies.
Derek Narducci, another local blader, said some of his friends weren’t so forgiving when he switched.
“But then doing (inline skating) I gained more friends,” the 22-year-old said. “It’s been, like, the greatest thing ever since.”
So what’s the future for skating? Mickey perhaps best sums up the local attitude: “This is what I want to do. This is what I have been doing. This is what I love.”
On one point, inline skaters and skateboarders do agree: Beach Park’s skate facility is pretty terrible.
At a community meeting recently, the city Recreation and Parks Department sought input from those who use it about how to improve the park.
“We’re aware at this time it is insufficient and doesn’t meet the needs,” said Dianne Hoover, Bakersfield’s Recreation and Parks director.
The facility is dwarfed by other area parks — its 15,000 square feet pale in comparison to the 23,300-square-foot state-of-the-art park Delano recently built, for example.
The city has allotted $125,000 to expand and revamp the existing facility. Popular suggestions included more advanced obstacles, stairs, a bowl and more transitional spaces.
“Every rail in there is at a weird angle,” said Chris Kowal, a 20-year-old biker as he worked to draft a park design during the second half of the meeting. Attendees also requested that the entire space inside the fence be paved to allow space to gather speed.
The city is planning to hold a follow-up meeting in about a month. Call the Recreation and Parks department at 326-3866 for more information.
Two basic inline skating moves:
• Soul grind — The back skate rides parallel to the ledge or rail while the skater crosses the other foot in front at a 90-degree angle.
• Frontside grind — Both skates ride perpendicular to the ledge but parallel to each other.
Where to skate in Bakersfield:
• Beach Park, on the corner of Oak and 24th streets, has a skate park.
• Beale Park, 500 Oleander Ave., has an amphitheater that skaters frequently use.
• Look for other locations with ledges, hand rails or stairways.
Source: Matt Mickey, owner of Intuition Skate Shop