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Roller Skating: Fun and Cool · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
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Speaker 1: the podcast Stuff you should Know. That's right before we
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1:07
Speaker 1: will put your money to really good use. And uh
1:10
Speaker 1: we are chipping into so okay, so let's start talking,
1:15
Speaker 1: chuck about roller skating, because there's worse things that you
1:18
Speaker 1: could talk about. Yeah, maybe let's start out with our
1:22
Speaker 1: own personal experience. UM. As a sort of semi sheltered
1:28
Speaker 1: Baptist boy, my parents did not drop me off at
1:31
Speaker 1: the roller rink on a Friday night to go roller
1:34
Speaker 1: skating like all the other kids were doing, because it
1:37
Speaker 1: was unsupervised boys and girls together and that's where dirty
1:42
Speaker 1: things and naughty things happened sometimes. So the only time
1:46
Speaker 1: I got to go roller skating was when I went
1:48
Speaker 1: on youth group outings to the roller rink, which we
1:52
Speaker 1: did some long and short of it is, I was
1:55
Speaker 1: never a great roller skater. I don't remember if I
1:59
Speaker 1: was a good roller skater and not. I certainly was
2:02
Speaker 1: never like a good roller skater. But I didn't fall
2:05
Speaker 1: that much, and I certainly didn't have to like hold
2:07
Speaker 1: onto the wall. Did you go? Did your parents drop
2:09
Speaker 1: you off and you got to go like try and
2:11
Speaker 1: kiss girls and stuff? Yes, and your parents weren't too
2:14
Speaker 1: far off. The first condom I ever saw in person
2:17
Speaker 1: was at the rollers probably totally right to keep me
2:20
Speaker 1: out of there in some dude's wallet. Um, Yes, but
2:24
Speaker 1: it was it was much more. That was like literally
2:27
Speaker 1: the worst thing I ever saw at the roller ring.
2:29
Speaker 1: I can understand where that left a ring in a wallet? Right, Um,
2:36
Speaker 1: but no, it was like a like a Friday night
2:39
Speaker 1: thing usually. Um it was a school sponsored thing, so
2:43
Speaker 1: you know, like everybody there, which was pretty cool. Um.
2:47
Speaker 1: The slow skate like Arrowsmith Angel was always amazing. Um. Yeah,
2:52
Speaker 1: it was a really fun experience. I went to Ohio
2:54
Speaker 1: skate was the name of my roller rink. The one
2:57
Speaker 1: we went to was called stones Gate because it was
3:01
Speaker 1: near Stone Mountain. Yeah that makes sense. But again I
3:05
Speaker 1: didn't get to go enough. I was okay, it wasn't
3:07
Speaker 1: so much where when I went, people are like, you know,
3:10
Speaker 1: who's the Mennonite over there? He still it looks really nervous.
3:16
Speaker 1: But you know, I did okay, but I wanted to
3:18
Speaker 1: go dry and kiss girls and I wasn't allowed to.
3:20
Speaker 1: I don't recall kissing a girl at the roller rink ever,
3:23
Speaker 1: So you know you kissed the girl eventually, right, You're
3:26
Speaker 1: you're fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm married. You didn't miss
3:29
Speaker 1: that much. But it was fun. It was a fun time.
3:31
Speaker 1: I I all of my memories from the roller rink
3:34
Speaker 1: are very fond ones. I wanted to kiss a girl
3:36
Speaker 1: in the seventh grade, and I just that did not happen. Okay, yeah,
3:41
Speaker 1: I think I had my first kiss in second grade.
3:44
Speaker 1: Of course you did, because your boss there and your
3:48
Speaker 1: boss now, thanks a lot man. All right, so let's
3:52
Speaker 1: talk roller skates. They have actually been around a lot
3:55
Speaker 1: longer than I thought. You put this together, right, Dave
3:57
Speaker 1: helped us with this one. Oh all right, I didn't
3:59
Speaker 1: know that I forgot about this one, I guess. Yeah,
4:01
Speaker 1: but they've been around a lot longer. They've been around
4:03
Speaker 1: since the seventeen hundreds. I did not know that the
4:08
Speaker 1: Dutch are Dutch friends were the ones who first started
4:11
Speaker 1: thinking of ways to put wooden spools into a line
4:15
Speaker 1: and rolling around on them. But it's our English friends
4:20
Speaker 1: that get credit for being the first to have documented
4:23
Speaker 1: use of roller skates. There was a production in London
4:27
Speaker 1: on stage in seventeen forty three, not sure what it
4:30
Speaker 1: was called, but they were supposed to be pretending to
4:33
Speaker 1: be ice skating, So the actors on stage used roller skates.
4:37
Speaker 1: And if that doesn't bring up thoughts of like delighted
4:40
Speaker 1: gasps that the audience is the curtain rises and there's
4:43
Speaker 1: people magically ice skating on stage. I don't know what
4:46
Speaker 1: does Yeah, absolutely uh. Not too long after, in seventeen sixty,
4:51
Speaker 1: there was an inventor from Belgium named John Joseph Merlin
4:55
Speaker 1: who debuted these roller skates that he made at Masquerade Ball.
5:00
Speaker 1: When he rolled in playing the violin, was like, hey, everybody,
5:03
Speaker 1: look at me, I'm playing the violin. I'm rolling. Oh no,
5:08
Speaker 1: a mirror and like just sort of sounds like skated
5:11
Speaker 1: right into this mirror and broke it and broke his
5:14
Speaker 1: violin because at the time there were no toad stops
5:18
Speaker 1: and there were no trucks on the bottom of your skate,
5:21
Speaker 1: which we'll get to, but that's what allows you to
5:23
Speaker 1: to kind of lean and steer a skate a little
5:26
Speaker 1: bit right. For some reason, I think of Merlin like
5:29
Speaker 1: as he as he gets more and more out of control,
5:32
Speaker 1: his his violins playing speeds up too. Rather than the
5:36
Speaker 1: opposite natural things just stopped playing violin, he keeps he's
5:41
Speaker 1: playing like his own demise that I keep imagining it
5:44
Speaker 1: like that. Oh, I love it. I wonder why the
5:46
Speaker 1: guy just didn't see it coming and like decided to
5:48
Speaker 1: just fall on purpose rather than crash into a mirror.
5:51
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Maybe it's because he was so you know,
5:53
Speaker 1: playing so fast. He was doing the Devil went down
5:56
Speaker 1: to Georgia. So there's a guy named Jay mzel Plimpton
6:00
Speaker 1: and he's considered um pretty much all around. Is the
6:04
Speaker 1: first inventor of the real roller skate back in eighteen
6:07
Speaker 1: sixty three. And in super nineteenth century fashion, he wasn't
6:11
Speaker 1: an inventor. He was a furniture store owner in New
6:13
Speaker 1: York because that's who invented stuff back in the nineteenth century. Yeah,
6:17
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. They were called the rocking skates, and
6:21
Speaker 1: they were the first quad skates. They were the first
6:24
Speaker 1: ones that have you know, the two wheels in the
6:26
Speaker 1: front and the two wheels in the back next to
6:28
Speaker 1: each other. And I mentioned those trucks, the first one
6:31
Speaker 1: that had a truck, and that is, instead of the
6:33
Speaker 1: skate just being fixed in position on the bottom of
6:36
Speaker 1: a wood shoe in in Amsterdam, the wheels are secured
6:43
Speaker 1: to a truck and the truck is secured to the
6:46
Speaker 1: shoe or the boot, and those trucks. You know, if
6:49
Speaker 1: you ever skateboarded, you know you loosen and tighten the trucks.
6:52
Speaker 1: You can do the same thing on skates, and it's
6:54
Speaker 1: not quite like a skateboard. Like the trucks give just
6:58
Speaker 1: just a little bit on a roll or skate such
7:00
Speaker 1: that like most of your turning and stuff is done
7:03
Speaker 1: by picking up your feet. Uh, and not just like
7:06
Speaker 1: leaning really hard to the left and doing a circle.
7:09
Speaker 1: But they but they really helped. Yeah. Um. So not
7:13
Speaker 1: only did Plimpton invent the modern rolling skate, he also
7:16
Speaker 1: basically introduced the pastime of roller skating to the world. Um,
7:21
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm definitely onto something here. He rented a
7:24
Speaker 1: ballroom in a hotel in Providence, couldn't find out what
7:26
Speaker 1: hotel it was, um, and set up a roller rink.
7:29
Speaker 1: There is basically a proof of concept. And then he
7:31
Speaker 1: started touring the country and I think the world, showing
7:35
Speaker 1: people how great skating was, giving demonstrations, giving lessons, throwing
7:40
Speaker 1: skate parties, I guess, and um, in a very short time,
7:44
Speaker 1: the Victorians were like, this is a really great thing
7:46
Speaker 1: that we're into. He invented the skate in eighteen sixty three.
7:51
Speaker 1: By the eighties, there were three thousand roller rinks in
7:55
Speaker 1: the United States, England, Europe in Australia. Yeah. I was
7:58
Speaker 1: about to say this would make a movie, but now
8:01
Speaker 1: that I think about it, it it would make a great
8:02
Speaker 1: drunk History episode, especially the John Joseph Merlin park. Yes,
8:07
Speaker 1: and so just why haven't we been on yet? Derek Waters,
8:11
Speaker 1: get Josh and I on junk History and let us
8:13
Speaker 1: tell the story of roller skating. I think that we
8:16
Speaker 1: need to get in the way back machine and ask
8:18
Speaker 1: him because that do not on anymore. I thought it
8:21
Speaker 1: was still going. No, we missed our chance. I'm totally
8:25
Speaker 1: down to get in the way back machinery. I know,
8:27
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I'm really sad now I didn't
8:29
Speaker 1: know that it has completed. It's run. Okay, Well, never mind,
8:35
Speaker 1: Derek Waters. Put us in the next thing you do.
8:37
Speaker 1: Why don't you guys have me on? I'll have you one.
8:39
Speaker 1: I'll Derek Waters on anytime. Uh, roller ranks became all
8:44
Speaker 1: the rage and young Victorians were out there. There's time
8:47
Speaker 1: before you could like go on a date and stuff
8:49
Speaker 1: like that, so it was kind of like young Chuck.
8:52
Speaker 1: It would have been a time for me to talk
8:55
Speaker 1: to girls and stuff, and that's what it was back then,
8:57
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties. Yeah, but I guess unlike
9:01
Speaker 1: your parents, the Victorians were like, this is okay, We're
9:05
Speaker 1: gonna let them hang out by themselves chaperone. But the
9:09
Speaker 1: thing is, if you went skating back in the nineteenth century, UM,
9:13
Speaker 1: they would have like a full orchestra or an organist
9:16
Speaker 1: playing um, like a carousel basically, I think is what
9:20
Speaker 1: it was a lot like um because if you're just
9:22
Speaker 1: skating around silently in like with like no music, that
9:27
Speaker 1: seems really unwholesome and weird. So I think they figured
9:30
Speaker 1: out really quickly that you kind of need music to skate. Uh.
9:33
Speaker 1: This is a pretty cool fact that was in though.
9:36
Speaker 1: Was at the Grand Hall Olympia in London, a sixty
9:40
Speaker 1: eight thousand square foot roller rink was built, which is
9:43
Speaker 1: about the size of a soccer field, So that just
9:46
Speaker 1: kind of goes to show like how much people were
9:48
Speaker 1: into skating it. It worked his way into vaudeville. It
9:51
Speaker 1: worked this way into the pictures. In the nineteen thirties,
9:55
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin, very famously in modern times, skated blindfolded. Just
10:00
Speaker 1: if you've never watched any Chaplain, go just check this
10:03
Speaker 1: out at least and get a slight appreciation of his genius.
10:06
Speaker 1: But there was a he was on the fourth floor
10:08
Speaker 1: and there was no railing because it was under construction,
10:11
Speaker 1: and so he's skating around blindfold and of course they
10:15
Speaker 1: is so scary. Yeah. Um, and also that Vaudeville act.
10:19
Speaker 1: I just have to shout out Charles Professor Frank, the
10:22
Speaker 1: dean of roller skating, and in particular I want to
10:24
Speaker 1: shout out his five year old daughter, Lily, who could
10:27
Speaker 1: roller skate on stilts. I've never heard of anybody doing
10:30
Speaker 1: that before or since. I feel like I've seen that
10:33
Speaker 1: at a circus. Okay, well, you can thank Lily Frank
10:37
Speaker 1: for for innovating that one. I wonder if she invented
10:40
Speaker 1: the stilt. Probably not so in the fifties. Um, the
10:45
Speaker 1: peak of popularity of roller skating happened starting around ninety seven,
10:50
Speaker 1: I believe the late fifties, and apparently Chicago was the
10:53
Speaker 1: epicenter of this roller skating revival, because in between the
10:57
Speaker 1: Victorians and the fifties, roller skating actually developed a really
11:01
Speaker 1: seedy reputation. UM. I saw like an article from the
11:06
Speaker 1: seventies where a roller rink operator said that back then
11:11
Speaker 1: roller rink was the kind of place you wouldn't let
11:13
Speaker 1: your daughter go hang out, like they're just not good places.
11:16
Speaker 1: But all of the roller rink operators that had hung
11:18
Speaker 1: on kind of banded together and like really worked to
11:21
Speaker 1: revive roller skating's image. And we're successful, so successful that
11:26
Speaker 1: the late fifties saw the greatest number of roller skating
11:29
Speaker 1: and roller rinks and in history. Yeah, my parents didn't
11:32
Speaker 1: get that memo. I guess they were still working off
11:34
Speaker 1: the h code. But yeah, more than five thousand ranks
11:39
Speaker 1: were operating in the nineteen fifties. And if you think
11:42
Speaker 1: you grew up in the like seventies and eighties and
11:44
Speaker 1: you're like, no, that was the heyday there only well
11:46
Speaker 1: only there were a lot back then too, but about
11:48
Speaker 1: thirty hundred fewer ranks than the nineteen fifties. Yeah, and
11:53
Speaker 1: I definitely think of the late seventies is like the pinnacle.
11:56
Speaker 1: But that was wrong. My eyes are open now, Uh,
12:01
Speaker 1: shall we take a break. Yeah, let's take a break
12:03
Speaker 1: and come back because there's some really unexpected coolness coming up. Okay, Chuck.
12:32
Speaker 1: So I don't typically, or I didn't before, associate roller
12:36
Speaker 1: skating with civil rights, but they really went hand in hand.
12:41
Speaker 1: Um early on. I think one of the earliest sit
12:44
Speaker 1: ins was in nine outside of the White City roller
12:48
Speaker 1: Skating Rink in Chicago. This early, like I equate sit
12:52
Speaker 1: ins with like maybe the fifties, definitely the sixties. Um.
12:56
Speaker 1: But one of the reasons why they targeted roller skating
12:59
Speaker 1: rinks for sittings and civil rights protests because some historians
13:02
Speaker 1: said that everywhere in the country segregation, whether like on
13:06
Speaker 1: paper or in practice, was a real problem. But in particular,
13:12
Speaker 1: Black Americans found that, um, public pools, amusement parks, and
13:17
Speaker 1: roller skating rinks where the three hardest places to integrate.
13:20
Speaker 1: And um, everybody likes skating, but not everybody had access
13:24
Speaker 1: to it, And so Black Americans were like, no, that
13:27
Speaker 1: doesn't sit very well with us. We're going to do
13:29
Speaker 1: something about that. Yeah, Like, they may show up at
13:32
Speaker 1: a roller skating rink and even if it was not,
13:35
Speaker 1: you know, legal to do so, they would say that
13:37
Speaker 1: we have a private party tonight, you can't come in.
13:40
Speaker 1: So stuff like that was going on. Uh. In the
13:42
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three there was a man seven year old
13:45
Speaker 1: from Chicago named Ledger Smith who very famously roller skated
13:50
Speaker 1: almost seven hundred miles to attend the March on Washington
13:55
Speaker 1: for jobs and freedom, which is the very famous I
13:57
Speaker 1: have a Dream speech where that took place, and he
14:00
Speaker 1: was called roller Man. He had a sash that said freedom.
14:03
Speaker 1: He was backed by the N double A C P.
14:05
Speaker 1: And roller skated six and eighty five miles to attend
14:08
Speaker 1: it and to a lot of uh, you know, media
14:11
Speaker 1: fan fair and like obviously it was um for the time.
14:14
Speaker 1: It wasn't like widespread media, but it got attention right
14:18
Speaker 1: for sure. UM. So, after the Civil Rights Act was
14:22
Speaker 1: passed the nineteen sixty four and there was again on
14:24
Speaker 1: paper no such thing as um segregation or racism in America, UM,
14:29
Speaker 1: black Americans going to roller rinks still were faced with, like,
14:32
Speaker 1: you know, just being shut out. But to kind of
14:36
Speaker 1: follow the law in the least way possible, roller rink
14:41
Speaker 1: operators would set aside like one night a week for
14:44
Speaker 1: black patrons, um. And they would call them things like
14:48
Speaker 1: Soul Nights or Martin Luther King Junior Night. And it
14:52
Speaker 1: was what black Americans had to work with in the
14:55
Speaker 1: sixties if they wanted to go roller skating in some places,
14:58
Speaker 1: that's right, but it was it end up being something
15:00
Speaker 1: that really changed roller skating because on Soul Nights or
15:05
Speaker 1: on Martin Luther King Jr. Night at the roller Rink
15:08
Speaker 1: is where things got super cool and where they said, hey, um,
15:14
Speaker 1: you know, white people aren't here. We can do what
15:16
Speaker 1: we want. We can get our dance on on these
15:20
Speaker 1: roller skates, and we can get that organist out of
15:22
Speaker 1: the room and play some good music. And that's what
15:25
Speaker 1: they did. They got uh, you know, like fifties and
15:29
Speaker 1: sixties soul and R and B and then eventually like
15:32
Speaker 1: funk music playing on the turntable and all of a sudden,
15:36
Speaker 1: skating got one thousand percent more awesome. Yeah, because up
15:41
Speaker 1: to that point, everybody was like, no, you don't do that.
15:44
Speaker 1: You you skate around in a circle with a smile
15:46
Speaker 1: on your face, than the than the little like baseball
15:52
Speaker 1: game organist. But right exactly. But every but everything that
15:56
Speaker 1: you think of with roller skating, if you think it's
15:58
Speaker 1: even passingly cool, you can thank mid century black Americans
16:02
Speaker 1: for basically saying like, there's a much better way to
16:04
Speaker 1: do this, and integrating dancing and roller skating was a
16:07
Speaker 1: big part of that. And um so that really laid
16:10
Speaker 1: the groundwork for that skating revival that you and I
16:13
Speaker 1: talked about. That seems like to us like the peak
16:16
Speaker 1: of roller skating, even though it wasn't. Um. And there
16:19
Speaker 1: was one guy in particular that was kind of the
16:22
Speaker 1: conduit for the whole thing. His name was Bill Butler,
16:25
Speaker 1: and he was an Air Force sergeant and all the
16:27
Speaker 1: way back in the late fifties he was trying to
16:30
Speaker 1: convince rink owners. He traveled around a lot um as
16:33
Speaker 1: part of his Air Force service. UM, so he would
16:35
Speaker 1: go to different rinks by himself, I guess, and um
16:38
Speaker 1: he would try to convince the owners to like play
16:40
Speaker 1: some records instead of this organist you know. Um. And
16:44
Speaker 1: every once in a while he was successful. And when
16:45
Speaker 1: he was he really showed people like how great it was.
16:48
Speaker 1: But Um, as much as he was laying the groundwork
16:50
Speaker 1: in the fifties, in the late seventies he was basically
16:54
Speaker 1: the place where disco shot through into roller skating. He
16:59
Speaker 1: was like the prism that disco came through and spread
17:03
Speaker 1: into roller disco. Yeah. And that was in New York,
17:07
Speaker 1: of course, sort of the the apex of disco. Uh
17:10
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn actually at Empire Roller Disco is where Bill
17:13
Speaker 1: hung out and disco happening. It all, like you said,
17:17
Speaker 1: to sort of coalesced at this moment in time where
17:20
Speaker 1: skating was sort of retaking off, and then all of
17:24
Speaker 1: a sudden you had this great music to dance too,
17:28
Speaker 1: and dancing on roller skates is even cooler. Uh if
17:31
Speaker 1: you could pull it off. Um, it's very hard. I've
17:34
Speaker 1: tried to do that stuff. I'm that's not very good
17:36
Speaker 1: disco roller skater, but rollers they kind of like dip
17:40
Speaker 1: their toe in it. As far as the rinks go.
17:41
Speaker 1: They would have like a club night where they would
17:44
Speaker 1: play those records and stuff. And then eventually, when disco
17:47
Speaker 1: really really hit, the riding was on the wall and
17:49
Speaker 1: they started fully converting roller rinks into what we think
17:54
Speaker 1: of roller rinks now. Like before this, they didn't have
17:57
Speaker 1: like all the amazing sort of dance lie It's and
18:01
Speaker 1: mirror balls and like disco is is what brought all
18:04
Speaker 1: that stuff in. So all of a sudden you have
18:06
Speaker 1: like neon and like cool carpet and like a killer
18:09
Speaker 1: sound system and it was like a disco on wheels exactly.
18:15
Speaker 1: And one of the reasons why it got so big
18:16
Speaker 1: is because disco really brought um, Americans of all races
18:21
Speaker 1: together for like the first time, more than ever before.
18:26
Speaker 1: I don't want to say the first time, but definitely
18:27
Speaker 1: more than ever before. It was a really integrative I
18:31
Speaker 1: think that's a word, sure, um kind of cultural movement,
18:34
Speaker 1: right so um. Basically, another way to put it is
18:37
Speaker 1: white people who already like disco, we're like, oh, you
18:41
Speaker 1: guys are roller skating to disco would show up at
18:43
Speaker 1: the roller rinks and learn from the Black Americans who'd
18:47
Speaker 1: been dancing all this time and we're now like had
18:49
Speaker 1: basically laid the foundation for roller disco to show them
18:52
Speaker 1: that there's more to roller skating than just going around
18:54
Speaker 1: in a circle with a smile on your face. That's right,
18:57
Speaker 1: and Bill Butler leading the way in Brooklyn, like anyone
18:59
Speaker 1: who is anyone in the disco scene would like they
19:04
Speaker 1: would go to Studio fifty four or one night and
19:06
Speaker 1: then they would go to Empire roller Disco. If you
19:09
Speaker 1: weren't Share or Linda Ronstat or you know, god knows
19:12
Speaker 1: who else, so you could skate with Bill Butler and
19:16
Speaker 1: it was like a genuine movement was happening. There was
19:19
Speaker 1: very little barrier to entry, you know, um, because you
19:22
Speaker 1: rent the skates generally, like of course a lot of
19:24
Speaker 1: people bought there, like super cool skates. If they could
19:26
Speaker 1: afford them, but you know, a couple of bucks to
19:28
Speaker 1: get in, like seventy cents to rent skates and all
19:32
Speaker 1: of you know, there weren't like the velvet rope wasn't
19:34
Speaker 1: happening like at disco clubs where they wouldn't let you
19:37
Speaker 1: in if you didn't have the right look. And it
19:39
Speaker 1: was sort of democratized in a way. Yeah, it was
19:42
Speaker 1: really inclusive, which is cool. Um. There was one other
19:46
Speaker 1: thing that happened in the seventies too that that changed
19:49
Speaker 1: roller skating forever and basically made it what we think
19:52
Speaker 1: of today, and that was the introduction of the polyurethane wheel,
19:57
Speaker 1: and that um did a couple of things. One, you
20:00
Speaker 1: could go outside now um to roller skate. Obviously you
20:04
Speaker 1: could before because Ledger Smith roller skated seven miles. But
20:08
Speaker 1: one thing you don't realize is that Ledger Smith probably
20:10
Speaker 1: did that on metal wheels. And a description of roller
20:14
Speaker 1: skating outside of metal wheels I saw was that the
20:16
Speaker 1: whole point is to just keep your teeth from rattling
20:19
Speaker 1: out of your head. So Paul euthane wheels are softer
20:23
Speaker 1: and they're much more forgiving outdoors. So people were now
20:26
Speaker 1: allowed to go outdoors and roller skate and particularly roller
20:29
Speaker 1: disco outside and then indoors. It allowed for much greater
20:33
Speaker 1: control and movement in precise movement uh in the roller
20:38
Speaker 1: rink than the older wheels had as well. Yeah, I
20:41
Speaker 1: mean we talked about this in the skateboarding up. The
20:44
Speaker 1: same thing happened there. They were already being made for skateboards,
20:46
Speaker 1: but there was a little bit of a dip in
20:49
Speaker 1: popularity for skateboarding at one point in the seventies, and
20:52
Speaker 1: then the wheel manufacturer said, hey, let's put them on
20:55
Speaker 1: roller skates. Everything changed all of a sudden. You can
20:58
Speaker 1: go to Central Park in New York and see some
21:00
Speaker 1: really super cool roller disco happening on the sidewalks and
21:04
Speaker 1: uh and pathways. It's essentially the definition of seventies groovy,
21:10
Speaker 1: you know. Oh yeah, like all of a sudden, like
21:12
Speaker 1: any like, it felt like every other movie or TV
21:15
Speaker 1: show you saw I had some sort of roller skating
21:18
Speaker 1: either scene or like part of the plot. Yeah, Like Skatetown,
21:22
Speaker 1: USA was a big one. Um. Patrick Swayzy was in
21:24
Speaker 1: that roller Boogie. There's another one starring Linda Blair, Zanna
21:28
Speaker 1: Do great movie starring Olivia Newton, John Um and then
21:33
Speaker 1: like you said, like even randomly to like, if you
21:35
Speaker 1: watch The Warriors, the leaders of one of the rival
21:38
Speaker 1: gangs like gets around on roller skates, like it was
21:41
Speaker 1: just part of the part of the zeitgeist. Basically, Yeah,
21:44
Speaker 1: not a tough look for a gang leader, no, but
21:48
Speaker 1: that's any the great things of the Warriors. He looks
21:51
Speaker 1: like a troglodyte though, so he is really scary, but
21:53
Speaker 1: he's also on roller skates. It's a weird juxtaposition. Before,
21:58
Speaker 1: while I was a checking out Dave's original uh PEC
22:02
Speaker 1: put together for us, I stopped there before turning the
22:05
Speaker 1: page and was thinking, wait a minute, I remember a
22:08
Speaker 1: Chips episode very distinctly where they were bank robbers that
22:13
Speaker 1: had those big platform wooden shoes and would like click
22:15
Speaker 1: a button and wheels would come out and they would
22:18
Speaker 1: rollers that was their getaway car, was their roller skates.
22:21
Speaker 1: They would leave an oil slick trail from their heel,
22:24
Speaker 1: and it was Chips. It was a two parter um.
22:26
Speaker 1: And I went and looked it up, and uh, I
22:29
Speaker 1: didn't see that part. But there's there's a very fun
22:32
Speaker 1: YouTube video. Um I think it's called like the most
22:35
Speaker 1: seventies TV scene ever or something like that. We just
22:38
Speaker 1: look up Chips roller skating, bank robbery or whatever and
22:41
Speaker 1: it will come up and it is a huge fundraiser
22:45
Speaker 1: for the HP on the show. And they're at a
22:48
Speaker 1: roller disco place and almost every seventies person you can
22:54
Speaker 1: think of was in this scene. And they were just
22:57
Speaker 1: announcing that it was really long. It's like three minutes,
22:59
Speaker 1: and they're like, and there comes Ruth Buzzy and he coughs,
23:02
Speaker 1: like I can't remember all the guys, but they were
23:06
Speaker 1: just it was just like a h murderers row of
23:10
Speaker 1: seventies icon like TV and movie stars out there, roller
23:14
Speaker 1: disc going some poorly and then some if you look closely,
23:18
Speaker 1: that a little disc line going like the disco line
23:20
Speaker 1: where you go through the middle. I saw one guy
23:22
Speaker 1: doing a move. He didn't even have roller skates on.
23:25
Speaker 1: He just kind of walked out in these loafers and
23:29
Speaker 1: it's hilarious. It's a very great video. I feel like
23:32
Speaker 1: Chips doing a two parter on roller disco really lets
23:34
Speaker 1: us off the hook for our two part on Evil
23:36
Speaker 1: kinevil Um. There was another thing that came out to like.
23:40
Speaker 1: Um Share had a single called Hell on Wheels and
23:45
Speaker 1: Um she actually created a music video for the song,
23:48
Speaker 1: which was weird because it was released two years before
23:50
Speaker 1: MTV came out, so that was a really unusual thing
23:53
Speaker 1: to do. But if you watch it, she combines the
23:56
Speaker 1: roller disco craze and the trucker she craze by rollers
24:01
Speaker 1: roller disc going in front of a tractor trailer on
24:03
Speaker 1: a road. Yeah. It's a really unusual video and an
24:07
Speaker 1: unusual song too, but it's got I mean, a disco
24:10
Speaker 1: beat for sure. Yeah. I remember the trucker thing. We
24:12
Speaker 1: had a CV. It was oh so funny. That was
24:16
Speaker 1: the Convoy that movie. Yeah, but she but Share made
24:20
Speaker 1: it okay for truckers to like roller disco now, yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: I guess. Uh. L A had their own version of
24:26
Speaker 1: Empire in Brooklyn. It was called Flippers and I looked
24:30
Speaker 1: it up. I think it was at La Sienega in
24:33
Speaker 1: Santa Monica, kind of right there in central Hollywood. And
24:36
Speaker 1: it is now a CBS, aren't they all? I think?
24:40
Speaker 1: So every old cool thing is a CDs. Now there's
24:43
Speaker 1: a CVS in I think it's in green Point in
24:46
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and it has an old disco ball still in
24:50
Speaker 1: the ceiling, Like what was this place? And I've never
24:53
Speaker 1: found out. But I don't think CVS installed it. I
24:55
Speaker 1: think it kind of came with the location. Yet I
24:58
Speaker 1: don't have a CBS can Menia to my home. Somehow,
25:02
Speaker 1: it's funny, I know, I mean if they're not that far,
25:05
Speaker 1: because all the Intel neighborhoods Atlanta are fairly close. But
25:08
Speaker 1: I don't know. You want to CVS like within five
25:10
Speaker 1: minutes drive and I guess you don't live near a
25:14
Speaker 1: defunct roller just go. No, they took the Ecker Drugs
25:17
Speaker 1: near me that was convenient and changed it into a
25:21
Speaker 1: kidney dialysis place, which is useful, but like, you know,
25:25
Speaker 1: where am I gonna get my goodies headache powder? For sure?
25:29
Speaker 1: But Flippers was big in the late seventies, and it
25:33
Speaker 1: was you know, the the West Coast version where like
25:36
Speaker 1: David Lee Roth would hang out and Rod Stewart would
25:38
Speaker 1: hang out, and Jacqueline Bassett through her thirty fifth birthday party. Yeah,
25:42
Speaker 1: and Ted Kennedy held a fundraiser there for his nineteen
25:44
Speaker 1: eight presidential campaign. It's very, uh, very nineteen eighties. Yeah.
25:49
Speaker 1: And between Flippers, in between um Empire all throughout the
25:53
Speaker 1: United States there was like seriously a thousand new roller
25:57
Speaker 1: rinks that came online in the seventies, um, and it
26:00
Speaker 1: was pretty cool, but then it went out, um very quickly.
26:03
Speaker 1: I mean was the peak of roller disco. And there
26:08
Speaker 1: was almost not like um a crest Or trough. It
26:13
Speaker 1: was almost like an inverted V. It just came around,
26:17
Speaker 1: peaked and just dropped off really quickly. Right, people started
26:20
Speaker 1: getting into like jazz or size and then break dancing
26:23
Speaker 1: and all that. It just went on to other stuff,
26:25
Speaker 1: but it never actually went away. Yeah, Like I feel
26:30
Speaker 1: like it didn't go away in a couple of sectors.
26:32
Speaker 1: I think adults like my parents looking for the next
26:35
Speaker 1: cool thing, Like they took disco dancing lessons, which is
26:39
Speaker 1: not like them at all, but that's how ubiquitous disco was, right,
26:43
Speaker 1: I feel like adults kind of moved away. I think
26:45
Speaker 1: kids still went to the roller skating rink as evidenced
26:49
Speaker 1: by US and Black Americans did. It was still a
26:52
Speaker 1: very popular activity like up through the early nineties for
26:57
Speaker 1: African Americans in the US. Yeah, and it's it's just
27:00
Speaker 1: so like typical. But you think of like, oh, the
27:04
Speaker 1: peak of the peak of roller skating happened in seventy
27:07
Speaker 1: nine eighty, and then it just went out when really, um,
27:11
Speaker 1: Black America had been basically creating like a roller dancing
27:16
Speaker 1: and then roller disco White America came around, was interested
27:19
Speaker 1: for a while, became disinterested and moved on, and then
27:22
Speaker 1: just assumed that it just evaporated and went out of
27:25
Speaker 1: existence because White America stopped paying attention to it. But yeah,
27:28
Speaker 1: there are a whole subcultures of of Black America that said, no,
27:32
Speaker 1: we really like doing this and we're going to keep
27:34
Speaker 1: on doing it. And over time, from that roller disco era,
27:37
Speaker 1: which really was like a just a bomb drop that
27:40
Speaker 1: really changed roller skating forever. Um, it went on and
27:44
Speaker 1: became refined and new like styles were created, and uh,
27:48
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool how it kept going. I love it.
27:50
Speaker 1: Should we take a break. Let's take a break, all right,
27:53
Speaker 1: we'll talk about skating styles and just kind of how
27:56
Speaker 1: these skates were put together right after this, all right,
28:23
Speaker 1: shall we talk skating styles? We shall? This is when
28:27
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like when you talk about hip
28:30
Speaker 1: hop culture and breakdancing and that they're like substyles within
28:35
Speaker 1: the larger culture, which is kind of a cool thing.
28:38
Speaker 1: I love it when a culture has a subculture where
28:41
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, if you like to rhythm skate, rhythm
28:44
Speaker 1: skate if you like to jam skate, jam skate, and
28:47
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of overlap, but uh, and some
28:50
Speaker 1: of this, like all this stuff you can you kind
28:52
Speaker 1: of look up examples to really get the nuance. But
28:55
Speaker 1: what is jam skating? Jam skating at its base is
29:00
Speaker 1: a incredibly difficult combination of breakdancing and roller skating. If
29:06
Speaker 1: you watch a breakdancer, like a good breakdancer, it's what
29:10
Speaker 1: they're doing is impossibly hard and incredibly it takes an
29:15
Speaker 1: incredible amount of like talent and skill and stamina and
29:18
Speaker 1: creativity just to break dance someone like, for instance, exactly
29:23
Speaker 1: me and in third grade for sure. Um, now take that,
29:27
Speaker 1: take that person who's able to do that, and put
29:29
Speaker 1: them on roller skates, and then what you have is
29:33
Speaker 1: jam skating. And if you watch a video of it,
29:36
Speaker 1: it is beyond impressive, like to see people who are
29:39
Speaker 1: really good and proficient at it, because it is breakdance
29:42
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of floor work. There's shoulder spins,
29:44
Speaker 1: like there's like you know, like that whole jumping in thing,
29:48
Speaker 1: I can't remember what you call it, where you kind
29:49
Speaker 1: of like skip back forward, I can't remember what's called,
29:51
Speaker 1: but it's super cool. Again, people do that on roller skates.
29:54
Speaker 1: And then there's also like b boy battles where there's like,
29:57
Speaker 1: you know, one cruise battling another. One person's bad ling another.
30:00
Speaker 1: So they just go back and forth with a little
30:02
Speaker 1: like with the dances um until somebody wins or I
30:06
Speaker 1: don't remember how they ever figure out who wins. I
30:08
Speaker 1: think it's clear, but okay, yeah, probably, But that's jam skating,
30:12
Speaker 1: and it's really really impressive to see. All right, all
30:16
Speaker 1: this stuff is impressive, but certainly jam skating. Rhythm skating
30:20
Speaker 1: was from about the mid seventies. I had a lot
30:23
Speaker 1: of roller disco influence there obviously, and this is you know,
30:27
Speaker 1: this is dancing. It's kind of like disco dancing while
30:30
Speaker 1: you're roller skating. Uh, very precise and choreograph like you
30:36
Speaker 1: would see a lot of people do like routines. But
30:39
Speaker 1: it is not quite artistic skating, which is a little
30:41
Speaker 1: more akin to figure skating. But you can still rhythm
30:45
Speaker 1: skate with someone and come up with your own like
30:46
Speaker 1: you would at the disco if you had like Saturday
30:49
Speaker 1: night fever, like if you had your dance partner and
30:51
Speaker 1: you would do your thing rather than just sort of
30:53
Speaker 1: freestyle dancing with someone exactly. That's exactly rhythm skating. And
30:57
Speaker 1: then UM, rhythm skating. I suspect even goes further back
31:01
Speaker 1: to probably the fifties when people started playing R and
31:03
Speaker 1: B music at the roller rink on like soul night
31:06
Speaker 1: or whatever. UM. And but today it's still around today,
31:10
Speaker 1: and it it kind of spread out UM to like
31:13
Speaker 1: local areas, so that regional style started to develop. UM
31:17
Speaker 1: in Atlanta has its own style. If you've seen the
31:19
Speaker 1: movie A t L and I think two thousand six,
31:22
Speaker 1: you know, part of the thing that's going on there
31:24
Speaker 1: is a backdrop is like the roller rink UM, and
31:27
Speaker 1: that's a lot of what you would see in A
31:29
Speaker 1: t L. You would see at an actual roller rink
31:31
Speaker 1: today in Atlanta, UM, where there's a lot of like
31:34
Speaker 1: it's rhythm skating. So like you said, it's like dancing
31:37
Speaker 1: but on roller skates. UM. But they kind of it's
31:41
Speaker 1: it's connected to break dancing and that there's like crew
31:44
Speaker 1: battles and that kind of thing. UM, but it's still
31:46
Speaker 1: it's it's not break dancing necessarily, it's just like dancing
31:49
Speaker 1: on skates. Yeah, Cleveland apparently has their own style, which
31:53
Speaker 1: is a little more figure skating style apparently like axles
31:57
Speaker 1: and jumping and stuff like that. Detroit, of course is
32:00
Speaker 1: going to have their own style, Chicago style too. There's
32:03
Speaker 1: got to be it has a pickle on it. He
32:08
Speaker 1: put a pickle. It's deep dish. Uh. Well, I just
32:11
Speaker 1: figured since it was the center, then they probably have
32:15
Speaker 1: the Earn style, but who knows. Detroit had their own
32:16
Speaker 1: style though. Um, and this was this is what I
32:21
Speaker 1: didn't quite get. What is sliding sliding to the side,
32:26
Speaker 1: like not going forward or backward, going to the side,
32:29
Speaker 1: sliding on your skate, All right, that makes sense. A
32:31
Speaker 1: lot of sliding in Detroit style apparently, right, which is
32:33
Speaker 1: really cool because there's also a lot of precise foot
32:35
Speaker 1: movement too. And those two things required two different hardnesses
32:39
Speaker 1: of wheels, but they managed to to, you know, figure
32:42
Speaker 1: it out in Detroit. It's really cool to see people slide.
32:44
Speaker 1: I saw one clip of a dude and he was
32:47
Speaker 1: in the middle of the rink and just slid all
32:49
Speaker 1: the way to the edge and then onto the carpet. Um.
32:52
Speaker 1: It was really cool looking because it's just such a
32:54
Speaker 1: smooth like move you know. Uh. The one that I
32:57
Speaker 1: think I liked the best when as a kid was
33:01
Speaker 1: I believe it would be the freestyle dance skating, Unless
33:05
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I think that was the lady or the
33:08
Speaker 1: guy at the rank. That was just they were going
33:11
Speaker 1: in the circle and they were they were skating forward
33:14
Speaker 1: the whole time, but the whole time they were also
33:17
Speaker 1: just sort of dancing and they were lifting the skates
33:20
Speaker 1: up and knees up and legs forward and backward and
33:23
Speaker 1: crossing over here and there, and it was just very
33:26
Speaker 1: smooth and fluid and just look super cool. Like you
33:30
Speaker 1: wouldn't stop and do a split or do like a
33:32
Speaker 1: break dance move. You were just sort of grooving around
33:35
Speaker 1: the rink right, and you could tell that they probably
33:39
Speaker 1: hadn't like come up with the moves necessarily ahead of time.
33:42
Speaker 1: They were just feeling the music, feeling the music. It's
33:44
Speaker 1: the kind of roller skate dancing that like somebody would
33:48
Speaker 1: probably do in a bathing suit, you know what I mean.
33:51
Speaker 1: That's freestyle dance skating, And like what's cool about is
33:54
Speaker 1: anybody can do it like you can. You just have again,
33:57
Speaker 1: I have to be able to roller skate and feel
33:59
Speaker 1: feel the roof. Um. But there's people who can do
34:02
Speaker 1: it better than others. All right, Because I did that stuff,
34:05
Speaker 1: I could, you know, at my apex of roller skating,
34:08
Speaker 1: I could like stay up and look pretty good and
34:11
Speaker 1: do a good crossover on the corners. But that was
34:14
Speaker 1: about it. That's that's I think that's better than me.
34:17
Speaker 1: I don't remember being able to do anything like that.
34:19
Speaker 1: I was just would you do a rink skater? I
34:21
Speaker 1: go in a circle with a smile on my face.
34:23
Speaker 1: No, no no, no, that's what I'm saying. I mean crossover
34:25
Speaker 1: like when you're on the turns you cross one your
34:27
Speaker 1: right foot over your left foot. Yeah. I would just
34:30
Speaker 1: not do that. You would lean exactly. Yeah, I would
34:36
Speaker 1: prepare for the turn in advance, not do that crossover thing.
34:39
Speaker 1: I think I probably did once or twice, but it
34:41
Speaker 1: wasn't something that I was utterly confident. I wasn't going
34:45
Speaker 1: to like totally biff um when I tried it. You
34:48
Speaker 1: did you do the snoopy? What do you remember that? Huh?
34:53
Speaker 1: I say, I mean, I'm just pulling this off the dome,
34:55
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure the snoopy was when you uh
34:59
Speaker 1: went all the way down out on one skate and
35:01
Speaker 1: then held your foot held the toe stop off the
35:06
Speaker 1: floor with your hand. I think that's called the snoopy.
35:09
Speaker 1: At least maybe this a regional or something. I don't know,
35:11
Speaker 1: it sounds really familiar. I think you might be right
35:14
Speaker 1: about that. I know that I know the move you're
35:16
Speaker 1: talking about, and I think it might be called the snoopy.
35:18
Speaker 1: What a cute name for a move? Could I do that?
35:21
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I hadn't been drinking, and then
35:26
Speaker 1: I never got backwards skating down super well, which is
35:30
Speaker 1: a really key component. If you wanted a couple of skate,
35:34
Speaker 1: you're just holding hands and going forward together. Right. If
35:38
Speaker 1: you were boss, you would turn around and you know,
35:41
Speaker 1: take that girl by the hips. Oh man, you were advanced. No,
35:47
Speaker 1: I'm not like the dirty. It's like, you know, slow dancing.
35:49
Speaker 1: You put your hands on her hips, she puts her
35:51
Speaker 1: hands on like around your neck, and then you gotta
35:54
Speaker 1: be able to but you got but you gotta be
35:56
Speaker 1: able to skate backward really fluidly to do that chuck.
36:00
Speaker 1: That is I don't recall even seeing that. What what
36:03
Speaker 1: kind of couple skating were you seeing? Again? We were
36:06
Speaker 1: going around in a circle like skates right next to
36:10
Speaker 1: each other at all times, holding hands, you know, maybe
36:14
Speaker 1: speeding up. That's it. And then you split some money
36:17
Speaker 1: and rings and I can't remember what I like. They're
36:21
Speaker 1: probably like square pizza. That's probably what I would get pizza. Um.
36:27
Speaker 1: There's also there's also, um, there's inline skating, which after that, Um,
36:32
Speaker 1: the peak in the seventies and eighties of roller skating
36:37
Speaker 1: and just general popularity. Roller blades came out right after that,
36:41
Speaker 1: apparently like an eighty three or something like that. I
36:43
Speaker 1: didn't realize that because I was associate them with the nineties,
36:46
Speaker 1: but I think that's when they kind of blew up.
36:48
Speaker 1: Did you ever get into that? No, I never did. Um.
36:52
Speaker 1: I was skateboarding at the time, so I wasn't doing
36:54
Speaker 1: inline skating. I had one pair of roller blades in
36:57
Speaker 1: my life, but I didn't use them very much. In
36:59
Speaker 1: our we're thinking like, all right, I should just get
37:01
Speaker 1: rid of these, but I mean people can get like
37:04
Speaker 1: nuts on those. There's a type of inline skating called
37:07
Speaker 1: aggressive skating, and it is it's like skateboarding, but you're
37:10
Speaker 1: doing it on rollerblades, which seems to me like way
37:14
Speaker 1: harder actually. Um. And then there's one other thing I
37:17
Speaker 1: learned about inline skating, chuck that we just have to share.
37:21
Speaker 1: What's that? So in the early nineties, Amish teenagers found
37:27
Speaker 1: out about roller blades and they're like, we're going to
37:30
Speaker 1: use these, despite their elders protests, they said, nope, nay.
37:34
Speaker 1: I think it's probably what they said we are we
37:36
Speaker 1: are going to um adopt these, and they don't. I
37:40
Speaker 1: don't think they do any aggressive skating or anything like that,
37:42
Speaker 1: but they use them to get around and still to
37:43
Speaker 1: this day you can see Amish teenagers rolling around on
37:47
Speaker 1: on rollerblades and Amish country. Good for them. Yep, that's
37:51
Speaker 1: what I say. What else you got? Well, I guess
37:54
Speaker 1: we should talk about I mean, we have a whole
37:56
Speaker 1: episode on roller Derby which you should go listen to,
37:59
Speaker 1: but maybe we should finish out with the least interesting part,
38:04
Speaker 1: which is the anatomy of a roller skate. Uh gotta
38:09
Speaker 1: cover it because that's what we do. If you want
38:11
Speaker 1: to buy some skates today, you can spend a hundred
38:13
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars on average. You can spend a thousand
38:16
Speaker 1: dollars if you want. I remember, do you remember when
38:19
Speaker 1: they came out with like the Tennessee skate When we
38:21
Speaker 1: were kids and how cool that was. That was a
38:24
Speaker 1: little before my time. Yeah, but yes, when I look
38:26
Speaker 1: at pictures of them now, I'm like, those are really cool,
38:29
Speaker 1: like blue blue Adidas with yellow stripes, really cool, like
38:33
Speaker 1: a full fully functioning not fully functioning, but like a
38:37
Speaker 1: full tennis shoe. Didn't have any upper ankle support or anything,
38:41
Speaker 1: and then it had the well, I guess we'll talk
38:43
Speaker 1: about the parts here. I mentioned the boot, and the
38:47
Speaker 1: boot upper is anything above the soul, and of course
38:51
Speaker 1: you got the lining on the inside and the laces
38:53
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But the plate is what I
38:56
Speaker 1: was talking about. You've had a regular old Adidas, maybe
38:59
Speaker 1: modified slightly, but it was mounted to a plate mounted
39:02
Speaker 1: to the trucks, and the skates are the wheels, right,
39:05
Speaker 1: and they still have that today, But it's just the
39:08
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody's making Adida's boots for roller skates,
39:13
Speaker 1: but usually they divide the boots into two types, high
39:16
Speaker 1: top and low top. And depending on the type of
39:18
Speaker 1: skating you're gonna do, you want to choose wisely. So
39:22
Speaker 1: freestyle um rink skating, which again is just going around
39:25
Speaker 1: in the circle with a smile on your face. Artistic
39:28
Speaker 1: which is like figure skating, and then rhythm skating they
39:31
Speaker 1: all use high tops, and then low top is more
39:33
Speaker 1: useful for jam skating and speed skating. UM. So that's
39:37
Speaker 1: pretty much the only it's not really looks necessarily, it's
39:41
Speaker 1: you know what kind of skating you're doing, whether you
39:43
Speaker 1: go high top or low. Yeah, you've got you know,
39:46
Speaker 1: we talked about poly ere thing. But you can also
39:48
Speaker 1: get different size wheels and different hardness of wheels depending
39:52
Speaker 1: on what you're looking to do. And your outdoor wheels
39:56
Speaker 1: are gonna be a little softer than the indoors. You're
39:58
Speaker 1: gonna have more traction with a larger wheel obviously, and
40:02
Speaker 1: a little more agility with a smaller wheel. You could
40:04
Speaker 1: be super cool and get those light up wheels if
40:06
Speaker 1: you want. They're so awesome. They're very cool. Yeah, they
40:10
Speaker 1: have an actual like dynamo in them. They use magnetic
40:13
Speaker 1: spacers inside um copper wiring and so when the wheel spins,
40:18
Speaker 1: it generates electricity that powers an LED. So let's talk
40:22
Speaker 1: toe stops. So remember our friend John Joseph Merlin who
40:27
Speaker 1: broke the mirror when he was playing violin at the
40:30
Speaker 1: Masquerade Ball. He didn't have a toe stop he wishes
40:33
Speaker 1: he had, but it was like a hundred years later.
40:36
Speaker 1: I think. I think he was in the eighteenth century,
40:39
Speaker 1: wasn't old John Joseph Um. It wasn't until eighteen seventies
40:43
Speaker 1: six that toast stops were finally invented and people had
40:46
Speaker 1: a way to break um. Yeah, a hundred and sixteen
40:49
Speaker 1: years after John Joseph Merlin. And all that is is
40:51
Speaker 1: like a big hunk of rubber that's um screwed into
40:55
Speaker 1: the toe underside of the toe of the boot um.
41:00
Speaker 1: And all you do is just push down on your
41:02
Speaker 1: toe and the toe stop makes contact with the ground
41:06
Speaker 1: and it slows you down, depending on how much pressure
41:09
Speaker 1: really quickly or you know, kind of slowly and gradually. Yeah,
41:12
Speaker 1: I'd never have been able to stop really quickly without
41:16
Speaker 1: busting my butt. So maybe it didn't know how to
41:19
Speaker 1: use a toe stop. I kind of drug it behind
41:21
Speaker 1: me to gradually slow down. But I don't know that's
41:24
Speaker 1: a great technique. I didn't know if there were other methods. Um.
41:28
Speaker 1: That's what's called the snoopy. Now. I think other methods
41:32
Speaker 1: are if you're really good, you just like like um,
41:36
Speaker 1: peel out to the side like you would on skis
41:38
Speaker 1: to stop quickly on skis, I think people do that
41:41
Speaker 1: on roller skates to stop suddenly. Well, that's way beyond
41:45
Speaker 1: me for sure. Um. There's also something called jam plugs chuck,
41:49
Speaker 1: which are um the same thing, but they're much closer
41:53
Speaker 1: to the toe um than a a toe stop is,
41:56
Speaker 1: which means that you have way more clearance for the wheel. Um.
42:00
Speaker 1: If you're like, say, standing up on on your toes
42:03
Speaker 1: and rolling, you could do that with jam plugs. You
42:06
Speaker 1: couldn't do that with the toe stop. So things like
42:08
Speaker 1: jam skating would use jam plugs instead. Yeah, and I
42:11
Speaker 1: think they can. You know, you can have you can
42:13
Speaker 1: be like heart shaped and you can get a little
42:15
Speaker 1: more creative with the jam plugs, little little faces and
42:18
Speaker 1: stuff emogens. You put all those together, you got yourself
42:22
Speaker 1: a roller skate. You put it together twice, you have
42:25
Speaker 1: a pair of roller skates. Uh. And apparently a roller
42:29
Speaker 1: skating and this is something I wasn't fully aware of,
42:31
Speaker 1: became a really big deal during the pandemic. Again, the
42:35
Speaker 1: only way I knew this was sort of happening was
42:37
Speaker 1: um our former colleague, the wonderful Miranda Hawkins UH started
42:44
Speaker 1: roller skating during the pandemic, and I would just see
42:46
Speaker 1: her Instagram stuff of her, like her videos of her
42:50
Speaker 1: learning how to roller skate and do like these moves
42:54
Speaker 1: and tricks and stuff, and like, I saw Miranda make
42:56
Speaker 1: great strides over the course of the pandemic, but I
42:59
Speaker 1: just thought she was like super cool, because Miranda is
43:02
Speaker 1: super cool. Well apparently, well she's still super cool, but
43:06
Speaker 1: apparently a lot of people were doing I didn't know
43:07
Speaker 1: it was a thing. I thought it was just her thing.
43:09
Speaker 1: It was a thing. And what's interesting is you can
43:11
Speaker 1: actually trace back to the person who started it. Um
43:15
Speaker 1: as an actress named on a Koto. She was in
43:18
Speaker 1: a movie called Wigi or Wigia from two thousand fourteen.
43:22
Speaker 1: It's pretty good movie actually, Um but she also is
43:25
Speaker 1: a really talented like freestyle dance roller skater, and she
43:28
Speaker 1: started posting videos and the on TikTok of her roller
43:32
Speaker 1: skating and they hit just right, and at the beginning
43:35
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, everybody was like, oh, yeah, we can
43:37
Speaker 1: go roller skating. You can do that outside, you can
43:40
Speaker 1: social distance and still have fun. And like she kicked
43:43
Speaker 1: off this roller skating revival, especially among gen z. I
43:47
Speaker 1: love it. It's a perfect pandemic sports slash it is.
43:53
Speaker 1: It's really cool, and you know, I think it's already
43:56
Speaker 1: gone out again. Although the thing about roller skating is
43:59
Speaker 1: this is what it always so, it's like peaks and
44:01
Speaker 1: popularity and then declines of popularity, but it always hangs
44:03
Speaker 1: on and just kind of goes its own way. And
44:06
Speaker 1: every time it becomes popular, it attracts a few more
44:08
Speaker 1: people who are now roller skaters when otherwise they never
44:11
Speaker 1: would have been. And then the next peak comes and
44:13
Speaker 1: even more people are into it, and then it just
44:15
Speaker 1: seems to be this this process as immutable as the
44:18
Speaker 1: wind across the dune. Yeah. And the differences these days
44:21
Speaker 1: is it's, uh, you just don't have as many options
44:25
Speaker 1: for roller rinks if you if you live in a
44:28
Speaker 1: in a major city, you might have a few. Uh,
44:31
Speaker 1: if you live in a small town, you might even
44:33
Speaker 1: have one. Because that's you know, that's kind of the
44:35
Speaker 1: great things about small towns, as you may still have
44:37
Speaker 1: a drive in or a roller rink, but you're not
44:39
Speaker 1: gonna have like, hey, which one of these like twelve
44:41
Speaker 1: places should we go to? Right? Uh? And as we
44:45
Speaker 1: always like to point out a good trivia question when
44:47
Speaker 1: we come upon it, It turns out that n w
44:50
Speaker 1: A held their first concert at a roller rink called
44:54
Speaker 1: skate Land in Compton. That's where Dr Dre and Easy
44:57
Speaker 1: and Ice Cube met. I love it. Ah, you got
45:01
Speaker 1: anything else about roller skating? Negative? I took this one
45:04
Speaker 1: was an eye opening episode for me because I realized
45:08
Speaker 1: in retrospect that I was not a particularly good roller skater.
45:11
Speaker 1: So thank you for opening my eyes to that. I
45:14
Speaker 1: feel like I know myself a little better now. Yeah,
45:16
Speaker 1: I was not either, and you were worse than me.
45:18
Speaker 1: So right. Uh So, if you want to know more
45:21
Speaker 1: about roller skating, go do it. There's nothing stopping you. Really,
45:24
Speaker 1: just go have some fun skating. It's a lot of fun.
45:27
Speaker 1: And since I said it's a lot of fun, of course,
45:29
Speaker 1: that means it's time for a listener. Megan, I'm gonna
45:34
Speaker 1: call this gentle correction. We've gotten it from quite a
45:36
Speaker 1: few people. We cooped up in our paper towns up. Hey, guys,
45:41
Speaker 1: just finished the Fake Towns episode. I was hoping you
45:44
Speaker 1: would talk about paper Towns and bring up the book.
45:47
Speaker 1: I can't always tell if you're joking or not say
45:49
Speaker 1: things wrong on purpose, which we do, or if it
45:52
Speaker 1: was an honest mistake. So when Josh said he'd never
45:54
Speaker 1: heard of author of Paper Towns, I wasn't sure if
45:57
Speaker 1: it was a joke. The author is John Green, not
46:00
Speaker 1: Tom Green. I was thinking of the hilarious Canadian comedian. Also,
46:05
Speaker 1: you almost certainly have heard of him. He is the
46:07
Speaker 1: co founder of vid Con, which we've been to. Yeah,
46:13
Speaker 1: that was our I'm sure vicon is great, but we were.
46:15
Speaker 1: That's where we met Tjon day of Chocolate Rain famous. Yeah,
46:18
Speaker 1: I got a picture with Chocolate Rain. But it was
46:20
Speaker 1: also where we very famously did our worst attended live
46:24
Speaker 1: performance of fourteen people. Yeah, and we worked with half
46:28
Speaker 1: of them easily. Yeah, it was not a good match
46:30
Speaker 1: for us. But bit Kuna true is wonderful. But John
46:33
Speaker 1: Green apparently co founded bit con, co hosted the podcast
46:36
Speaker 1: Deer Hank and John and host of the podcast The
46:40
Speaker 1: an Throw poss Sine reviewed by the Way. That podcast
46:45
Speaker 1: is also now a book and the y a novel
46:48
Speaker 1: Paper Towns was actually turned into a movie. So Connie says,
46:52
Speaker 1: thanks for always making Connie smile. Connie was dropping a
46:56
Speaker 1: lot of extra information here, so we always appreciate that.
47:00
Speaker 1: Thinks a lot, Connie. Yeah, that definitely wasn't honest mistake.
47:03
Speaker 1: I wasn't clever enough to be joking about that, and
47:05
Speaker 1: I didn't catch it. So anytime one of us mispeaks,
47:08
Speaker 1: it's always on both of us, right. Uh. Well, if
47:11
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like Connie
47:13
Speaker 1: did and drop a knowledge bomb on us like she did,
47:16
Speaker 1: you can do it as gently as she did, because
47:18
Speaker 1: we like those. It's more like a bath bomb than
47:20
Speaker 1: a knowledge bomb. You know what I mean, I know
47:22
Speaker 1: what you mean. Uh. You can send it to us
47:24
Speaker 1: via email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
47:31
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
47:34
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,