Rolling Mission

SYF was at hoedown and they let it be known. here are some photos shot by Dominic Garcia of the south texas crew and a Glow photo because he’s so colorful. (the sorta part is because none of these were from the Hoedown comp)

Ray Reyes - ao top acid

Rob Z top soul

Ray Reyes - ao top soul

Rob Z - top acid

Josh Glow SWITCH ao fish

and the steeze! (this photo and this trick just look really damn good, way to go pat and dom)

Pat Leal - Rocket Fish

honestly how many “leftovers” does this guy have? Jeremy is a clip collecting somummabitch.

Jeremy Raff B-Role 2007 from Jeremy Raff on Vimeo.

miss you buddy.

The guys down south installed a slider bar at their local park and had some friends from the not so south south come visit and session. there are a lot of photos and i’m not going to list and title them right now, but maybe later. enjoy. Skaters include Damien Garcia, Dominic Garcia, Rey Soto, Rob Zebranek, Serge Delion, and more…


(more…)

Damien Garcia has made some major upgrades to his equipment and was left with all of this unedited dv footage, so he made some edits. Here are profiles on Ray Soto and Josh Villegas. Enjoy.

Ray Soto – Last of the DV from Damien Garcia on Vimeo.

Josh Villegas – Last of the DV from Damien Garcia on Vimeo.

our friends down at RGVJuice.com updated with a little rolling gallery from a Mcallen Box Session.  Just a little excuse to post this image of Gay Ray.  Click the pic to see the full gallery.

I would like everyone to discuss this article. I personally do not find it promoting by any means. Barely Dead, Forgotten Extremem Sport, and Revival? Rollerblading has been alive and well since it began. Sure public opinion has varied and the sport as been the butt of many jokes, but this is a natural progression with any new sport. America’s new favorite little league (skateboarding) went through the same things in its time, and until rollerblading can set itself apart in a big way it will be showcased as such. Thankfully it is going bigger and individuals have really proven themselves. Once the public eye gets to see what rollerblading is capable of, it will see this sport in a new light.

Rollerblading : The Forgotten Extreme Sport

Ray Soto has built a skate park in his McAllen backyard. He covered the ground with ply wood so he could roll around. He nailed boards together to make ramps so he could launch into the air, and he fastened piping to boxes so he could grind across the surface.

It took him two months and about $1,300, but now friends from as far as Dallas come to skate. Soto’s rural property on Bentsen Road has transformed into one of the best skate spots in McAllen. Dissatisfied with city-funded facilities, the 26 year old veteran rollerblader made his own place to practice his sport. He says it was worth it.

Soto has rollerbladed for more than 14 years, starting as a youngster in his drive way and becoming one of the best skaters in McAllen. But don’t confuse him for a skateboarder. Soto does tricks on aggressive rollerblades, or skates designed with flat wheels for balance and wide plastic lips on the sides for grinding.

Soto has rolled along with the sport since the beginning, only taking breaks for reconstructive surgery after torn ACLs in both knees. Before he started seriously dating his girlfriend, he made her watch videos of professional rollerbladers, noting her reaction. She found it interesting, and they continued to date.

And about two years ago he built the massive, elaborate wooden park on his property. Housed among a field of brush a few dozen yards from his family’s cattle, the park has played host to countless rollerblade stunts. And it will surely be the place for hundreds more. For Soto and others like him, skating is a way of life.

Rollerblading versus skateboarding

In the mid 1990’s, a new type of sport began to jump from Southern California to living rooms across the United States.

Dubbed extreme sports by the media, these sports started to air on national television as ESPN’s X-Games. Suddenly, millions of people watched sports that existed underground for years, including skateboarding, rollerblading and BMX biking. In the beginning, air time was close to equal. But that soon changed.

An atomic bomb fell on the extreme sports world in 1999 in the form of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, a video game on Sony’s Play Station. The game found its way to a generation of young people, making Tony Hawk a household name and generating more revenue than any other action sports video game, according to Activision, the company responsible for the game. And skate boarding’s popularity rivaled traditional sports. A BMX biking game followed, but none came for rollerblading.

In 2005, ESPN cut rollerblading from the X-Games. But in McAllen, a group of rollerbladers kept skating.

The dark days

As rollerblading’s popularity dipped across the country, the same thing happened in McAllen.

Dominic Garcia, a Brownsville native, moved to McAllen seven years ago. When he first arrived, he met rollerbladers everywhere. He walked outside, and his next door neighbor was rollerblading. He went to Rayburn Elementary, and rollerbladers were grinding the hand rails in the back. He made tons of skater friends, including Ray Soto.

Garcia, now 28 and an 11-year veteran of the scene, remembers watching as that changed. Friends quit skating. Others grew up and didn’t have time. Some moved away. The number of rollerbladers dwindled.

Discouraged that rollerblading might die out, Garcia took matters into his own hands.

Growing the sport

It’s Christmas Day, and the Edinburg skate park is packed.

Skate boarders and rollerbladers fill the ramps. It’s a warm December 25, even for McAllen, and the sun has started to set. But a group of at least a dozen rollerbladers congregate on the south side of the park. Their ages range from pre-teen to 28. They take turns skating towards an obstacle, a 20-foot long wooden box with white piping on the edge. The smallest ones roll slowly, jump towards the box, and knock their skates against it.

Dominic Garcia and Ray Soto built the box themselves. Garcia hauls it to the skate park at least once a week, usually on Friday evenings so the younger guys can take turns grinding it. As they skate, Garcia rides nearby on a mountain bike. He hurt his knee pretty bad on a recent trip to California, and he can’t skate. It’s a rollerblading injury, of course.

In the past two years, Soto and Garcia have often helped skaters buy rollerblades. They’ve even occasionally given them old pairs for free. When an inexperienced skater misses a trick or falls down, Garcia rides over and explains where he went wrong, offering advice on how to do it right. As Garcia teaches, Soto continues to skate the box, I-pod headphones sticking in his ears.

He skates fast, leaving no margin for error. A miss would mean careening into the ground and probably rolling. He jumps up, spins half way in the air and locks both feet on pipe, sliding the whole thing. The group of skaters claps.

It’s a far cry from four years ago, when the only wheels at local skate parks were attached to boards.

Our friends down south want a new park, and they did the unthinkable… They teamed up with skateboarders and bikers to show the city they mean business. The gathering caught local newspaper The Monitor’s attention and the following article is the result.


Skate boarders don’t like rollerbladers.

Rollerbladers put wax on obstacles so their skates will slide faster and smoother. That wax makes skateboarders slip. And the rollerbladers don’t like most skateboarders. Their wooden boards, not attached to their feet, limit them from jumping the biggest gaps and grinding the longest rails. Don’t even ask about bikers, whose huge metal rides cause painful injuries during the occasional skate park collision.

But they’ll forget all these problems. Just ask them about building a concrete skate park in McAllen. The answer is a unified “yes.”

For years, skaters in the city of palms have ridden small metal ramps at the McAllen Municipal Park, located north of Pecan Ave. on Bicentennial Ave. The ramps and obstacles are challenging for beginners, they say, but after a few months, the park becomes boring. Plus, the metal has become damaged over the years. Some skaters haul large, home-made wooden boxes to the park for more challenge.

Many skaters still use the park. Several others, however, say they have started making two, sometimes three trips a week to the Brownsville Sports Park, where a $688,000 concrete skate oasis awaits. Brownsville opened it in December after five-year campaign by local skaters to ge tit built. The 12,000-square-foot park features obstacles twice the size of McAllen’s park, and it’s built from concrete with variety. On a weekend with good weather, as many as 1,000 skaters use the park, says Tuffy Martinez, the facility’s superintendent.

That’s what the skaters want in McAllen. That’s the one thing they all agree on.

But city officials often balk at dropping more than half a million dollars on a skateboard park amid a recession, says Larry Pressler, McAllen’s director of parks and recreation. And $688,000 is just the construction price; Pressler says it also costs money to maintain and operate.

“One of the things the city always looks at it is how many customers are served with the dollars spent,” he says. “With things like police, fire, streets, drainage, infrastructure and things like that, those are pretty much necessities our residents here need to live. One of the facilities the city has interest in updating is the skateboard facilities, but there’s other things that seem to push it back all the time.”

But it’s not a hopeless cause. Pressler says skaters can work towards the park. He encourages them to speak regularly with elected officials, such as city commissioners and parks board members. Pressler can only submit proposals for skate parks. He can’t approve the funding, and he says skaters who e-mail him with pleas and demands for a better park often don’t understand that. He also encourages skaters to speak directly with elected officials, rather than through e-mail.

And the younger skaters should encourage their tax-paying parents to speak on their behalf, he says. These measures have worked for runners and joggers, who now enjoy an extensive path along Second Street.

For the foreseeable future, skaters will continue to make the trip to Brownsville. Jeremy Rodriguez, known as the Germ and widely regarded as one of the best skateboarders in McAllen, says he drives to Brownsville three times a week, often packing six other skate boarders into his truck.

The group usually spends the entire day there, gassing up and buying food from local restaurants. They leave at night when the lights go out. Kevin Wagoner, owner of the Switchfoot Skate Shop in McAllen, says most of his customers do the same thing. Wagoner, an Oklahoma native who has skated all over the country, says a major city needs a good-size concrete skate park.

“McAllen wants to be a world-class city,” Wagoner says, “but they can’t even be a Brownsville-class city.”

Our friend Chris Welch over at RGVJuice.com sent out emails a little while back asking 10 Questions. Bikers, Boarders, and even Rollerbladers were asked, and then showcased on the site. Here are some rollerbuddies and me.

check RGVJuice.com for more.
TNS Dallas Tonight at the Bergs. $5 from 5-close (around 9) Glowicki will be filming for the first TNS edit, and I’m sure Dominik will be there shooting photos as well. Come out and have a good time, bring a friend, bring a girlfriend (keep her away from Fritz), bring whoever, and have some fun.

Tonight in dallas, TNS takes place at Allen Park. Meeting around 6-7 and skating until you can’t skate anymore.

RGV Rolling has been picking up as well. They are having another box session at the Mcallen Park on Friday.

Check each of their myspace pages for more info.

I unfortunately will be working and unable to attend.

Oh yeah, it seems RollerNews.com finally discovered the Rollerblading is Still Fun edits and they have been getting a lot of love.

The guys down south in the Rio Grande Valley have also started to try and have weekly skate gatherings. They have a few random local parks they like to spice up with their own obstacles and generally just have a good time. Plans are to meet at the Mcallen Park at 6:00 PM and skate until everyone is too tired to move. Click the pic to add their myspace and check out the videos to get an idea of what you’re in for.


Mcallen Rollerblading Boxes 11.30.08 from Damien Garcia on Vimeo.

Jeremy Raff & Ray Soto’s box session from Damien Garcia on Vimeo.