- Don't worry, pants are still important and divisive
- Rollerblading was removed from the X-games a little after Y2K
- Some still do big hammers, many do not. Every trick is not a nail.
- Living legend Jon Julio of Hoax II and unity grind fame ran a Roces aggressive sub-brand for several years called Valo that produced skinned and unskinned UFS Majestic 12s ("V13s") as well as a carbon skate: that company is no more and JJ currently sells THEM skates, which are based on the UltraWheels sabotage with modernizations.
Yes, JJ has been pro the WHOLE time since 1995/6. - Shima started a skate co based on skinned Razors cults called NiMH with JE and JW that later became only shima and thusly renamed SSM that went defunct around 2015
- The once influential Rollernews.com shut down in 2018 due to increasing platformification, wherein all rollerblading stuff is owned and served by Facebookstagramistan Inc, and, to a lesser extent, Alphabet
- "Full length" skate videos do still exist, and the ones that aren't released on YouTube or Vimeo are generally sold via sellfy.com as Pay Per Download.
Silly, isn't it? - The Be-Mag Message Board was locked at the end of November 2019 following a partnership with Skatepro, a Danish shop. Sadly, your best source for skating news, information and shit-talking is going to be a mix of FBgram and YouTube accounts- some of which were formerly magazines (like Be-Mag). Also maybe reddit.com/r/rollerblading and Blader Union, a Geocities site.
The forum's spiritual predesuccessor is the Backtoblading Slack, run by the Sequencemag/BackToBlading/Fifty50 boss, whose board immediately pre-dated Be-Mag [but post-dated #aggressive on efnet]. Plenty of helpful, elderly aggressive inline skaters lurking about.
Also, remember Scum Magazine? Its originator now runs bigwheelblading.com. One (oneblademag.com) is run by JE, a dude who used to work at Daily Bread before it went under in 2006. They still print a magazine every year or so. - 90+% of rollerblades and rollerblading accessories are made in China. 90+% of rollerblades and rollerbladers are recreational.
- For the stuff that's not, there are lots of 1-2 man cottage industrialists pumping out interesting niche products: adapt (handmade boots and frames made in Holland), oysi (hilo frames), king souls (custom uhmw souls), wizard (fancy rec frames), flat (fancy big wheel metal aggressive frames), sola (fancy metal aggressive frames), moonshine (uhmw grinding-related parts)
- Salomon made good skates -- a lot of them (up until 2006), many of which are still in use
- Believe it or not, Roller Warehouse is still in business!
- Yes, rollerblades are cheap compared to things needed for your other hobby
- Doing whatever you want on skates all the time is fully encouraged. It's acceptable to suck and look bad too
- There are probably still at least a few active aggressive rollerbladers in your area. More if you're in/near a big city
- There used to be an equal parts insightful/hilarious podcast hosted by the Cirque Duh Sol Eh? Canadians, that went on hiatus for a few years, but now it's back. They appropriated the term "mushroom blading" and are now mostly known by it for a video series of the same name.
- Bigtime annual events actively occurring include: Winterclash (EU park comp), Blading Cup (JJ-run CA street demo), What Year Is It? (Woodward camping for adults)
- There's a push to get hardcore extreme aggressive inline freestyle roller into the olympics with skateboarding in the form of park stunting and downhill. There's a French companion park tour called FiSe that's coupled with this: think international ASA.
- A lot of old folks can't take the impact or injuries and are turning to various flavors of speed and downhill.
- Nobody will hate on you for your rec skating: probably not even the general public.
- Forcing kids to skate might be a bad idea
- Don't try skating your old skates: they'll probably shatter into pieces. If they're Salomons they might not, but in the case of the former you'd probably do well to hot water anneal the plastic before any resuscitation attempts -- and in the latter case you might be better off pawning your Salomons on eBay (they're no longer made and popularly sought after).
- Unless you're in great physical shape, attempting to pick up with the hurricane topsoul or roof gap you left da game at in 2005 might break the back in your back-to-blading push. Start small and work back up to it.
- Following on the above, consider wearing a heavy layer of helmet and/or pads, for your safety and others' amusement.
For Back-To-Bladers (2020 Edition)
Posted in Articles.
A Brief Summary and Explanation of Somewhat Not Really Recent Aggressive Inline Skating Historical Events and Developments for Back-To-Bladers coming out of deep freeze suspended animation. All of the important things since you stopped skating. (2020 Edition)
Dano on #
Great stuff!
Loved reading this!
Looking to take the plunge and start rolling again soon... my last outing was 1998 - yes 22 years ago! - ACL reconstruction - football injury - stopped play.
Managed to track down my old skates... Oxygen Argon pro Matteo’s ... still not in hand as they are being collected from a friends mothers house... hand delivered to my mothers house and then couriered across country! But just in case of deterioration I have bought a pair of un-skated Razors on eBay for £60!
Now to work on my fitness as the closest I get to working out these days is carrying my sleeping kids to bed!