Skates, Blades and Hot Tracks: Roller Culture in the Bay Area

Roller culture in the bay area has lived many lives – from the roller discos of the 1970s, to the inline skate competitions of the 2000s and a quad-skating revival fueled by TikTok and the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s tangled up with other cultural movements, including the Bay Area’s underground music scene. And improvised roller parties – from Golden Gate Park to Panther Skate Plaza – are building on a legacy of Black and Latino communities originally excluded from formal skate spaces. We’ll talk with San Francisco’s “godfather of skate,” a roller dance teacher with five decades of skating experience and a former professional rollerblader.