Photo: Rainbow Skateland.
Roller skating — often in the street — has been part of African American culture for years. Today it’s really an art form.
The world of roller skating is a world I know nothing about. The one time I tried it at a kid birthday party, I was mostly frozen. But wait till you hear about the expertise of today’s Black roller skating world!
James Thomas reports from Atlanta for the New York Times, “To parse the different regional roller skating styles in metro Atlanta rinks, watch the traffic patterns.
“Sparkles Family Fun Center in Smyrna, Ga. on a recent Thursday night offered a case study: Locals skating in the hometown style churned the floor’s edge, punctuating their synced steps with hand claps that rose from the shoulder. Skaters in the New York-New Jersey-style bobbed steadily and pivoted in tight circles at the center of the crowded rink. A critical mass of skaters doing Chicago’s brand of fluid, James Brown-inspired footwork, or JB skating, carved a jet stream between the crowds.
“It was the warm-up party for the Jivebiscuit Skate Family Reunion, one of the longest-running national gatherings of Black roller skaters. The 17-year-old event, held in February, is one of several annual parties that have made Atlanta a skating hub, bolstered by a steady, decades-long influx of Black residents from other cities.
“ ‘It’s definitely like the Great Migration meets the skate migration,’ said Reggie Brown, 40, a JB skater and music producer who grew up in Chicago. Though he now lives in New York, Brown visits Atlanta frequently to skate. …
“That commingling has Atlanta’s stalwart skaters concerned about keeping their distinctly energetic and percussive style alive. They say Atlanta’s newer skaters, who have wide access to regional variants, increasingly practice a hybridized type of skating that’s not rooted in any one tradition.
“ ‘If you don’t understand the foundation, you have the potential to lose it altogether,’ said Vaughn Newton, the skating choreographer for the 2006 coming-of-age movie ATL. Newton, 58, is a respected bridge between the city’s younger and older skaters. …
“On any given night in Atlanta — certainly on a destination party night — a D.J.’s song choices can activate or chill the various pockets of culture swirling the floor. So when D.J. Arson played ‘Presha‘ by 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne, a standout of the trap subgenre, on the second night of Jivebiscuit at Stone Mountain Skates in Stone Mountain, Ga., the Atlanta-style skaters took their cue.
“Paul Antonio Johnson led a procession along the perimeter, his high knees evoking a drum major in a marching band. He called out routines; the skaters behind him clapped and matched cross slides to the pounding beat. The maneuver is a foundational element of the Atlanta style, where a skater crosses feet laterally in sync with the music. Though known by different names across regions, Atlanta skaters in the 1970s first termed it the crisscross. Younger generations smoothed it out, lifting their skates for a cross-body step they called the cross slide.
“ ‘If you know what you’re looking for,’ says Newton, ‘you’ll see the crisscross. And that’s what everything is built on.’
“Arson stayed in trap mode for the next half-hour before shifting smoothly out of the simmering, drum-heavy hip-hop into mid-tempo R&B with muscular grooves and few lyrics. The Atlanta skaters slowed down and cycled off the floor while the JB skaters took over, swaying and lunging, arms high. They had buoyancy and finesse.
“Atlanta style embodies ‘a lot of energy, showmanship, ugly face. It’s real hype,’ said Kenneth Anderson, known as Kojak. He and his wife, Tijuana Anderson, or Lady Tee, 61, are pillars of the Atlanta skating community. ‘It’s like riding a motorcycle on 285 and just letting your hair down,’ Kojak, 62, said. ‘It’s a real aggressive style.’ …
“When Joi Loftin moved to the area from Detroit in 1988, synth-funk and early hip-hop were prevalent. In 1995 she and other transplanted Detroit skaters, who were used to up-tempo R&B, began to pool their money each week. ‘We would rent Golden Glide rink just so we could play the music that we wanted to skate to,’ she said. ‘That session is still going on to this day.’
“Loftin soon developed relationships with other rink owners, D.J.s and skaters. She and John Perkins, a transplant from New York, started Sk8-a-Thon in 1996, one of the first recurring national parties that showcased Black roller skating styles. Their first event drew 836 skaters from around the country to the Golden Glide in Decatur, six miles east of downtown Atlanta. Over the years it grew to accommodate thousands in multiple rinks over four days, making a Labor Day trip to Atlanta a Black roller skating ritual Loftin hopes will continue now that she’s held her last Sk8-a-Thon in 2023.
“ ‘It’s a beautiful thing,’ said Terron Frank, 34, who traveled from Portsmouth, Va. for Jivebiscuit. ‘You can pretty much see every style you’d want to see in Atlanta.'”
More at the Times, here. Great photos.
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