Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

entertainment.howstuffworks.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 207 posts

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#181

Post by hamburglar »

Supermancho wrote: post #175
hamburglar wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fear of being perceived as a homosexual is a type of homophobia, but homophobia is not necessarily a fear of being perceived as a homosexual.

I don't think most people are arguing about that. Some post that puts forth "it doesn't mean this it means that" can be charitably added to with additional interpretation rather than "wrong. it's THIS". Dead-end true-scotsman argument.

Except I am literally responding to your very specific claim:

> It does mean "fear of being perceived as homosexual".

It doesn’t mean that. It can refer to that, but that is not what homophobia means.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#182

Post by gorbypark »

odessacubbage wrote: post #172
cortesoft wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is freeskiing? I have never heard that term Edit: googled it, and it appears to be a snow sport... not sure how that would be a competitor to rollerblading? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeskiing

freeskiing::inline. the tricks and the motions are the exact same, you can just go bigger/faster/higher and there is more money in it. i can only speak anecdotally but pretty much all of the of the 'serious' rollerblade kids i knew growing up went over to competitive skiing because that's where the opportunities were.

For a lot of people there was an intermediate step in there. Ski boards (aka ski blades) were super popular with the rollerblading crowd and suffered a similar fate as rollerblading (I remember being called a fruit booter a number of times on my ski boards). It was in the X-Games before skiing was, but they eventually just cancelled ski boarding and pretty much all the pro's went on to ski, and that was more or less the last nail in the coffin for the sport. It's actually way more dead than rollerblading, as it didn't really just move "underground". People figured out that twin tip skis were actually much better at nearly everything than little 100cm ski boards.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#183

Post by twobitshifter »

chana_masala wrote: post #113
eggy wrote: post #49

I had been quad skating since the 80s during the day for recreation, and then Sunday nights for dance skating, jamming, not figure skaing. Roxy would have skate nights too. It was a blast. I started blading in the early 90s, and would head up to NYC Central Park with my ex-wife to the skate circle to dance all day Saturday and Sunday, and blade home to our apartment in Hell's Kitchen through side streets and avenues…

I'm curious how you would hang out with your ex-wife. Edit: seems like I didn't manage the tone here. I didn't mean it as any kind of insult. I've just genuinely never heard of anyone getting along with their ex partner in this way, so I am curious to know more about the dynamic

It’s implied that at that point they were still married.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#184

Post by twobitshifter »

micro_cam wrote: post #165

See also windsurfing, snow blades, fat biking and a bunch of other sports that were briefly the next big thing. Some of this is just the nature of fads but an interesting case can be made that, with the rise of the internet sports and decline of local shops the instruction infrastructure isn't there anymore: https://fredhasson.medium.com/how-the-internet-killed-windsu... Obviously some sports are thriving but many of…

Fat biking is dead now? I see them everywhere.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#185

Post by pram »

odessacubbage wrote: post #137
Svperstar wrote: post #12

About 10 years ago I read a bunch of former roller bladers and skateboarders talking about the death of rollerblading in the 1990s. It is much easier to do tricks on rollerblades, also it was viewed as a "gay" activity in a much more homophobic time in society. There was a picture of a rollerblader in a skating mag and they photoshopped pink makeup on his face and made his rollerblades purple. Skaters started calling…

inliners got a reputation for waxing the absolute shit out of spots which is considered a somewhat major party foul, especially in the more cloistered, local centric skate scenes of the 90s and early 2000s. bmxers were disliked for similar reasons; pegs absolutely destroy ledges. there is also the perpetual problem of access to a limited resource, i've observed my dad going through similar flame wars concerning motor…

That reminds me, absolutely everything had loads of wax when those Soap grinding shoes were popular too lol

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#186

Post by pram »

watwut wrote: post #23
Svperstar wrote: post #12

About 10 years ago I read a bunch of former roller bladers and skateboarders talking about the death of rollerblading in the 1990s. It is much easier to do tricks on rollerblades, also it was viewed as a "gay" activity in a much more homophobic time in society. There was a picture of a rollerblader in a skating mag and they photoshopped pink makeup on his face and made his rollerblades purple. Skaters started calling…

Skateboarding has a culture of hating anyone else having fun and liking something that is not "properly difficult". Now they hate scooters for being "too easy". And it is ridiculous every single time.

Scooter hate also isn’t new, they were popular in the very early 00s

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#187

Post by micro_cam »

twobitshifter wrote: post #184
micro_cam wrote: post #165

See also windsurfing, snow blades, fat biking and a bunch of other sports that were briefly the next big thing. Some of this is just the nature of fads but an interesting case can be made that, with the rise of the internet sports and decline of local shops the instruction infrastructure isn't there anymore: https://fredhasson.medium.com/how-the-internet-killed-windsu... Obviously some sports are thriving but many of…

Fat biking is dead now? I see them everywhere.

They were defiantly a fad 2015 ish with sales booming. They are still around and popular where they make sense but the number of available models and sales have dropped back...still a ton out there obviously though.

There are a bunch of e fat bikes being sold at the moment as part of the e bike trend...who knows how long that one will last.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#188

Post by Buttons840 »

toxik wrote: post #157
fao_ wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Skaters started calling rollerblades "fruit boots" and that killed it for a lot of people who didn't want to associated with something seen as weak and "gay". Their problem, a lot of fellow queer people rollerblade and they have a hell of a time. It's actually extremely funny how homophobes will stop having fun specifically because something gets coded as queer. Like they're deliberately cutting off their nose to s…

I think people who don’t want to be called gay are homophobes. It seems like you implied that though. It’s very normal to not want to do things that make you unpopular.

Or maybe they just don't want people to be mean to them. If someone kindly tells me I do something that seems gay, but is otherwise kind to me, I probably wouldn't care. If someone is calling me gay to be mean, there's probably other mean things they're doing too, and I won't like it.

Re: What the Heck Happened to Rollerblading? (2017)

#190

Post by xyzzy21 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #31
Svperstar wrote: post #12

About 10 years ago I read a bunch of former roller bladers and skateboarders talking about the death of rollerblading in the 1990s. It is much easier to do tricks on rollerblades, also it was viewed as a "gay" activity in a much more homophobic time in society. There was a picture of a rollerblader in a skating mag and they photoshopped pink makeup on his face and made his rollerblades purple. Skaters started calling…

What happened is that I moved to the Swedish countryside and as such was confronted with hills and unpaved roads. When I lived in the Netherlands I used skates for transport in lieu of a bicycle because they're far easier to take along on public transport. I skated to the station, skated into the train, skated off it after 1.5 hours and 150 km, skated to my job and repeated this on my way home. I was just as fast as…

It's definitely an American thing.

The primary cause of hating disco in the 1970s was that it was gays, blacks and latinos who were associated with it. And that and corporatization of music by the very same boomers that's kept disco dead in the US since. And yet the REST of the world kept disco and reincarnated it into several genres of electronica.

So I wouldn't be surprised.

Post reply on HN