Roller skating
“Anyone who says being in a car park is anti-social doesn’t understand I’m only there because I have nowhere else to go”
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Some of those who attended his Skate Tingz events at their height were new to skating – part of the global roller-skate boom during lockdown as people were incentivised to find fun ways to exercise outdoors alone. The nostalgic aesthetic of old-school roller skates, evocative of ’50s diners and ’70s dancefloors, helped to build a trend on social media platforms such as TikTok. Suddenly these sites were flooded with clips of artfully styled women skating backwards down sunny streets, swaying to a pop soundtrack.
Roller-skate shops worldwide sold out of stock from spring 2020 into this year. But, for skaters like Bacchus-Marquis, life on eight wheels is about something deeper than followers and ‘likes’. Roller skating has been “what saved my life, many times”, he says. Whatever obstacles get in the way, “We’re not going to stop.” Open Instagram and you’ll see numerous videos of women dancing on skates in their bedrooms, but you won’t get a true idea of the tightknit quad-skate scene that paved the way for the current explosion THE RED BULLETIN
