I wouldn’t enjoy it by myself but with people around I enjoy it when it’s a social thing you look at each other have fun it’s the best I’m zainik I’m 26 years old I live in Istanbul kadikai and I studied American culture and researcher in the university and I
God’s pedagogical formation so that I could teach English and I worked in kindergarten and gave private lessons to kids mostly and then I quit my job in order to skate more and actually there are many jobs that you can do as a skater and recently I’m doing those kinds of
Work and just improve myself thank you I used to draw a lot and write a lot like I could say I was a literary person and an artistic person but somehow throughout the years I found it so hard to express myself doing those things and I finally figured
Out that I am more into expressing myself physically because in the in the park I forget everything I just put everything aside and don’t think about anything it really makes me forget about the world we are in also the skate park like it’s Life Changes on that moment
You forget all the bad stuff which is actually so nice because life can be tiring like future is so vague but there are these moments that you can forget and they are so valuable for me For a while I never met a quad skater I was the only one because I never seeked another person because I already had this group of friends that I could skate with and that I was close with but after a certain time I wanted to open an Instagram account based on roller
Skating of me that I could meet other people and just show my progress so that’s when I started to meet with other quad skaters which is another pleasure I mean we can easily say skateboarding is an industry it’s that is male based I think all around the world and I think
Like most skater girls are also tend to dress like boys and somehow they end up contributing that it’s a male based thing I mean everyone can wear anything they want of course but it’s okay to be girly and do skateboarding and whatever it is skating actually changed that wheel a
Lot around the world and and it’s a woman dominant sport so it’s so cool to have women dominant sport in skate parks and on the streets so after I started skating I I found myself that I wanted to open an Instagram account just my skate journey and then I opened this Instagram
Account and posted my first video and thought to myself is there any a community on roller skating and then I found this account Istanbul roller skaters tagged my video and then it turns out it’s Dida who actually opened the account and then we started to talk and chat occasionally
Then we decided to meet and that’s how we met when we became friends and both of us really discovered that we are really into roller skating and it’s becoming like a passion for life oh my position I am Dedham I’m 26 years old I have been
Skating for two years and I founded the first roller skate community in Turkey in two years ago in 2021. 00 skating was always my childhood dream and my childhood passion even I remember the times I was I put the plastic bags on my feet and pretending like skating
On the carpet and after my father solved my passion he bought me a pair of roller skates so that I started roller skating when I was a little child but I after I skated for a while I gave up and I haven’t skated till the pandemic like till the two years ago Foreign everywhere It’s first I like I was yeah I have been skating maybe three times a week three times four times sometimes every day after I started like following the skaters on social media I realized that it’s actually really big and huge culture abroad especially in us and I imagined like the same atmosphere here
In Turkey as well because I believe that roller skating yeah besides it’s a sport it’s also a very positive and energetic culture so I wanted to build like the same atmosphere like in abroad in Turkey too after that like after I decided on building a local community here in
Istanbul when I was like going out to train I was trying to reach out the people who I like each person I saw on quad skates and after that I opened all the like social media accounts Uh we just took the like the thing seriously and started like working on the projects and we presented those projects to the local government Istanbul municipality and they accepted us like they accepted our project so we organized our first event in musakasan in one of the local governments places so we started
Organizing parties and events and like the yeah events in festivals as well so that was like one of our starting points we are like a social Enterprise and also I believe that we are also a feminist Enterprise as well one of my like ideas
Or one of my goals in that is like the overcome the male dominance in skating and like invites a woman in outdoor sports as well that’s a new thing that’s what I bought Dida mentioned earlier that women Um were not accepted in a way in public spaces skating outside because mostly we see what I described you know oversized t-shirts Peggy jeans in skateboarding and also in inline skating and we are kind of the first skating type that really Embraces having the women’s side okay
And you need to show your style and creativity I think that’s the difference compared to other skating cultures and for example we don’t compete we just have fun together and you need to show your identity with your skates with your skating style and with your like fashion style so it’s
Like a whole package so it’s like a yeah it’s like a performative Arts actually maybe I can describe it like that too foreign and in summer we try to like make events in here but also we try to like make different uh events on different teams for example like we did roller
Dance and bar you know like bar Concepts and we try to like organize different workshops in different places but here is our like uh you know spring and summer kind of eating place is now we are really taking this seriously and want to build a very like systematic
And organized Enterprise where we can do all the things about roller skating actually so yeah I hope we will yeah we will be successful I believe that’s so I believe if we do the commitment and if we pay enough attention and just keep on holding on to it because in Turkey
Because of political and economical reasons sometimes you just can’t start your day everything just pulls you down we just have to stick to our vision and get up and do the work each day I think the biggest challenge but zainab also mentioned in Turkey the life is very hard right
Now for all of us especially for young people because we are getting through a huge economic crisis at the moment political crisis you can see on people’s faces they are not happy at all and what we do is all about positivity it’s like uh you know how can I it’s like
Unfortunately it’s an extra it’s seen as extra in Turkey because people always like just try to manage and leave yeah survival moves like the hardest part is that for me like now we have problems like more important than building a roller skating team we try to survive
And stuff so I think it’s like the most challenging part even for us even for us this year we had really difficulty to having motivation to keep the community keep what we do keep mowing on because we couldn’t see you know what will happen in the future So we were trying to write a manifestation for our website and we want to take ideas from everyone from the community so we asked them why did you start roller skating and why is it important to you and we got to read all these different answers but
There was this one answer was really common that it was always a childhood dream it’s the same for me too and it was so cool to see that everyone shared the same dream as a child and I think the desire of skating comes from a really common part of in our souls
So even though we have different backgrounds and different taste in life the desire comes from the same spot so that’s how we that’s why we connected really good among each other we have a really long way ahead but I believe that we will manage it because we love it
Was an unfortunate year since the New Year’s Eve first with the earthquake and now there’s the elections coming people are holding their breaths and it was kind of unfortunate for us but I think the summary started our season is here and it will be great spring will come spring will come Oh Foreign Wake up
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