This video is brought to you by squarespace in the 90s rollerblading was the fastest growing sport on planet earth completely dwarfing all of the other extreme sports of the time at its peak the sport had 29.1 million participants this kid has been speeding since he was nine years old wow
Whereas around the same time skateboarding had just 4.5 million and snowboarding 3.8 million rollerblading was everywhere films televisions competitions it was massive and then it completely died the competitions disappeared all the sponsorships had dried up and these wealthy famous rollerbladers were forced to quit and go get a job at their local
Tescos in just 10 years this thriving new sport had completely vanished and in today’s video we’re going to explore how the hell this all happened all right so to set the scene it’s the 80s The world as we know it is completely changing times man of the year was awarded to a computer the culture defining mtv has just been launched and amongst the big haired neon track suits and overly synthesized music the new craze of roller skating had started to gain some popularity between the 70s and
The 80s there was the invention of the roller disco where basically you’d strap on some roller skates and listen to some music and have a little boogie which i know sounds pretty lame but it’s good fun especially if you’ve got a few points in here you’re golden however the
Roller skate was about to change after two brothers and hockey enthusiasts scott and brendan olsen came along they were at their local sports store one day and they found a model of a rollerblade it was slightly different rollerblades usually having wheels sort of adjacent to each other this skate was just a
Straight line of wills now known as an inline skate and they very quickly realized that this was the perfect thing for when ice hockey is out of season as the wheels were straight much like an ice skate everything’s the same except for the ice surface scott brenny went
Home and they descended into their dark dingy basement and in a sort of dexter’s laboratory fashion they didn’t emerge until they came out with the perfect inline skate this new skate was equipped with polyurethane rollers a rubber hill stop and it was perfect for maneuvering fast
And quickly on any terrain and there was one more thing that they had emerged from their dark dungeon with a very simple but memorable business name rollerblade in the early days of rollerblade the target audience was like skiers an ice skater to kind of give them something to
Do when it was off season and it was pretty popular sales were good for this very niche market and in 1986 the inline industry was valued at seven million dollars but then disaster struck for the olsen brothers one of their mates who was supposed to be their accountant it started to fiddle
With the money a little bit and uh embezzled one hundred thousand dollars meaning that the company was in hot water and the olsen brothers faced bankruptcy but then a man by the name of robert nagley swooped in to save the day and by that i mean he took them for an
Absolute ride originally he offered them 1.5 million dollars for just half the company but then this guy absolutely shafted them he got them down to a hundred thousand dollars for 95 of the company and over the years as the olsen brothers became more and more desperate
For cash they ended up selling for a 1 royalty of the company that would last 10 years these new owners brought with them a brand new marketing strategy and that was to turn it into a cool hip and trendy fat and so they decided to target the cool hip and trendy place of
California being the same region that saw the birth of surfboarding and skateboarding if there was any place on earth that would pay stupid money for the latest trend it was california and the plan paid off rollerblading swept california in the mid to late 80s pretty much everyone owned a pair of
Rollerblades so much so that the term rollerblade basically became a generic name for inline skating you see something was missing rollerblading of the 80s was to put it bluntly extremely lame roll it raise the creator not the imitator with these homeboy you’re gonna escape greta if you see me out there you
Better be aware cause i just might be coming from out of the air yeah it was tied in with the image of like wealthy californian yuppies wearing neon colored spandex that was so tightly fitted you’d look like a piece of meat wrapped in cling film rollerblading was clean happy-go-lucky sanitized it had
Absolutely no edge to it it was about as edgy as the teletubbies and as an activity it was mainly done in like a dancy fashion or just to cruise around with but rollerblade the company they didn’t mind because they were selling rollerblades but rollerblade did put together like an official team a bunch
Of personalities and talented rollerbladers to help push and promote rollerblade there was this one guy called bruce jackson who was just an absolute head case aggravated you know you got to blow out some steam just going inverted like bam getting those huge airs and just having a bit having a blast you know
What i mean and the whole team were basically just caricatures of californian lifestyle then rollerblading began to change instead of just cruising around and spinning in circles on flat grounds rollerbladers started to incorporate ramps and jumps and the rollerblade team would actually start to get better and do some kind of cool
Things but then very quickly the whole game would get completely flipped on its head and that was due to the rise of a very similar sport skateboarding before we go any further i want to shout out squarespace for sponsoring today’s video squarespace is the only platform you’ll
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Had been around for a while it was a massive fad in the 60s and then completely died in 1965 and the sport went completely underground with no money in the sport only the true ogs stuck with it and the decline lasted all the way up until about the 80s we would
Begin to see brands like vans and thrasher who would basically pioneer this subculture complete with the distinct fashion of like baggy jeans skate shoes and as well music like the sort of skate punk genre that was very popular but the cherry on the cake was the anti-establishment attitude skateboarding rebelled against the
Happy-go-lucky clean image of the 80s and as we entered the early 90s skateboarding would completely blow up and become a sensation with million dollar brands famous skaters it was massive this extreme sport that parents feared became the new rock and roll and so if you can imagine all that hard work
The skateboard has put in the struggle to build the industry being constantly told to get a job because skateboarding’s for losers and then rollerblading came along and said cheers lads we’ll take it from here the rollerblading community completely overtook skateboarding in a very short time rollerbladers are the grunge
Aficionados of sports fashion by the mid to early 90s there was 24 million participants that were rollerbladers compare that to skateboarding’s measly 4.5 million and so all of this led to a bit of a beef but we’ll go more into that later in the video the early 90s for rollerblading saw not
Only the sport explode but the skill level went nuts like in 10 years people went from spinning around in circles wearing lycra shorts to launching themselves across like 20-foot gaps in 1991 chris edward would become the first ever person to grind down a rail which would completely open the floodgates to
The skill of grinding and again much like skateboarding there would be video parts that would come out one of the early iconic ones was in 93 with dare to air which in the beginning scene they acknowledged the lame image of rollerblading that existed in the 80s it’s for hardcore skaters right like me
Like me see and i’m the number one and basically shunned it saying that disco is out and the rollerblading was freaking horrible this video would showcase the lifestyle attitudes and skill of these young lads who were quickly becoming stars in the world of rollerblading in 1993 the magazine daily bread was launched
Becoming the voice of this style of rollerblading which was now dubbed aggressive inline and then it got even crazier the participation numbers for inline skating went from 23.9 million in 1995 up to 29.1 million rollerbladers worldwide in 1997. making it the fastest growing sport on planet earth And the market was showing the effect of this insane rise in rollerblading from being a 10 to 12 million market in 1988 up to 60 million in 1990 and by 91 it was now a 200 million dollar industry and then it would peak in 1994 at 650 million dollars with rollerblade the
Company taking up a good majority share of the market size which some good news for them olsen brothers i told you about at the beginning their one percent actually made them about 10 million dollars but as for the culture of rollerblading more and more video parts would be released like these hour long
Videos hoax one came out and it pushed arlo eisenberg and brooke howard smith into the spotlight and it would be hoax 2 that would really give an identity to rollerbladers arlo and brooke went on to found the pre-infamous brand of senna obviously the reason we have the name senate
Is because we wanted a name that sounded powerful but also that was corrupt cena brought with it a kind of bad boy image to rollerblade and very quickly it became the face of the sport in 1994 they started putting out t-shirts and they made about 1.7 k jump
Forward to 1996 and they sold 750 thousand t-shirts which made them about 13.5 million dollars between 96 and 97. this was largely thanks to a massive market in backlash causing all kinds of controversy tonight they slipped in a slogan on their clothes that reads destroy all girls so here’s what all the excitement’s
About senate clothing designer arnold eisenberg shows us where to find the slogan destroy all girls and like overnight every single news outlet across america picked up the story rollerblading now became the devil it was counter-cultural it was edgy gone with the days of the spandex clad roller
Disco image now it was hardcore and by that i mean your parents hated it which obviously made it really cool and you wanted to do it but it was 1994 which was largely considered the year that rollerblading blew up with record sales it started to attract the mainstream
Market nike had their own rollerblade company called bower and espn created the iconic x games the x games was created in large part to capitalize off the success of rollerblading and all the other trendy extreme sports that were popular at the time the success of extreme sports in the 90s
I find very interesting like skateboarding with thrasher and vans rollerblading had the same with cena medium mind game all of these brands they found an authentic way to like speak to the youth which just say in that sentence makes me feel like a 50 year old man but it’s true though like
The 90s advertisement was all corny inauthentic and just weird totally fruity man and kids didn’t resonate with it but when they saw arlo and brooke they could see themselves in these rollerbladers they were just like them so they wanted to represent senna proudly because senna got who they were art is its own
Justification i don’t care what anyone’s rules are if it’s the law it’s i don’t that’s what i’m thinking if the law doesn’t mean anything if the law is then i’m not gonna adhere to it but with this coolness now that makes me sound old every
Company and film wanted a piece of it pop culture became flooded with references to rollerblading films were made like prayer for the roller boys airborne the music video um even had rollerblades mtv back when it was cool they were constantly showing rollerbladers like their lives all the
Stunts they do what’s up from john green from work rhode island this is my scar story and on top of that x-games has become a worldwide phenomenon pushing extreme sports to the forefront of culture there was the two yasutaku brothers who would just do mind-blowing stuff on the vert ramp like
Double flips big spins big air you name it you know coming into this event everyone thought that was pretty much a sure thing 1080 california roll and the street skaters had gone nuts legends such as eric perkin one of his most iconic moments was when he jumped
Down two sets of like 12 stairs i mean that boy must have traveled like 30 plus foot there was brian aragon and the iconic chris haffey Like looking back at this footage i seriously can’t get over the skill level of these guys in the 90s like i was sort of unaware about some of the things that they were doing because there was so much money in it it incentivized rollerbladers to just push and push the
Level so that they might stand out and get a sponsorship rollerbladers were happy investors were happy but there was one group who weren’t so happy and that was skateboarders like no joke throughout the 90s skateboarders hated rollerbladers guts like i mean there were physical fights between the two there was no end of
Insults and effectively skateboarding went to war with rollerblading hello i’m johnny knoxville and this is belt sanders skates they would make these parody videos of rollerbladers the skateboarding magazine big brother interviewed arlo eisenberg basically just clowning on him the whole issue and they even put like this steve
Irwin parody video out hello it definitely does sound very petty especially now there were a few gripes that skateboarders legitimately had against rollerbladers firstly rollerbladers were kind of just seen as kids who’d get in the way at the skate park they would take up space they would
Put too much wax on the coping and they were annoying secondly they also called themselves skaters at that time and lastly i think really what was the core of this beef was that rollerblading never had to struggle for its success these kids would just pop up and become rich successful rollerbladers overnight
Which was only really possible because of this like extreme sport industry that skateboarding helped develop which took them like 20 odd years skateboarders had no end of insults for rollerbladers but it didn’t matter right at the end of the day rollerblading was was still going strong wasn’t it well
Toward the end of the 90s rollerbladers were at their all-time best the skill level was nuts more and more films made references to rollerblading there was a rollerblading video game you’re done good but despite that things started to take a turn and for the first time ever in 1997 the market started to
Falter the secondary brands to rollerblade which was k2 and first team k2 had experienced a 15 drop in sales and first team had experienced a 36 drop in sales nike fully jumped ship and sold their brand bauer people were trying to get out quick whilst the bubble looked
Like it was popping by 2004 it was reported that the participation levels had fallen down to 17.3 million which is a significant drop from the 29.1 at its peak more and more companies were closing up shot but then the axe fell on rollerblading’s neck in 2005 the x games decided to pull any
And all events featuring rollerblading this was the final straw for rollerblading with no x games to show off their sponsors all the sponsors pulled out more and more of the magazines and the brands folded and basically the rsn fell out of the sport that was it it was over pros were forced
To quit and just find regular jobs kids were ditching the rollerblades for skateboards the ride was up and the sport just fell off of the face of the earth now you may be wondering why did it die well there’s there’s a couple of theories ranging from 9 11 to
Masculinity which seems to be every modern journalist answer for all of life’s problems there was a whole documentary called barely dead which i’d really recommend watching which was made by rollerbladers talking about this subject but the documentary kind of lost me when they started talking about this grand conspiracy where all the
Skateboarding industries plotted to take down rollerblading i’m just picturing tony hawk in a dimly lit poker table with a cuban cigar chuckling to himself how he’s gonna destroy rollerblading and like yeah whilst these theories are kind of wacky they do pose some interesting ideas there was this image
Put on rollerbladers to try and outcast them from like extreme sports one homophobic joke killed me and what’s the hardest thing about rollerblading telling your parents that you’re gay that one little joke the whole thing the whole thing went away i never understood it and this constant rallying against
Rollerblading would affect its image it was seen as uncool but it was cool to hate on it but then some people present a more simple reason as to why it didn’t last that being that it was a pain in the ass to wear the roller blades you
Know like say you were to buy a drink from a shop you’d have to sit on the floor and buckle your rollerblades pull your spare pair of shoes out your bag put them on tie the shoelaces and by the time you’re done the shop’s closed and there probably is something to all of
These theories as to why rollerblading died but to me i think it’s much simpler than all of that and that is the it was a fad and to be honest the more i’ve been making these videos looking into these different cultures there’s a very similar pattern that almost happens to
All of them when a sport is new it has a great 10 years does really well every company wants a piece of the pie it gets more and more inflated and then the times change culture changes the kids grow up and brands like senna just didn’t appeal to people in like the
Early 2000s they were on to the next thing and the things that were called in the 90s were seen as corny in the 2000s like if you go back to the early 2010s and you listen to the music from then and the fashion a lot of that just it
Looks ridiculous now and i think the reason it was so shocking was because it got so big it came at the right time with the introduction of extreme sports so when it crashed it really crashed and here we are now 20 years on 2021 and you
Know that might not be necessarily a bad thing right now is actually an extremely interesting time for rollerblade after the market was in downfalls the last 20 years rollerblade actually reported a 300 increase in sales may of 2020 was the company’s largest shipping of rollerblades in 20 years and google
Search trends mirror this growth a lot of people speculate that this is in large part due to the lockdowns and whilst that definitely did play a role i think there’s just general shift that’s happening in society right now people are getting nostalgic about the 90s like for instance 90s fashion has been in
Style for a while and hit films of the 90s like space jam and the matrix and now cm remakes even in the music like machine gun kelly is like punk rock as well olivia rodrigo who’s to say that people aren’t just getting a bit nostalgic and they want to slap on some
Rollerblades and on top of that skateboarding is no longer counter culture it’s very much culture culture it’s popular if a kid wants to stand out and be different rollerblading might be that but making this video the thing i was most happy to see rollerbladers are still out there and they’re still
Killing it you’ve got the og guys like brian arrogan still kicking around chris haffie doing stuff with nitro circus when i first saw omega ramp i was like i have to get on that thing but then you’ve got the new gen like bobby spazzo Nils janssen [Applause] eugene ennin who is particularly one of my favorites he’s got a very cool unique style from the uk you’ve got sam croft who’s out here like still sending big stuff why would you mean i got that from the parkour world daniel labacco got involved with rollerblade not that long
Ago and he was sending some pretty meaty stuff you’ve got brands out here still regularly putting out rollerblade videos that get decent views and like i said in the slackline video i do think they need more youtubey kind of content if you take braille every time braille makes a
Rollerblading video they just pop off those videos work because they show the people who do rollerblading it’s not just insane stunts edited to music but you’re there with them so personally i do think rollerblading is about to have a second search probably won’t hit the heights of the
90s but ain’t what it’s all about and i can’t lie making this video has made me want to buy some rollerblades so let’s see where it goes from here if you enjoyed this video be sure to leave a like and subscribe to the channel we’ve got new merchants out on
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