It's absolutely essential that I roller skate now, for a couple reasons.
- Because I love it, it's in my blood, and when I don't skate I dream about skating.
- Because if I don't skate, I will sit on my bum and never, ever exercise.
So I have been hunting madly for a rink somewhere in New York, with limited success. Rink skating is far superior to outdoor skating (no twigs, no wind, no hills, no cars...need I go on?), but rinks are not in vogue. They struggle, like any other business in a crappy economy, and have struggled for a while. My home rink, Skatetown, was the site of some disturbing gang activity in the nineties and had (for a while, at least) cut almost all public skate sessions from its schedule, relying more on church groups, school skates, and birthday parties to keep it going. Whether there's a functioning rink in Brooklyn that I would go to without feeling I was risking life and limb remains to be seen.
In the meantime, we skate outside. It's fun and kinda charming. Alan and I spent this afternoon rolling through Prospect Park. We passed bicyclists, tiny humans with their parental units, and a drum circle pounding away in the shade. I did tricks and flippy things and twirls, and Alan didn't fall. It's no rink, but it'll do.