9.23.2005
Roll...Bounce!
I haven't enjoyed a movie in the theater so much in a long time. Seriously, the movie is great. It made me feel like I was 6 years old in Chicago again, since the movie is set there in the year I learned to skate in a little playground on Hyde Park Boulevard. It made me remember my little metal put-on-over-your-shoes skates with an adjustable screw on the underside that I had all through elementary school, zooming around in driveways, up and down the sidewalk and around and around in my friends' unfinished basements. It made me feel like I was a 6th grade supahstah at Skateaway (you know, that cheesy country bar down on the levee...that's why it's a big oval, yo).
I had this flash memory, when the kids walk into the new rink for the first time, of being 15 and taking my out-of-town friend skating, after she begged me to do so. I had forgotten about that, the rink on the edge of town, with the goofy music and the sketchy clientele. In high school I spent more time at ice rinks than roller skating (and even that wasn't saying much as we only went a few times a year at most), and that week when she was down from Chicago on her spring break is the only time I can remember being in a roller rink after the age of 12.
There's a lot about the movie that's great, but the fact that it makes you feel like jumping up and skating backwards to the groove is truly the best part. That, and the old guys in the audience with their old school roller team tshirts.
I had this flash memory, when the kids walk into the new rink for the first time, of being 15 and taking my out-of-town friend skating, after she begged me to do so. I had forgotten about that, the rink on the edge of town, with the goofy music and the sketchy clientele. In high school I spent more time at ice rinks than roller skating (and even that wasn't saying much as we only went a few times a year at most), and that week when she was down from Chicago on her spring break is the only time I can remember being in a roller rink after the age of 12.
There's a lot about the movie that's great, but the fact that it makes you feel like jumping up and skating backwards to the groove is truly the best part. That, and the old guys in the audience with their old school roller team tshirts.
