Adventure - Heather
Description: Re-Experience the childhood phenomenon of rollerskating, be able to hold hands with someone while skating, only this time getting to hold hands with one's favorite person!
View our videos at the end!!
(Marty's Report):
Well, it's been a few weeks since we had a full blown adventure. Our adventurette last week was fun, but not full tilt like this one. Because this one was a full on, balls out, freakin' blast from the past: Roller Skating, m*****ther f****er!
Heather tracked this one down, and believe it or not (I'd believe it if I were you), there are no skating rinks in SF. There's an ice skating rink in Yerba Buena, and some 4 wheel rinks out in the desolate hinterland of the East Bay (we try not to venture there too often), but nothing in the hip rockstar city that we live in. A loss.
So down we sojourned to my half-week workplace, the sad and tattered Redwood City. Now, I know what you might be saying: "But Marty, isn't Redwood City kind of a Silicon Valley North? Doesn't it have wealthy and powerful tech companies that power our economy and give us hope for the future?" Well, that's a good question(s), but whatever tech companies still cling to the shoreline like desperate rotting barnacles, they no more embody the heart of Redwood City than does the stripper culture up in North Beach. No, the heart of Redwood City, California, we found on Main Street, at the Redwood Roller Rink. Sort of a scuffed, miniature-golf-carpet, multiply-patched wood floor heart, but that's what the RWC has to offer.
We haven't been roller skating for, let's see, maybe 25 years? OK, maybe 20. I remember Corey and I going to the summer skating when school was out, at the Roller King in Roseville. We were hooked up with summer passes, and could go as we liked. I don't remember if Mom always took us, or if we sometimes went by bike. I suspect the former, because we were kind of young.
Redwood Skate was exactly like King Skate, and I think this demonstrates an underlying pattern similar to the One Peruvian Band Theory. You know the Peruvian pipe band you see at the Green Festival, outdoor markets, and tourist locales like Pier 39? There's really only one band in the whole world. It may seem like there's many, but it's an illusion, or maybe Rainforest Magic. Because if you listen closely, they are ALL playing the same music, the same songs. Really.
So in the same vein, I think that while you may enter the doors of King Skate, or of Redwood Skate about 200 miles away, both are portals to the One Skating Venue (OSV). When you exit, it somehow knows how you got there, so the illusion is that you were in a totally separate facility. But it's only an illusion.
"Marty, how can you possibly know something that on the face of things seems to implausible, no, impossible?" Another excellent question.
Redwood skate had the same accoutrement as did my beloved summer home 20ish years ago. The snack bar was the same, with the same more-or-less food-like items. The people working there had the same bemused self-reflectiveness about their working in the OSV. The indoor picnic benches were the same. The little girl birthday part: same. The disco ball and colored light ball thingy, also, identical. The only sane conclusion: the OSV.
Said truth of the OSV did not diminish our enjoyment of skating one iota. I had a great time, and got to skate hand-in-hand with my favorite four-wheeled chick in the whole world. I had a coke. We listened to music that was just the modern equivalent of what they played in Roseville. They did the Hokey Pokey! Ah, sweet...
It did take a few minutes for my body to remember what to do with its standing on 8 little rubber wheels. But once the cellular data kicked in, I was off and zooming around the track, only almost-falling once when I was filming Heather on my phone (see below for Heather's rockin' edited video and mine). Otherwise, it was a zippy and peppy graying 40 year old going around the track, not plowing into any of the munchkins at all!
I actually spent a fair amount of my time filming on my new super phone, which was fun, because Heather thinks she's probably obsessive-compulsive enough to be a good video editor. Which is great, because I find the process impossibly tedious. So I collected all manner of shots to give her a good palate to work from, and I look forward to seeing what she comes up with (she hasn't finished it as of me writing this).
Yeah, it really was quite a sweet outing. I am around, in my day-to-day San Francisco life, so many rock star people, both in terms of their amazing talents and painful conceits and egos, that to be at the OSV among folks who seemed to be Just Regular Folk, was so refreshing. Not that I have illusions of being a JRF myself. I'm lost to the neurotic seeker crowd long ago, culturally speaking. But like going back to the Central Valley, something in me is consoled by people who, if they ever thought they'd be rock stars, gently cast off that illusion a long time ago and settled with what appeared to be some dignity into the small pleasures of life.
Maybe I'm idealizing, and people are always deeper than I at first give them credit, but if nothing else this tells you my own subjective feeling at the OSV today. Simple and innocent in a way I don't get to experience very often, and therefore quite a little vacation.
(Heather's Report):
Well, I think Marty said most of it in his usual spot on fashion. I think his theory of the One Skating Venue is also spot on as I have experienced this phenomena myself.
The portal for me leads to Greenville, North Carolina. In remembrance, a completely hated town although maybe not so hugely bad when I consider all the things I did there. This was from 12 - 18 years of age, one's most psychologically formative years as one starts learning one's individual self. I played a lot of D&D, went to movies, took Tae Kwon Do and went roller skating... a lot.
The rink in Greenville looked pretty much the same as Redwood City, although perhaps less worn. This I attribute to being in existence 21 years ago and I think, quite recently built at that time. Disco balls, flashing colored lights, the music (which as Marty puts it, was pretty much starting to use synthesizers), the weird astro turf like carpeting. The floor was in great shape, unlike the worn surface of the Redwood skating rink. I think I even saw the scuffed up wood through holes in the smooth "top" material. Although it didn't seem to have much issue with catching wheels but I did tend to avoid those spots.
It was a bit weird getting on four wheels again. I have this thing about falling and getting hurt these days. I'm only 35 but I seem to have picked up some old lady fear about falling. Plus, I've always felt that I have a long way to fall, being so tall and all. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. But there was no falling amazingly enough. I think being on four wheels in a square, rather than a line, helps a lot. I had a pair of inline skates and I remember falling a lot off of those but rarely when using the old skates, unless attempting to skate backwards. I didn't try some of the fancier things I used to do, such as crossing over feet in turns to keep speed, nor did I go super fast.
I was definitely satisfied with "strolling" around and around, musing at the quality of the atmosphere, the "speed" generated breeze through my hair (which I had done up into pig-tail style braids to increase the sense of childhood fun), the darkened lights with the disco ball and flashing, colored lights, the smell (yes, the OSV has the same smell, no matter what part of the country it transports itself to), the music, although granted it was more contemporary hip-hop, pop, rock style rather than 80's music. Like smell can transport one into long ago, forgotten memory, thus can environmental association. And I definitely had hits of this as I went round and round, my body having the sense of this experience, even if I couldn't exactly remember in my head.
I did remember all the old (and sometimes still current) fantasies I had when skating of wanting to become a champion ice skater or at least being very good at roller skating that I could do iceskating type tricks, jumps, spins. Basically I wanted to dance on wheels. When I did the indoor skydiving, I wanted to be able to dance in the air. That complete freedom (and confidence of self and training... and natural talent) to be able to do anything on a blade or four wheels, but to be able to do more than just dancing with feet on the floor. Dancing is cool, I grant you that! But dancing on blade or wheels or in the air, that is so much cooler!!! Plus, you can do things that you never could on regular feet. So as I zipped around, I noticed those old fantasies arising (contemporizing and remaking themselves, as always) and did feel a bit of melancholy yearning for stuff that I never did. And very likely never will do.
I don't remember if I skated hand in hand with whomever I went with, because I don't remember going alone but I don't know if I went with boys either. Or girls. But again, pretty sure I did not go alone. I remember going with my father once when he came into town. I remember that very vividly and how he would go around corners in a most funny fashion; squating down into a crouch position with arms straight out like superman and zooming around the end of the rink before straightening up again. So this time around, I got to hold Marty's hand which felt both strangely familiar and just strange, at the same time. But if I had to skate with a boy, he'd be the one.
But all in all, I enjoyed myself. It's a work out on one's legs and ankle's for sure and I would happily go again for the experience and exercise. And to hold Marty's hand in a different venue. The One Skating Venue!!!
Marty's Video (containing our interviews and skating footage):
Heather's Video (a different version with "story"):
(Note there are a few seconds of deliberate darkness after the music, there's more, keep watching!!):
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