skate thru life

[davemerrill]

Let STUPID COMICS take you on a roller-skating trip through the late 50s as Kurt Shaffenburger illustrates this corporate comic book all about Chicago Roller Skates!



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Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

It's a funny thing, how various entertainment options that once were EVERYWHERE seem to suddenly decay and die. Sometimes there are barely alive echos of the past, bowling alleys for example. They're gasping for life and it seems only an eyeblink ago bowling was mainstream, and popular, and actually an event to many.

Skating is the same. Roller Rinks were EVERYWHERE. It was a 'thing' to go skating. Even before Disco took over the 'culture' of the Rink was very much like that comic. Well, except for the covert smoking by highschoolers.

I think Rollerblades killed skating. That and the concept of going and actually doing something. Oy, today's culture, every asshat would be texting while skating.

I was never a skater. Weak ankles. I did like bowling however.

Something just hit me about that comic. Another thing that shows how different the world was. It ASSUMES that one would have no problem tearing down your skates to repack the bearings. It was the same culture where those kids would soon be pooling money to build their own hot-rod from junk cars. An assumption that one would just roll up your sleeves, get the gasoline and get to it.

what? I can't hear you! get off my lawn! :)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

The roller rink I went to as a kid is still there and still has the same carpeting, at least it did the last time we visited, which was about 10 years ago. They are no longer endlessly playing the Eagles or the Hokey Pokey or the song about how there are some crazy little women in Kansas City, though.

There's a roller rink near Cincinnati that was turned into a flea market, and I know of one in Birmingham that was turned into an antique mall. They're big buildings, they won't sit idle for long.

Rollerblading certainly killed the old fashioned skates, that's for sure. Easier to use, easier to skate on outside, don't have to deal with creepy teens hanging around in the roller rink.

I think the 'repack the bearings' crowd moved on to skateboards, where they think nothing of that sort of thing. Bicycles are the same; there's a lot of really complicated mechanical stuff that you get into once you move past your Huffy dirt bike. Hell, I need to go downstairs and see if I can't get my back brakes to work. Might need them sometime.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

There's a roller rink near Cincinnati that was turned into a flea market, and I know of one in Birmingham that was turned into an antique mall. They're big buildings, they won't sit idle for long.

Suspect a lot of those spaces were taken over by Wal-Marts. Skating rolled out of fashion right around when big box stores started needing large lots around the edge of town.

And yeah, just because kids don't work on their roller skates or Radio Shack electronics project kits doesn't mean they don't still tinker with shit. They just tinker with different shit -- bikes, skateboards, smartphones, Wordpress hacking scripts. Evolution is a slower process than you maybe think.