Joie du Vivre: A Collection Of Pandemic Roller Skating Videos

It’s a 100°F heat wave. After putzing around by kayak in New Hampshire’s Portsmouth Harbor with my roller skater friends, I thought maybe I’d share this little collection of skate videos. I put them together during the height of COVID19. The contrast between the stark emptiness of the Boston Waterfront on a Friday night in 2020 versus the “what pandemic?” attitude of Hampton Beach is dramatic. And there are quite a few secret and not-so-secret radio references in these as well…

I don’t film skate videos. I have been skating for about 35 years, nearly 20 of which have been with the same group of people. Roller skating became a social media sensation and pandemic hobby to an entirely new generation of wheelers. But it decimated my skate crew. All of the rinks closed down, temporarily in theory. But many did not survive. My home rink – all the skaters identify one as their home rink – shut its doors permanently during the pandemic. Driving one of my friends to his car today, he commented “I can name a hundred people who no longer skate anymore.” He wasn’t exaggerating. I don’t film skate videos, but I did during the pandemic, because I knew it would be the end of an era.

Like every preceding generation, we comment that the kids in the rinks are just not the same. They are closed off, guarded, cliquey, a bit unfriendly, and well, quite inhibited seeming. Like they have no idea how to just relax, laugh, let loose, and have fun. Can you blame them? A lot of them are younger, just entering their twenties. Much of the old guard did not show up anymore when the rinks (the few that made it through) opened their doors again. The world is a scary place to this younger group, and they show it.

But there is a core of us that keep going. The roller skaters, suffering no shortage of their own pain, trauma, personal trials and tribulations, have an unparalleled zest for life. A quest for adventure. And a need to keep moving at all costs. We know how quickly inertia sets in. We have always faced a world that tries to throttle our spirit. And our response has always been: we stopped using brakes a long time ago.

So I don’t take skate videos typically, but I did during the pandemic. My own little protest and tribute to the things I knew could not exist forever. But I will skate until the day I no longer can.

Enjoy!
KM1NDY