Just the Beginning with Low Life
Tracey and Lorianne of Low Life paint a portrait of a rollerskating scene in flux.
Lili is what’s hot in Montreal. It covers the fashion scene, with some detours. Thank you for your readership, and please contact me with tips or constructive criticism.
You’ve seen rollerskating. You’ve seen the regulars dancing on that paved walkway in Lafontaine, you’ve seen it all over TikTok or other social media, and you may even have seen some park skaters in Van Horne Skate Park.
Public interest in rollerskating revived during the pandemic, and a lot of skaters are lacing up for the first time. This influx of new participants raises existential issues about skating, its past, and its future.
The common theme in rollerskating is that it is older than you think. Inline skates1 were invented in 1760 by John Joseph Merlin2, and quad skates were invented in 1863 by James Plimpton in Victorian-Era New York. Quad skates are far more maneuverable than their inline brethren, and Plimpton’s invention paved the way for dance, park, and derby skating.
There are two scenes that have sustained roller-skating past its heyday in the 70s: the black communities in cities like New York and Detroit that have been skating continuously since then, and the queer-and-femme-dominated world of roller derby.
However, the Pandemic brought the derby world to a halt and resulted in the closure, temporary or otherwise, of many roller rinks. At the same time, roller skating became very attractive as a screenless activity that one could do by themselves outside. All you need is some smooth pavement and some quad skates, which will run you around $150 CAD for an entry-level pair. Wrist, knee, and elbow pads are sold in packs for $60 CAD3. Further, if you’re trying to leave your house to dance, putting on some skates has become your only option.
A rapid surge in popularity brings about a lot of change, so to sort things out I went to Low Life, Montreal’s rollerskating shop, to talk to shop owners Tracey and Lorianne.
The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Marc: How would you describe the rollerskating scene in Montreal? How does it differ from the skateboarding scene?
Tracey: It's changing right now. Our shop used to be geared more towards roller derby because we have a really strong roller derby community. But there’s no roller derby during the pandemic. Lots of people turned to outdoor sports during the pandemic, so there’s definitely a growing community. It’s all ages, so you have the younger people that are excited because they’ve never done quad skating before, and you have people that are a little bit more nostalgic, who did quad skating in their childhood. There are a lot of outdoor groups and Facebook groups for roller-dance, skatepark, and just cruising in the streets. It’s a growing community; it’s a very accepting community.
Lorianne: Yeah, I think compared to skateboarding it’s really open and inclusive. I’ve skateboarded for a very long time and I know it’s getting better, but it was not always inclusive to women, or trans people. Derby, for sure, is super inclusive and a lot more accepting.
Marc: In my research on skating, I learned that people in Detroit will skate differently from people in Cleveland4, for example. Is a Montreal style of skate emerging?
Tracey: I think Montreal is one of those cities where skating didn’t die completely, but it got diluted. There weren't a lot of people skating continuously from the 70s and 80s. The cities you’re talking about have a very strong skate culture and it’s continued: they’ve had rinks that stayed open, and I think that culture is more taken care of. I think that in Montreal it kinda faded away. I think it’s really the beginning. It’s just starting to come up and maybe there’s not a strong enough group of people for there to be a bigger “trend”, let’s say, or a specific style. We might see that happen, but for now, I think it’s a bit undefined. There are definitely a few stronger skaters that have skated for a long time, and I think they’re excited about all the new people. More interest in the sport that they like is gonna help grow that community in Montreal and lead to more opportunities. But I don’t think that there’s a “style” yet. But it probably will look different, every city has its own flair on things, so probably there will be, but it’s too early to know what that looks like.
Marc: I wanted to ask about that. A lot of people take issue with the “TikTok bump” of people getting interested in skating. As far as elitism or gatekeeping goes, do you feel like the roller-skating community has been accepting of everyone who just wants to start skating?
Tracey: I think it depends, there’s gonna be cooler people and more annoying people.
Lorianne: I think everyone is open to new people joining if they join with respect. There are people that have never skated before and they think they invented it, like “check out this new thing that I’m doing”, but they don’t consider the people in the Detroit community or New York that have been doing it for a very long time. They’re just appropriating it without respecting that history, and how people used to [skate] and how they’ve always been [skating]. So I don’t think that people are angry that people are skating. It’s not “we don’t want them to skate”, it’s more that we want them to skate and respect that we’ve been doing it and it’s not new. It’s mainstream now, but marginalized groups have always been into skating.
Marc: When you are stocking things for the store, is there an “ideal Low Life customer” in your brain, or is it just more what you respond to?
Tracey: I think right now we’re trying to listen to our customer’s needs, and make sure that we can have that stuff available locally. But we try to stick with brands that we know, and what we’re used to. People are looking for lower price points as well, and we don’t want to just bring anything, we want to bring in brands where it’s still a good product, brands that we’ve been dealing with for a long time. It’s been hard to get stocks during the pandemic, so we have brought in some stuff that we haven’t carried before. We have way more recreational skates than we’ve ever had. If you came in two years ago, we didn’t have half of these skates. It was more derby-oriented, park skates. We had a few rec skates but really limited quantities. We mostly ordered for specific customers if they wanted a specific skate, we could get it on order. Now we’re stocking more rec skates because that’s where demand is. I don’t know if there’s an “ideal” customer.
Lorianne: A respectful one that listens, and is happy to skate, and is happy to learn. It’s a lot of marginalized groups [in skating], and roller derby was a very tight community, and now it’s everybody. So it’s just different. But we love everyone! We love skating, we want to be inclusive, everyone is our ideal customer as long as they wanna skate and respect us.
Or “Rollerblades”, but that’s a generic trademark, like Ziploc being a catch-all term for resealable plastic bags.
Merlin perhaps also invented the rollerskating accident: At a party, Merlin decided to skate around while playing the violin (dudes rock). He then “impelled himself against a mirror of more than five hundred pounds value, dashed it to atoms, broke his instrument to pieces and wounded himself most severely”.
No one is too cool for safety gear. I’ve broken my wrist falling off of skates without wearing gear, and it was a very silly and expensive thing to do.