United Skates: shining light on the underground skating culture you never knew existed
Subscribe
X

Get the latest from Beat

01.08.2018

United Skates: shining light on the underground skating culture you never knew existed

unitedskates.jpg
Words by Zachary Snowdon Smith

You might think that skating has been relegated to roller derby and children’s birthday parties – but you’d be wrong. Two filmmakers have spent the past five years documenting an underground, roller skating subculture, that’s as vibrant and widespread as it is overlooked.

In 2013, Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown were in Central Park, shooting a documentary short about the veteran skaters of the disco era.

“We thought that when they stopped skating that that would be the death of roller skating, because, who roller skates anymore?” Brown says.

They were approached by two young black skaters, who told them about an underground event happening that night in Richmond, Virginia, and Winkler and Brown were intrigued. In Richmond, the filmmakers found themselves in a club among thousands of mainly black skaters – a world they’d never suspected existed. Their documentary, United Skates, attempts to capture the culture that produces these earthy and dazzling performances that fall somewhere between figure skating and breakdancing.

“When we tell people we’re making a roller skating documentary, the first thing they say is, ‘Is it disco or derby?’” says Brown. “The easiest way to describe it is as hip hop on skates. You can see that kind of culture in the terms that are used: there are skate crews and skate DJs. People are doing it for the love.”

Reaching from Eastside LA to South Carolina, skating is somehow both underground and everywhere. Queen Latifah made some of her first West Coast appearances in a roller rink and, before he was selling you headphones, Dr. Dre performed as a skate DJ in Compton, as the film reveals. In interviews, Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature, Coolio and other icons of hip hop discuss their roller skating roots.

The US’s black skating community didn’t start with disco – it was born during the civil rights era, when activists struggled to desegregate amusement parks, public pools and roller rinks, opposed by business owners afraid of losing the revenue of white patrons. During the long and rocky production of United Skates, Winkler and Brown spoke to men and women who could trace back four or five generations of skaters. One well-seasoned skater describes being attacked by Klansmen while rallying to integrate the rinks.

“Rinks were a hard-fought space,” says Brown. “[Owners] would do things like hire thugs to trip skaters when they were skating, and give black skaters the wrong size skates. Black skaters would then protest and try to get these rinks desegregated.”

After the death of disco and the advent of the rollerblade, white roller skaters thinned out, and the now predominantly black skating scene retreated from public awareness. Now, many rinks in the US face closure from city councils that would rather host a new Home Depot than a rink that contributes little in sales tax and attracts crowds of black customers. More than three rinks close in the US every month, Brown says. It’s a strange example of the way unofficial racial segregation has continued after the end of de jure segregation in 1964.

Since that first night in Richmond, United Skates has evolved into a sprawling project that’s taken about as long to assemble as a Kubrick film. In retrospect, Brown didn’t know what she was getting into with this, her first feature film.

“It’s been a very long labour of love,” says Brown. “We felt a lot of pushback from the funding community, but not from the skate community – they welcomed us with open arms. Raising the funds was difficult.” Brown hopes that the release of United Skates will help slow the wave of rink closures and bring greater recognition to the sport.

“Overall, the film looks at what happens if we, as a society, value commercialism over culture,” she says. “If we didn’t have these rinks 20 or 30 years ago, would we still have hip hop?  What’s going to happen in ten or 20 years if we don’t have these spaces? I hope Melbourne audiences get a taste of that and feel inspired to look at the community spaces we have in our own country, and to ensure they’re still there for future generations – and maybe go roller skating.”