HOW TWEEN MOVIE BRINK! DESTROYED BLADIN' IN AMERICA

rollerblading was cool in my neighborhood for a few months in 1995. there was a lot of street hockey going on and that naturally meant blades for all. then, inexplicably, rollerblading became the exact opposite of cool. mostly it's because people with blades started doing things like this: 

unacceptable. 

so paris in 2004 took me by complete surprise. never in my life had i seen so many normal, urban, attractive people on six wheels. and yet there they were, constantly: swooshing down the beaux arts bridge, loop-de-looping through arcades, taking casual drags on cigarettes as they glide down the quai d'orsay. none of them wore spandex, kneepads, helmets, or darkly tinted glasses. in fact, most of them seemed to be of the corduroy jacket and literary satchel set (i.e. cool). did blading--excuse me, bladin'--get so uncool that it made the highly coveted hairpin turn to become uber-kitsch cool? and why did this turn fail to happen in america? we can blame baywatch and other similar boardwalks (reality based and otherwise), spandex, and the mid-90s perky workout ethic but that would be too easy an out. i think the sole reason why bladin' never made it back to cool in the good ol' usa is simple: in 1998 disney made a movie called, appropriately, brink!

unfortunately, in america, the art of rollerblading would never recover from this particular disneyfication.

this is nothing against brink!--heavens no! and this is especially nothing against the puppy-eyed boy next door erik von detten who, according to imdb.com, possesses "leading man good looks and undeniable charm" (true!) i'm just saying that brink! basically quarantine the sport to a fluffy disney arena, and that is an arena in which no honest to goodness x-treme sporter wants to be. the good thing about brink! is that it really helped pave the way for other influential tween disney movies such as high school musical, 1 - 3. and it left us with so many gems such as when gabby, the go hard or die hard female blader of the x-bladz crew, says "skating from the heart" and really means that in almost every situation bladin' means living from the heart. 

and that is why this week i chose to go against the prevalent feeling that bladin' = horribly passé. that is why i pulled my $20 k-mart blades out of my trunk, pulled on my knee high striped socks, and strapped myself into the blades. and let me tell you, they looked good on my feet. and i felt good flying down these iowa sidewalks. and even though more than four cars rolled down their windows after honking to shout "WOOOOOOOOT WOOOOOOOT!" i did not take the smallest offense. so today you might want to ask yourself the same question gabby asked andy brinker: "when you woke up today did you say, 'today i'm gonna talk or today i'm gonna skate'?"

[5:28 - 8:00]

i rest my case.

oh i'm sorry...

now i do.