Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
A little over two weeks ago I switched over from my Riedell R3 derby-style skates to a pair of Chicago 805s. I haven’t seen many people write about the Chicago 800/805, so I thought I would share my experience. The Chicago 800/805 originates from one of the oldest skate manufacturers in the US, the Chicago…
One of the nicest things that has happened during the pandemic is that I started roller skating. Soon after, my friend Jess joined me, followed by Iris. Today, several months later, I’ve got a little posse of 30+ lindy hop friends from all over the Bay who have taken up skating, from Marin to Oakland to San Jose….
“It’s not possible to be unhappy skating,” my friend Kristin said to me on her second outing to the Skating Place in Golden Gate Park. I understand the sentiment. We’re rollerskating in a beautiful park in the city by the bay. There’s disco and funk pumping out of a boombox. People of all ages are…
One of the things that I miss about my communities is the feeling of being cared for and expressing care for others. It’s just so much harder to experience care and kindness when you aren’t physically together. Skating has reminded me of that though. Nearly every time I go out skating in the park, there…
So this October I had this crazy idea that I wanted to be TRON on skates for Halloween. More specifically, the character Sam Flynn from TRON: Legacy (2010). (Yes, the movie was a hot mess, but it looked and sounded amazing.) There were really two options for TRON costumes I found in my research: Buy…
This evening in the Skating Place there was a boy who was maybe six or seven years old going around the circle with us. At that hour, there were about ten of us skating, all adults. I round a corner and see the boy lying on the ground just bawling his eyes out, while two…
Hey it’s been 3 months since I started quad skating in July! I’m still skating pretty much every day and learning new stuff all the time. My current obsession is unlocking how to do toe spins. Wicked hard! I thought I would celebrate by doing a little jam skate video. I could think of no…
If this isn’t a perfect city summer vibe, I don’t know what is. God damn do I love skating in the park.
There are lots of kinds of roller skating: park skating (ramps), trail skating, derby, figure. But I have had one primary motivation for learning how to quad skate: dancing. Or “jam skating” as it’s called in many places. Early this morning, I celebrated two months of quad skating by jamming to one of my favorite…
So I’ve been roller skating for about a month now. I can’t think of anything I’ve “worked” so hard at at the start. Pretty much every day I’ve put in at least 1-2 hours of practice. And when I’m not skating, I’m probably watching skate videos. I didn’t do anywhere near that much practice when…