When I first met Tommy Boy, he would always rave to me about how he would blade everywhere in SF—on the way to work while wearing a suit and tie, on the way home bombing down hills and skitching up them, on the way to the gym, onto his next hot deal. He was proud of being a rollerblader and wore that pride all over San Francisco from the hills to the flats. I was inspired to follow suit…

So, rather than taking the bus or walking, I began blading to work at D-Structure everyday. Soon, however, I found that my anti-rocker setup and 58mm or smaller wheels could not withstand the crumbling concrete, cracking blacktop, and overall wear of the daily commute. The ride was as rough as it was expensive. I wanted to represent rollerblading to the fullest but it seemed that a bike was just more economical.

Right in the midst of this dilemma, I was at a flea market near my old apartment in Berkeley and saw several pairs of new-to-used recreational skates lying amongst old records, pots and pans, and assorted shoes and clothing from another era. I asked the vendor if he had my size and sure enough out of his trailer came a pair of black Rollerblade brand skates with three adjustable straps from the instep to the ankle. I decided to try them on and couldn’t believe how good they felt—I was literally gliding across cracks that my aggressive skates would cause me to trip over. I found that to increase my speed I needed only to shift my hips without even picking my feet up. And what’s more: the break allowed me to stop on a dime! I gave the vendor the mere $10 he asked for, and without taking the skates off I glided home.

Since then I have been using my recreational blades as my primary form of transportation. I have been mashing faster than ever on wheels that wear slow and glide over the gnarliest bumps and cracks. I have even been experimenting with what I am calling “break slide tricks.” Which is ironic since the first thing I did with my first pair of aggressive blades was to take the break off so that I could do tricks! I have also turned my roommate Thomas onto rec blades. According to Thomas, “It feels like I’m skiing down the street!” We can be seen shredding down the colorful streets of San Francisco together daily —mashing, carving, skitching, and just cruising. Every once in a while a skateboarder will grimace and say something negative, but we fly by too fast to care or hear. For the most part, people are juiced to see how much fun we are obviously having.

So, if you are in need of a primary or secondary form of transportation that is practical, cheap, and environmentally friendly, I would suggest looking into a pair of rec blades. Further, if you think about how pig boards and long boards are used by skateboarders to get around and joy-cruise, it makes perfect sense that rollerbladers would use rec blades for the same purpose. Finally, this shift could also be good for creating a broader opportunity for positive community between all the different kinds of bladers, as well as potentially creating a larger market audience for our own industry, while dispelling the myth that rollerblading is only for those who don neon and knee-pads. — Kevin Yee

Photos © 2008 Zuzana Roskovensky