The video story was reported and produced by Courtney Patterson.
With the ongoing pandemic, many people have picked up new hobbies to continue practicing healthy activities, but in a safe way. One of these hobbies is roller skating. Since the pandemic, the roller skating community has seen a huge revival due to popularity on social media.
Veteran skater Dennis Hentin of United Skates in Tampa says, “They brought back the retro kind of skates that were kind of like 70s but its more funky and fresh and new and people realize that it’s a great form of exercise, they can do it outside they can do it inside but um it’s kinda brought awareness back to roller skating.”
Tik Tok has been a prominent factor in bringing back this hobby, with over 3.8 billion views of the roller skating tag and a huge spike in Google searches for roller skates. Many people not only have a great time roller skating, but they also get the exercise their body needs.
For the truly devoted, roller skating never went away.
Arman M.O.G., skater says “I’ve noticed that people say that skating is making a comeback. What people don’t know is skating never really died. In the skate world we’ve been skating at mass parties with like over a thousand people for years, it’s just gotten a lot more media attention.”
Although there has been increasing popularity for the roller skating community, some people believe there is still room for others to learn what roller skating is really about and how it has continued to stay alive all these years.
Skaters Choice Skate Shop owner Christina Peña says, “Anybody out there if you go out on a Sunday night or a Wednesday night, you’ll see that its predominately Black people out there skating and that’s always been our clientele and it’s always been the people pushing skating the hardest and keeping it alive.”
The popularity of rollerskating throughout the pandemic has created backlash due to the lack of cultural appreciation that comes along with the sport.
Christina Peña says, “There’s been a lot of white women and white feminism in the skating community that they have brought back at the social aspect of it and they’ve brought it back to the forefront but it’s always been there as a subculture but that always happens with a subculture is whoever’s been keeping it alive gets pushed to the side and its whoever like discovered it and is really profiting off it is who brought it back and it’s been its cool there’s been a lot of push back against that and I feel like a lot of skaters are starting to get educated on that.”
