They shoot horses, don’t they?
On a discouraging stretch of road in El Sobrante one day this week, 14 disco roller-skating stars were dancing their little wheels off at Skate World, preparing for the Roller Disco Extravaganza.
It was to be quite an event at the Cow Palace, featuring such king and queen pins of the national mania as April Allen, star of the forthcoming film “Skateworld, USA”; Ellen Meade, 1973 Miss America talent winner for her dandy work on roller skates; and Mark and Marcia Hunt, “one of the roller world’s best known skating couples.”
For the past few weeks, the disco skaters have been rolling out of bed at 4 a.m. at a Sausalito house they’ve shared during this unique effort, and are on the floor by 6 a.m. practicing “Sophisticated Ladies” (bumps and grinds on wheels), “Singin’ in the Rain” (umbrellas on wheels), “Macho Man” (biceps on wheels), and the show’s highlight — Ellen Meade as Delilah (“whose electric hair lights up”).
Having not thought much about roller-skating in 30 years, since I was careening down hills at a frightened clip — arriving at the bottom with one floppy skate hanging by a strap — I had a lot of catching up to do on the country’s fastest rising sport-cum-fetish. My main source has been a disco-skating female attorney who boasts some of the finest bruises this side of Ken Norton. Half the joy of disco rollerskating, I gather, is topping one another’s contusions; semi-harmless sex and violence.
When I arrived at Skate World, the Studio 54 of Bay Area roller-disco rinks, the stars were on a break at Lucky Lanes Coffee Shop, the other hub of El Sobrante cultural life. Soon, though, they were back rolling around the rink in lazy circles as a PA system screamed a disco tune (rather than a nice organ rendition of “The Skater’s Waltz”).
Tights and tighter T-shirts
The skaters wore tights or even tighter T-shirts, snapping gum and trying to appear as peppy as possible at 10 a.m. in El Sobrante. Peppiest by far was Ellen Meade, an ex-Miss Florida, who is tall, leggy, unmarked, green-eyed, perfect-toothed and about as sincere on the subject of rollerskating as you want to get.
Ellen teaches skating in Bradenton, Fla., a hotbed of rollerphiles (along with Germany and El Sobrante), but her local colleagues claim that of the 50,000 AAU competitive skaters in California, twothirds are right here in the Bay Area. This obviously is a plus.
Disco-skating, says Ellen, “is a nice step up for roller-skating in general. It’s a people sport now.” She calls it “art skating,” as opposed to the fast, mean, grubby kind. Roller Derby, she frowns, has hurt the worthy cause of skating, which wants to go legit in the worst way. This year’s Frisbee to many is, to some, a way of life.
There is even a major push to make roller-skating an Olympic sport by 1984 (the ancient Greeks would have loved it). Indeed, in the last Pan Am Games, it was an actual event, which buoyed the roller world enormously. “It should have been in the Olympics years ago,” Ellen contends. “It’s more artistic and interesting to watch than women’s boat rowing.”
Miss Dogpatch
Meade, who also reigned as Miss Dogpatch, wishes “we had saner heads in the rollerskating world,” which is in chaos today, unlike, say, female boat rowing, which has got its act together. Roller leaders are needed — and money: $40,000 could make roller-skating an Olympic event, she says, a fact that boggles the feet.
There was much talk at Skate World of “the wheel people,” a term coined by George Wardlow, a disco-skating choreographer, Ellen’s coach since she was a 7-yearold demon on wheels, and all-around skating guru and roller historian. He traced roller disco’s roots:
“It grew out of disco dancers needing more space, joggers who began running with radios and wanted musical accompaniment, and skateboarders who felt limited by their machine.”
Wardlow excused himself to run his skaters through a disco version of “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” (San Pablo Avenue, actually), and as Mark and Marcia glided onto the wood, I got into my four wheels and rolled away from El Sobrante and the Wide World of ballbearings.
Late breaking flash: The Roller Disco Extravaganza has been canceled due to only 18 tickets having been sold. Disco-boat rowing, anyone?