I've always felt that one aspect of V-Steps is widely misunderstood, or simply overlooked: they're performed largely on outside edges. This quality alone makes V-Steps an excellent tool for learning to glide for sustained periods on a single skate. That's a hallmark skill that unlocks many other basic skating skills, including the T-Stop and Crossover. Watch both normal-speed playbacks and corresponding 8x slow-motion videos in this video collection. For me, slow-motion videos are a way to understand and learn skating moves. I watch them over and over, imitate the movements physically, and keep going back and forth between observation and practice until the movements begin to make sense. This is how I learn, and perhaps it’s how you learn, too.
V-Steps to Single-skate Gliding, in Slow Motion
I’d been searching for skate bags that could comfortably hold the Powerslide Next skates I’d just bought. I fitted them with an Endless 3x110mm frame and large wheels. These big-wheel skates have been all the rage among urban inline skaters for many years now. They’re great for long-distance skating on rough roads.
But these wheel frames were longer and taller than the usual 4x80mm hockey frames I’d skated in the past, such as the ones on my True carbon skates. These hard boots were also taller and bulkier than the hybrid carbon-shell boots, such as the Powerslide Tau, that I’d been skating in for the past three years.
These big-wheel skates did not fit any skate bags in my possession. The Inline Warehouse skate bag that had carried many of my past skates, for instance, couldn’t be zipped up when I squeezed a pair of PS Nexts with big wheels into it.
In this treatise, I show four skate bags, their actual measured dimensions, and whether my monster pair of rollerblades fits inside them.
In this journey, I also discovered a new way to pack big-wheel hard boots. I found that I could nest the two skates at right angles. That makes them fit any of the four bags. But this arrangement generates other issues.
As a postscript to Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates, I mentioned that I discovered Powerslide Reign Ares 100. They look like carbon hockey skates. Yet they're equipped with Trinity mounts for big wheel configurations, such as 3x110mm. These skates seemingly disproved my assertion that "you simply can't buy skates with big wheels on full-bodied, carbon hockey shells - they don't exist".
I bought a pair of Reign Ares, heat-molded them, and skated on them. I've examined them, and pondered on the internal structure of these skates for a week now. I've done all I could, to divine how they are made, short of cutting my new skates up. I can confidently say that, "they are no carbon hockey skates".
But I love them. I think they are the best answer to my quest to find big wheels on carbon (almost) hockey skates. This long post documents my journey to customize and set up Reign Ares. I turned them into the right big-wheel skates for me, for urban marathons such as Wednesday Night Skate NYC.
A few weeks ago I set out to write a short article on my quest to get Big Wheels on Carbon Hockey Skates. I organized pictures taken during the quest for illustrations. And I realized there were enough materials to address all topics on which I found no information online, during my quest.
So here is the first installment, on what exactly are carbon-fiber inline skates. How many types are commercially available. How your foot actually feel when you put them on. And how they are made.
I’ve been skating for a while on inline hockey skates with four 80mm wheels. These are normal-sized wheels popular since decades ago. These skates are great for urban skating on paved streets, skating on bike trails, skating at an outdoor rink, slalom skating around cones, and doing two-foot wizard skating moves.
But they are no good for marathon skating like folks do at Wednesday Night Skate NYC. So I set out to get myself a setup with three 110mm wheels. But it turned out that nobody makes carbon-fiber hockey skates that can take wheels bigger than the usual 80mm. So I had to compromise and make modifications to commercially-available skates, in order to mount big wheels on them.
The availability of skateable trails on Long Island is pitiful, compare to that in New York City. Despite having a much larger landmass, Long Island features very few publicly-accessible trails with paved and clean surfaces. To wit, click on the follow image to look at biking trails and bike-friendly roads in Nassau county compared to NYC, Queens and Brooklyn.
But not all biking trails and bike-friendly roads are suitable for inline skating. Some trails go significantly uphill and downhill - a challenge for beginner skaters. Some trails are not regularly maintained, and are full of debris that can trip an oblivious rollerblader. Furthermore, sharing a road with actual traffic is not something an inline skater would normally do.
For street hockey rinks and skateparks near Nassau, including some locations from Queens, head to the article on Public Skateparks on Long Island.
Outside of these parks, there are actually a few nice biking trails near Nassau that are relatively usable for inline skaters. You can find these trails on the Long Island Bikeways & Trailways map, published by the department of transportation.
This is part 2 of a series on Mabrouk. In this part I describe in excruciating details the four slalom components of Mabrouk previously summarized in What is Mabrouk: a slalom variant of Grapevine. I learned to skate a sustained Mabrouk by first practicing the four slalom components, and by connecting them with rudimentary transitions. I later refined these transitions to make the entire Mabrouk sequence flow, but that is for part 3 and beyond of this series.
Mabrouk is a slalom variant of the figure skating move called Grapevine. The Grapevine skating pattern is described and diagramed as early as 1880 by Vandervell and Cox in "A System of Figure-skating". The slalom version is presumably named after Swiss slalomer Eddy Mabrouk. Both Mabrouk and Grapevine employ the same exact 4 components, namely forward/backward criss-cross, and forward/reverse eagle.
While Mabrouk emphasizes curved patterns traced around equal-spaced cones forming a straight line, Grapevine strives to have the skater move in a streamline without giving explicit thoughts to slalom components. The difference can be seen in patterns they trace on the ground as presented below.
Asian Americans who bike or skate know that helmets sold in America are generally not shaped properly for Asian heads. This is a phenomenon alien to most non-Asian people. Lately some brands have come out with so-called "Asian Fit" models. After an extensive research, I think these are just hot air, except for possibly a few exceptions.
Wednesday Night Skate NYC is also known as WNS NYC. It's one of several well-established groups in the city. Some say it's the biggest group of them all. WNS is run by volunteers since the late 1990s. Every Wednesday from April to October, weather permitting, organizers show up wearing yellow-green vests at the south-side steps of Union Square around 7:45pm. By then a sizable crowd of skaters have already gathered at the steps. At 8pm an organizer gives a brief safety speech and introduces the route planner of the week, as even more skaters materialize all of a sudden at the steps. One organizer is appointed the leader of the day, and another the sweeper of the day. Folks are told not to skate ahead of the leader. The sweeper makes sure to leave no skater behind. Shortly after, skaters launch like a swarm of giant locusts, to descend upon the streets of New York City at dusk. The leader signals followers to take breaks at pre-designated stops along the route, so that the rest of the group may catch up, with the sweeper being the last person to arrive at each stop. The route circles back to Union Square, where a day's skating concludes.
Slalom bladers practice at a well-paved area behind Mist Garden at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. The surface of Mist Garden is quite smooth for inline skating as well, when it's not spewing fog and mist. You will find Mist Garden right next to the Unisphere which skateboarders and bladers alike have also turned into a skating rink.
Some of us argue that skating consists of repeated cycles of falls and recoveries. Specifically, a skater deliberately moves her upper body such that shifted center of gravity causes her to "fall". During this fall, she continues to glide on one skate. But at the same time she moves her other skate, the free skate, towards the projection on the ground of her shifting center of gravity, with the aim to recover from the fall by planting the free skate onto the new projected center of gravity. The process now repeats, with the free skate becoming the gliding skate.
If this fall and recovery sound like walking… well, it is walking, but with a special skating gait. In the sequence shown, the skater leans to the left while gliding on his left skate. He is about to fall to the left, but during the fall he moves his right skate, the free skate, over to his left side. He catches his balance at the last second, by planting his right skate on the projection of his shifted center of gravity.
Since the pandemic of 2019, I’ve been regularly inline skating at Eisenhower Park after work. In these last two years, I’ve seen a large number of new skaters show up with a box of new skates at the park. They put on their new inline skates, and struggled around for a while. Most tried to walk around the rink by holding onto handrails at the outermost track. The brave tried to skate and fall. Very few approached me to ask for advise.
So a large number of first-time newbies showed up every week. But I almost never saw them a second time. Perhaps they went to a new park to skate. Perhaps they didn’t hang out around the rink after getting their footing, so to speak. But I suspect that a majority of them gave up.
This article is for those who attempt to learn to inline skate. This article is what I wished someone had written for me, when I was just learning to skate.
Eisenhower Park is one of the few places in Nassau County where an inline skater can practice at an outdoor rink when honing one’s skills, and then stroll leisurely on wheels along scenic trails when just hanging around with friends and family. The rink is accessible all year round, and you will see people there every day. However, skating at the rink in winter months is only for the most determined folks. This article is not about a skatepark with street and transition elements, but I include it as a honorable mention as a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Rockaway Skatepark in Queens was destroyed by Sandy. It was rebuilt, then reopened in 2020. This new and large facility features butter-smooth surface at the writing of this article, with both street and transition elements, plus a long bowl which connects with the main skating plaza. Rockaway Skatepark is located at the west end of Rockaway Beach. The new boardwalk passes next to the skatepark. And the Atlantic Ocean is just 200 feet away. Its sister Far Rockaway Skatepark is located at the east end of the same beach, 3.5 miles away. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Oyster Bay Skatepark features both street and transition elements, plus three connected bowls. Despite the name, this skatepark is actually located at Bethpage, not Oyster Bay. In fact, it's part of the Bethpage Community Park, which is not far away from the huge Bethpage State Park. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Manorhaven Beach Skatepark features both street and transition elements. There is a raise platform in the middle of the plaza, with traffic flowing around this platform. At the time of this writing, it is the only public skatepark on all of North Shore Long Island. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Long Beach Skatepark features both street and transition elements, plus a large bowl. It is located between an outdoor hockey rink and the Municipal Boat Launch Ramp. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Kennedy Skatepark is officially named Jarred A. Newallo Skatepark. It is located in the Town of Hempstead, in Nassau County. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Maloof Skatepark is a 16,000 square-foot facility within Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens. It features street and transition elements on three levels. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Far Rockaway Skatepark in Queens is a 15,700 square feet facility featuring both street and transition elements. It is located at the east end of Rockaway Beach. Its sister Rockaway Skatepark is located at the west end of the same beach, 3.5 miles away. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Canarsie Skatepark located in Brooklyn stands out among other skateparks in Long Island, in that it features a perimeter trail around the main skate plaza. Various ramps and obstacles are scattered along this trail, making cruising this trail a unique experience for inline skaters. This article is a part of my Public Skateparks on Long Island series.
Astoria Skatepark is located right under the Triborough Bridge. It is a 21,500-square-foot installation with transitions on three levels of surfaces including concrete and bricks. For inline skaters, there are also paved trails around the Astoria Park, and an entire shoreline street closed to motor vehicles for bikes and skaters.
There are lots of "best skateparks on Long Island" articles online. Many are written by newspaper folks who didn't skate. They probably gathered random bits and pieces of information elsewhere to hand in an assignment. Some are made by websites for the purpose of showing you ads after you click on their click bait titles. Some write about skateparks accessible only to local residents. A few are written by reputable thrasher sources. But none of them have extensive pictures showing what each publicly-accessible skatepark has to offer, with accompanying videos. I intend to fill in this gap.
This is a follow-up to my previous article: Learn to Skate the Two-foot Grapevine Analytically from 2016. The first article talked about skating Grapevine on ice. This article discusses how to skate the same Grapevine on inline skates. Almost everything from the first article applies to this article. Thus this article will not repeat the same prerequisite skills and context information about Grapevine that I already covered in the first article. This article will focus on showing differences found when skating this move on pavement, compared to ice.