I wrote on this once and deleted the entire post. I don’t want this to come off as some whiny diatribe about how something, something, something. Lord fucking knows the internet needs another one of those.

This is only meant as a humorous attempt to talk about something that happens from time to time. If it doesn’t come across as that, hide under a blanket and cry if you’re not doing that already.

You know what I’m talking about.

The bomb.

The rollerblade bomb.

You know you’ve hesitated to tell a girl right away that you rollerbladed. Admit it. You’re guilty of it.

Fuck, I’m learning I better start doing it.

About a month ago I had half my face shredded off. Wounds still fairly fresh on my dome, I decide to go to a bar. I figured if I talked to any girl that night, I had more than two words to say to her, which is two more than normal.

There was the typical girl in San Francisco sitting by herself at a bar: pretty, young, dressed well, and waiting for the next guy to buy her drink. This one looked like a combination of a cute TV reporter I used to know and Colbie Smulders, or the hot brunette from How I Met Your Mother.

She approached me. We talked for a little bit. She said she had a boring office job, which they all do. She said she wanted to do something else. I don’t remember what it was. It was probably becoming a certified yoga teacher, organic kelp farmer, or something.

She asked what happened to my face. I told her I crashed into a friend at the skate park.

“Skate park. Oh, so you skateboard?”

It’s the usual assumption, so there’s no point in even talking about it.

“No. I rollerblade.”

“Rollerblade?”

This girl stands out because her eyebrow twitched and the corner of her mouth yanked so far back on her face I thought she just had a brain embolism and a major vessel in her brain ruptured. Normally it’s the same expression the first time you fart around her, so long as that first moment is the moment of silence at her father’s funeral.

The about-face she did was fucking so amazing that I wish I had it on video. It was comical, like I told her I had a needle-thin dick covered in AIDS. I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.

Either way, it’s the typical reaction from uppity girls:

Which brings this response from us:

Just another day in the blader dating game.

Playa, playa.

Okay, not at all.

I was talking to Justin Hertel, owner of Aggressive Mall, Trust, and all other sorts of cool shit, about this same topic not too long ago. He said he waits until date No. 2 to drop the bomb that he “owns a rollerblade shop.” I mean, yeah, it’s the biggest shop in the world, but it’s still a rollerblade shop.

I’ve written about similar incidents involving bladers at bars and why rollerblading isn’t cool. Why is it such a popular theme?

Because I like to bitch.

Now, I could say any and all demise with members of the opposite sex could be in part because of major defects in our personalities and the struggle of how we were bred as hunter-gatherers for 8 million years and now we’re forced into a society where we’re told to sit down, shut up, and mindlessly do a job, but where’s the fun in that? I’m one of those people who find it healthy to blame all of my problems on others, despite the fact the only thing all my problems have in common is me.

But let’s face it: there’s a good chance the one thing we all share in common can be a serious cockblock at times.

I’m not saying blading doesn’t have its groupies. I’m not saying blading doesn’t have its girls that jump from blader dick to blader dick. Any sport, from yoyoing to downhill Big Wheel luge, will have those girls. Then again, most dudes I know looking for a quality woman aren’t looking for someone who’s been around the block with their friends. They’re looking for that one girl. That one cool one that gets it.

Where do you find those women?

We could have an online dating site ready to connect us to ones seeking our lifestyle. Such as…

A writer over at Vice magazine recently did a piece on the online dating site that bills itself as a meat market for people who want to tell their friends they’re dating a “skater boy.” As with most Vice columns, this one contained a bad social experience that needed to be shared, for some God awful reason.

For those looking for the TL;DR of the article here it is: a girl who used to hang out at Pac-Sun wanted to find a love connection with a skater, so she tried the dating site DateSkaters.com. Her specimen’s code name was “ToekneeHawt.” He was 32 years old, wore those shoes that look like the gloves your mom wears when she does the dishes, they got drunk, talked about and consumed pharmaceutical drugs without a prescription, he complained about his ex, and ended up throwing up at the bar. There’s no date No. 2 in that future.

Not that any Vice writer would ever find something outside their own perspective, but before this goes any further, this needs to be said: Vice’s investigative reporting is some of the best in the business right now. Their lifestyle columnists, well, they need a life.

They may have passed on Dateskaters.com, but there looks like some quality meat circulating through that market. I call dibs on karies1959 or steppenout:

I would honestly, for the sake of science, like to hear about a blader who went on a date from someone on that site and drop the blader bomb on them on the first date.

You’ll either get scoffed at or still get thrown around under the sheets. Then again, I’m sure anyone cruising that site wouldn’t know the difference between a skateboard and rollerblades, so just collect your VD and call it a night.

But careful what you call yourself on that site because some bladers take serious offense to identifying themselves as “skaters.”

Honestly, though, it seems like the skater from the Vice article was yet another long line of posers, people identifying themselves with something for no reason other than the public perception. You all know skateboarders like this. They’re the ones spending more time at the skate park holding their board than actually riding it. They wear the skating clothes and cruise the malls. They bring their skateboards with them everywhere so they’re easily identifiable as a douche.

They’re about three years ahead of the scooter generation, so at least they have that going for them.

Because let’s face it, no self-respecting skater would wear barefoot running shoes.

I still consider it a blessing that there are few posers in blading. While their parents’ money is good for building up an industry, at least you know if you see someone wearing skating gear that they’re not some chump just trying to look cool and pick up girls.

You’d be better off faking cancer for sympathy than trying to use blading to get laid. Seriously, unless you’re at the ranks of Chris Haffey, Brian Aragon, or that lovable scamp Chris Farmer, don’t cry foul when you’re little fruit boots don’t make panties slip off like roofies.

In essence, we’re like the ugly girls in high school who have to develop quality personalities instead of just resting on what’s apparent from the outside. I’m pretty sure John Hughes could make a movie about it. It would be sad and depressing and we could all have ourselves a good cry.

Cry over what? I’m not sure. I don’t see the point in my own bitching anymore. It’s fucking dumb, really it is.

The only thing that separates us from other sports is public opinion. Most rollerbladers have the same kind of dedication to blading than some Olympic athletes.

We are motivated in improving ourselves.

We are dedicated to those we love.

We seek challenges.

We know what makes us happy.

We care about something.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a girl who can hang with the homies, understands why you do what you do, and doesn’t give you too much shit about it. Granted, when you get a girl like that, you better notice it and take damn good care of her. Throw a ring on her finger and hook yourself a good one.

I’ve seen it happen. I know many of men who have turned cool chicks into amazing wives. I know guys who support their women because they support them in their blading and everything else they do.

Trust me, even if you deny it until the day you die, that’s what you want.

The easiest way to do that is to date a fellow blader. We have female ones and some of them aren’t too damn shabby looking and can emasculate most of us on wheels. But, the dangers of that go with the dangers of only hanging out with skaters: you may miss out on some of the normal parts of life.

Now I will never advocate that normal should never described, but there’s great advantage in dating someone who doesn’t do the exact same things as you do. You have to diversify, yo.

Or you could just swear yourself single and never venture into the dating world, but I suggest against that. Dating a woman can be either the most challenging thing you’ll ever do, or the easiest thing, depending on your selection process and how much shit you’re willing to take in exchange for it.

Women bring a lot of damn good qualities into life. The right one gets what you do and why you do it and thinks it’s an admirable trait. The right one will take you out of your comfort zone and into places filled with no one you have anything in common with just so you have the opportunity to grow as a person.

And putting our penises into women has been an evolutionary trait that has helped us populate the planet to the point of extinction. It’s just what we like to do. Deal with it.

For any woman brave enough to venture our way, there is a guide available to you. Even at the very worst (which this isn’t), it’s a good thing to read for anyone who has ever read The Idiot’s Guide to Whatever.

If you haven’t read it yet—or casually dropped a link a few times in front of your girlfriend—check out the

The entire blog is written from the long-term girlfriend of a rollerblader. In it, she explains every little bit of unexplained behavior, offers insights to women in her place, and how to stock the necessary supplies.

Just by her first post, I can tell this woman gets it. She sounds fucking awesome.

Instead of mindlessly harping about weird shit her blader boyfriend does, she writes with complete sincerity, almost like a case study of some weird breed of human that’s largely misunderstood by larger society. Which we are, so that’s why her writing is so insightful.

Major topics worth checking out include:

The cool thing about this is seeing an outsider’s perspective in what we do. Instead of hearing the weird nagging girlfriends can do, this woman has a romantic view of what we love. She understands the life and what it means to us. The blog is a great way for anyone new to the life to understand our idiosyncrasies and how to manage them effectively.

For most girls, the trouble is trying to comprehend the whole ordeal of blading. It’s not just something you fucking do on the weekends, it shaped the entire way we grew up. Outside copping a feel at a fucking school dance or two, most of our childhood memories revolve around skating in one way or another.

Every bit of trouble we’ve ever been in is because of our blading friends.

We’ve been arrested together.

We’ve had friends save our asses from possible death.

We did all of this because everyone else was kind of fucking boring or shady.

You bleed with people on a regular basis and you instinctively bond. (I find it oddly strange that women don’t get that this is how guys work, too.)

Also, blading keeps us from becoming fat pieces of shit. It gives us a reason to take care of our bodies. It gives us something to be excited about.

That girl at the bar and every other girl at a bar are going to judge the fuck out of you the instant they meet you. They’ve been genetically programmed to do that so the world wasn’t populated by the lowest common denominator of our species, but we’re going against that now since we forgot to spay and neuter our reality television celebretards.

Old bar skanks will become impregnated by someone dumb enough to not use a condom and they’ll leave the scene to be replaced by others. I mean, yes, the bar whores can help alleviate important animal urges to spread the seed, but thankfully good science has lowered the risk of that seed surviving.

So if you’re looking to lock down a good woman, make sure she’s awesome. If she’s not, kick her. If she is, you make sure you let her know it every damn day. You better be a goddamn sweetheart because a good woman is a hard find.

If you hesitate to tell a girl you blade, you’re already with the wrong woman. If she’s not down with what you do, fuck her.

But don’t make her your girlfriend.



All right. Thanks. I’m done for the night. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Blade or Die,

— Brian Krans

P.S. — Books, mother fucker. Do you read them?

– Rock Town Press

– Aggressive Mall

– Intuition

– European Customers: Freeze Tag on the Highway and A Constant Suicide.

– Amazon

– Kindle

The next book I was a part of will be available soon. It’s about blading. You want to get it. It’s dope.

(Thanks to all those who purchased books since the last Blader Digest. A donation will be made to the Dylan Huntbach fund in Iowa. On behalf of blading as a whole, we can’t thank you enough for your donations and support.)