Hacker Cinema
United Skates
2018 · Film · documentary · 89 min
Directed by Dyana Winkler, Tina Brown
When America's last standing roller rinks are threatened with closure, a community of thousands battle in a racially charged environment to save an underground subculture.
3 positivefrom 3 commenters
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4 comments on Hacker News
According to the excellent roller doc "United Skates" the venues are closing due to rent increase.
https://www.bustle.com/p/the-hbo-documentary-united-skates-shows-how-rollerskating-mirrors-the-black-american-experience-15939537
> Which documentary?
United Skates (I did mention it above)
I used to skateboard in my youth, and have moved on to roller skating for reasons of accessibility of locations and lining up with my children's interests. I love it, I look forward to it, it's embarrassing to admit it to people I know, but such is the level of enjoyment of it, the embarrassment is far outweighed by the desire to share my enthusiasm.
I recently stumbled across the documentary United Skates, which was both uplifting and depressing at the same time. It does a beautiful job of, amongst other things, demonstrating the value of a pastime that requires discipline in order to achieve the adrenaline-buzz payoff, and the way such a pastime can get in the way of less-socially-acceptable alternative life choices.
I'm too old for it to seem appropriate to say this, but I fucking love roller skating. Going to a rink for a session is like entering another world, and "normality" is paused and disappears into insignificance for the duration. It's wonderful.
(One of the things that put me off skateboarding at a certain period of my life was a 'skateboard nose strike to the gooch' upon attempting a kickflip. Coulda been worse, didn't want to risk it...)
An invigorating documentary was made about this topic last year: United Skates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6RbzPZmat8