Get your skates on!
The Irish Mail on Sunday joins the high rollers who glided through the pandemic and are bringing 1980s craze to communities across Ireland
A1980s craze that made a comeback during the pandemic has mushroomed into a highly diverse and growing community of roller skaters, each one drawn to the joys of gliding through city streets for their own personal reasons.
For Nicole Douglas, 27, skating frees her mind and helps her to deal with mental health issues, especially when she’s having a bad day. ‘If I even get out for 15 minutes skating I always feel so much better,’ she told the Irish Mail on Sunday.
Ali, who skates with a prosthetic limb, grew up skating as child ‘and went away from it’ until she rediscovered the freedom it gave her after losing the lower half of her leg in a road accident in 2016.
While Josephine Ryan Murphy, 27, who has ADHD, says being part of the 50 First Skates group makes
‘If I even get out for 15 minutes, I feel so much better’
her feel ‘way more comfortable in herself’, and that lots of members are neurodivergent.
She twirled around confidently in teal quad skates with flower print toe guards.
Nicole started 50 First Skates, a Dublin-based roller skating group, during lockdown in 2020 after a friend gifted her a pair of skates.
She learned how to skate rolling outside the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre in Dublin’s Docklands, tentatively moving from pole to pole as she found her balance.
Wearing a yellow pair of Moxi Lolly rollers for jam skating, a style which combines gymnastics and dance, as her bright green dyed hair blew in the wind, Nicole said skating is ‘infectious’ and she loves the joy it brings to people.
Nicole took up skating after her beloved dog died to help her focus on something ‘productive’.
Aside from enjoying the sport as a release for her mental health, she has also made lifelong friends.
Nicola told the MoS: ‘There’s a lot of people in 50 First Skates now that I would consider as some of my best friends and I’ve met them through skating.’ When skating around Bord Gáis, Nicole met another girl skater and they quickly became friends. Others gradually followed. She said: ‘There was two of us, then there was 12 of us, then there was 50 of us.’
Now the group has more than 400 members in a WhatsApp chat, and it continues to grow. The skaters meet every week and hold a range of activities, including skating workshops and larger meet-ups
with other groups. Other roller skating groups have emerged in different parts on the country since the pandemic. Róisín Nic Cnáimhín, one of the founders of Roller Criú Cork, which began skating in 2021, told the MoS: ‘The skate community is nothing like I’ve experienced; it’s so welcoming and encouraging no matter where you go.’ The 27-year-old set the group up with her friend who she met through roller skating and they have now been organising meet-ups for almost two years.
Róisín added: ‘Our meet-ups aren’t just a place for people to learn how to skate, but I think they play an important social role for people.
‘It’s a great chance to meet new people, as well as a motivator for getting outside, something which is great to have during the darker winter evenings.’
Roller skating was one of Róisín’s favourite childhood hobbies, and she finds it ‘fulfilling’ to go back to and ‘definitely a good way to connect to your inner child’.
She now zooms freely around Cork in orange quad skates flashing her red light-up wheels.
Roller skating has started to creep into popular culture too and featured in the Barbie blockbuster released earlier this year.
One famous scene shot at Venice Beach, California, showed co-stars Margot Robbie (Barbie) and Ryan Gosling (Ken), skating along the promenade in bright, neon outfits.
Toy giant Mattel now sells skating Barbie dolls inspired by the iconic movie scene.
Online fashion store ASOS also jumped on the trend too, selling skates for around €100 in a range of styles including metallic butterflies and orange and pink waves.
Speaking about the growing phenomenon, Nicola Douglas said: ‘I think that while pop culture massively influenced roller skating back in the day, I think it’s actually
‘I think everyone skating has influenced pop culture’
flipped this time around.
‘People started doing it during Covid when there wasn’t really anything going on and now you’re seeing brand activations, events – all this kind of stuff where they know that roller skating is infectious for people that are just watching it as well, so I think they’re just jumping on the trend.
‘I do think that everyone skating has influenced the pop culture.’
Roísín Nic Cnáimhín also believes popular culture is having an impact – during the summer the Marina Market in Cork even held a Barbie inspired roller-skating disco.
‘It plants a seed of interest or it’s the final push someone needed to buy a pair of skates,’ she said.
Whether it’s a case of being inspired by Barbie or reconnecting with a childhood hobby, roller skating groups across Ireland are encouraging anyone to join.
As for what the skaters wear, any type of roller skate is welcomed in the community.
Quad rollers have four wheels, two at the front and two at the back, and a rubber stop.
Another popular option is inline roller blades, which feature anything between two and six wheels in a row on each skate, depending on the style of skating.
50 First Skates is a quad skating group and they gather mostly indoors in a sports hall but do occasionally venture outside, if the weather permits.
Roller Criú Cork welcome quads and blade skaters of all levels and also meet weekly.
50 First Skates is holding a Christmas Market on December 10, from 3pm until 7pm at Juno, 58 Dorset Street Lower, Dublin 1, where they will be raising funds in aid of the Gaza crisis appeal.