A Real Blast From The Past
24 May 2000 - San Diego, CA

The first time I saw this book was about a year ago, it was sitting in the bargain priced

"All you need to know about the world's fastest-growing sport on wheels"

section at Crown Books around the corner from here. Well, the other day, I went back into Crown Books, wondering if now, a year later, they still had it. And what do you know... in exactly the same spot, for the same bargain price, was this book! For just $5.99, I just had to pick it up!

This book is titled Inline Skating: All you need to know about the world's fastest-growing sport on wheels and is by Jeremy Evans, with photos by Matt Pingel. I didn't realize until I got home that this book is actually from England. The first thing that tipped me off was the fact they use weird spelling like "kerb" instead of "curb" and "colour" instead of "color" and stuff like that. Those wacky Brits!

This book is a quick overview over some different aspects of inline skating, such as basic terminology, rec skating, aggressive skating, speed skating and hockey.

Big Amplitude, Dude!

There is a lot of emphasis on safety in this book, and you can see that in every picture the skaters are just covered with every imaginable kind of pad. This book is full of great photography of real extreme skating, like this photo here on the left.

This book was published in 1998, but I would dare to say that most of this stuff is from 1997 or earlier. And it's a really cool blast from the past, to just look back on what rollerblading style was back in those days, and have a look at the popular tricks, equipment and clothes from that era.

There are a lot of really useful sections in this book. For example, they have a section dedicated to equipment that talks about the differences between different durometer wheels as well as the effect diameter and profile have. Other useful things are tips on bearing selection and care. When it comes to safety recommendations, this book suggests that rec skaters should "wear knee pads and wrist guards as a matter of course. Elbow pads should also

What's a Nine Bar? (click to enlarge)

be worn, but more experienced skaters can skate safely without them." That's some realy good advice. For aggressive skaters, they suggest some "extra protection such as shin guards and crash shorts with padded hips to suit their style of skating" as well as wearing a helmet. Hmmm, I think I should get some crash pads to suit my style of skating.

Probably the best section of this publication though, is the set of pages with pictures of all the different grinds and their names. Some of them seem to be labeled weird. Like the pictures for "royale" and "backside royale" both show backside royales. But the reason why this section is so great is on page 52 we have a guide to all the lame tricks that no one does anymore. Many skaters who have just started skating recently may have heard about "training wheels" and "wheel barrows" but never knew what they looked like. Well this section of the book has great photos of a guy standing on top of a ledge doing all these difficult tricks. I

Taking a break from hard core skating

highly doubt he could actually do any of them, especially since on the picture of the topside soul he isn't even locked on. Another tip off to the age of this book is the fact that this trick section talks about the "Fly Fish" as being one of the "newest grabs in rollerblading."

Even if you already know all the names of all the tricks, or what the difference between a grind rail and a quarter pipe is, you should still get this book because it has lots of hot chicks in it. And even though they are all wearing too many pads for just rolling around on the sidewalk, they make up for it by wearing less clothes. This book is chock-full of pictures of hot chicks in skin tight clothes showing a lot of cleavage. If that ain't enough to get you pumped up to go skating, I don't know what is! This book looks like it's supposed to cost about $20, but I wouldn't get it for that price. However, if you are lucky enough to find it at your local bookstore in the bargain bin for $5.99 like I did, I highly recommend it! Not only will you laugh at all the lame pictures and words, it looks great on a coffee table too!

-- Written By: M. Bryan Hong, Sea Quints Editor