The New Wheels

Roller-skating takes off

Every weekday morning, Mechanical Engineer John Buchan, 23, dresses neatly in a suit and tie and roller-skates seven miles across San Francisco to his office. He is not alone. The Bay City also boasts a roller-skating messenger service, skating grocery shoppers and skating mothers pushing baby carriages. In Los Angeles, Linda Ronstadt skated to a luncheon date with Governor Jerry Brown. On the boardwalk in Venice, Calif., a thousand skaters may appear on a Sunday, navigating perilously among pedestrians, while rolling guitarists serenade the sunbathers. In Minneapolis, the owner of Rolling Soles, Scott Sansby, 27, finds skating a practical means of transportation. "I tie my shoes to my belt loops and take off on my skates," he says. "They're better than a bike because you don't have to worry about locking them up when you get to your destination."

The impetus behind the new craze is an improved variety of skate. Borrowing the technology of precision ball-bearing polyurethane skateboard wheels, the new skate wheels offer the wearer an extraordinary maneuverability. Unlike the noisy, steel clamp-ons that kids used to wear, they are smooth and light, gliding over cracked pavement with silent grace and dispelling--deceptively--the fear of falling. Aficionados compare the sensation to that of skiing or surfing. The thrills are not exactly cheap: an assembled pair of wheels, skates and boots cost from $60 to $150, and customized ones can run as high as $1,000. Many people, understandably, prefer to rent their wheels.

In Manhattan's Central Park last May, Judy Lynn, 33, a former yoga instructor, opened the Good Skates, with 200 pairs of polyurethane-wheeled skates for rent at $2 an hour. There are waiting lines at her concession on weekends and on Tuesday nights, when city roller fans join in "Nightskates," a two-hour jaunt through the park. Last week they pirouetted and coasted to music from the New York Philharmonic's open-air concert near by. At lunch hour, regulars glide along the park's winding paths, lapping the joggers. Some of the joggers are in fact beginning to roll, and one skate manufacturer has come out with a "jogger" model--a blue running shoe with yellow racing stripes mounted on wheels. After all, skating uses many of the same muscles as running, burns a respectable number of calories and is easier on the knees.

Besides providing transportation and pleasant outings, roller skating is rapidly becoming a recognized sport. The U.S. Amateur Confederation of Roller Skating lists 12,000 speed skaters, 17,000 artistic skaters and 3,000 hockey skaters, with club membership up by a third in the past two years. National teams of all three kinds of skaters will compete in next year's prestigious Pan-American Games, and skaters are hoping to be included in the 1988 Olympics.

There has also, naturally, been a resurgence in rinks. "We've come a long way from the seedy places of 20 years ago," says George Pickard, the executive director of the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association of America, which has grown from 500 in 1970 to more than 1,500 members today. Many rinks have become in effect "youth nightclubs" says Pickard, with the same music and wild lighting of the discos. Cher and Ringo Starr have given parties in Los Angeles' Sherman Square Rink. Skateway, in Orange County, Calif., has a floor that looks like blue ice and a $40,000 light and sound system. At Brooklyn's Empire Rollerdrome rink, members of skating groups like the Jigaboo Jamers do the Hustle and the lindy. "Once you're rolling, you can do anything you normally do on your feet," says Lynn, with all the fervor of a Holy Roller. "You can strut, you can jump, you can do a conga line. Except that you're doing it at 20 m.p.h."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.