Before finding out about alcohol, there was a time when I could go to another realm using roller skates. As a kid on the street, the best skates were Chicagos. A skate key would always be on a string around my neck because skating in the street meant cracks in the asphalt which often knocked the skate off your shoe. But as galaxical as speeding around the street on skates was, the first introduction to Art's Skateland was better than going to Paris from a barnyard. The light ball on the ceiling that was lifted by Saturday Night Fever, the organ music, the sound of constant swooshing (Constance Swooshing was an early boner maker), the different feel of the wooden wheels on the wood floor - this is what I wanted to do every night 'til I die. OK, then girls and alcohol became a better idea than roller skating but along with the 80s came sneaker skates. That's right - jogging shoes with skates attached to them and these skates had rubber (maybe neoprene) wheels and the roller rink down the shore played loud disco music instead of organ crap. The boys and girls flew around the floor and I found that old thrill again, dancing to Car Wash and Gloria Gaynor, falling only a half dozen times or so. I somehow missed out on the on-line skates that followed but that doesn't matter. And the skateboard thing seems sedate to an old roller derby-wannabe. The cooler thing than skateboards were hootchie-bugs. You take old boards from the woodpile, bolt them together with washers as spacers, take your old roller skates apart and nail one to each board end. Then you aim downhill and lay on the center board as if you're sledding and steer with hands on the cross board. Great sensation being only 2 or 3 inches from the surface of the street as you roll down the street, but those effen cracks, BAM, skate gets knocked off because of shitty nail job and the skin from four knuckles makes a footlong skid mark on the street, exposing knuckles to screaming face while running to get band aids. Yea kids stuff (just joshing about the alcohol)