When I was five, my mom, in a concerted effort to drag me away from Saturday morning cartoons which were clearly eating away at my brain, signed me up for roller skating lessons. After 12 years of countless competitions and an estimated $30k later, I'm a dedicated skater and I know nothing about cartoons.
It's absolutely essential that I roller skate now, for a couple reasons.
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.
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.
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