For Skateboarders
Out of context: Reply #33
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- itsmitch0
I'll tell you why to get bent out of shape for it. Rollerblading is almost dead now as a sport after the boom in the 90's. There weren't any rollerblader owned companies during our boom, all corporate and when the "market" contracted for rollerblading, they all pulled out. They started making other things (like skis, etc.) and quit making rollerblades because it no longer had high profit margins. The companies that still kept on making rollerblades cut back expenses: they didn't release new models or even make improvements to old ones and the pros got completely fucked. Most of them can't make a living just doing rollerblading so they have to take up day jobs, do less contests, travel less, promote the sport less. It's cyclical because the less people that see rollerblading means less people take it up as a sport. Think of it as a mini version of the fucked-up economy we have in the US right now. In the past few years, we've had a few rollerbladers owned companies pop up but they're expensive as shit compared to what it used to cost for your setup because they're tiny. Most of our pros spend their time in Asia and Europe where they still have competitions. All this means less places to buy rollerblades (mostly online now), less competitions, less money in the sports, fewer videos released ... etc ... etc ... etc.
Now, as much as the skateboarding community has taken a shit on rollerbladers and what they do, I'd still hate for that to happen to skateboarding. And it could. Skateboarding has almost died a few times itself. If it goes through a downturn and there aren't skateboarder owned companies to put the sport before the profits then you'll have a clusterfuck of a problem. It would effect a lot more than you think. There used to be a lot more free parks that we have now and when skateboarding when through its downturn a lot of them were closed by the cities that run them. You can still find old cement snake runs that are beat up, half-buried and neglected because it costs A LOT of money to maintain a skatepark. Believe me, we're in the middle of trying to get one built locally right now and so we've seen the numbers and the research the city has done.