Skateaway

11″ x 9″ Collage on paper

If you are anywhere as old as me, you probably spent some time on roller skates. My Saturdays were spent at Ups and Downs skating rink rolling around to the great music of the 70’s and 80’s, trying to look cool and catch a boys attention. 

I wouldn’t dare try to skate nowadays, that’s a sure way to break an arm. But I do love this collage that depicts a sliver of my youth and my skating days, including the disco ball, the tape deck and tapes, because “the music make her want to be the story”……

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23 replies to “Skateaway”

  1. ya know growing up in the 70’s -80’s, I never once set foot in a skate away. Wasn’t until my 40’s I went in support of a friends kids party, put one foot out on the waxed floor and said Ah Hell Nah !!!! LOL

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    1. Really?? Skating was one of the only things we could do back in the day, and riding bikes, I suppose it kept me out of trouble until I progressed to the skateboard, then I started hanging out with the skate punks and all hell broke loose! It is a miracle I survived those days, I’ve got scars!

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  2. Love the music, the painting, and the story, Tiffany! Sounds like you had a blast growing up 😊 Only thing I ever did with skates, probably round the late 50’s, was take the wheels off and build a make-shift skateboard, lol!

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    1. Thank you, Adan! I really love the Dire Straits song, always have. That is pretty ingenious making your own skateboard, imagine they only made the steel wheels back then, my first pair were steel, but later they made them rubber, so much smoother! Great memories regardless!

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      1. Oh yeah, those wheels were tough to use, lol! This was late 50s & all we had were asphalt streets, broken sidewalks, and luckily, a church nearby with wide smooth walks. The nuns would come out & chastise us (the clanking of the wheels was terrible loud, lol!), but the priest would smile and wave from a window, so we kept on til the wheels broke off 😊

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  4. Never had roller skates as there were no sidewalks within miles of us. Still the case. I rode dirt bikes, raced motocross and did Evel Knievel-like jumps instead of roller skating. It’s a wonder I survived. Nice collage.

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    1. Haha! I know what you mean, a large part of my childhood we lived in the sticks, but my dad built us a nice big swimming pool one Summer. Before we filled it up with water, we skated that pool till the sun went down, it was an epic time, despite the skinned up knees!

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  5. For me it was a skateboard, but I’m probably your same generation. We did the roller skates at school a few times, but I never had a pair. I think the skateboard was cheaper. What an era that was, before computers, let alone smart phones. My TV was even B&W, and my music came in vinyl, and needed a needle to scratch along its surface. Phones even had dials, some of them.

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      1. Yes, agreed, and I had a strange insight the other day because I saw some old footage of New York from the 20s.

        We think we have all these new experiences that people in the past didn’t have, and that because of this their lives were simpler and perhaps more boring. They couldn’t fly to other countries; they didn’t have computers or the internet; they didn’t have cars, and so on.

        But for each of those there’s a counter experience we don’t have. We don’t know what it’s like to ride a horse for transportation; or to cross the sea in a schooner; and many of us don’t know what it’s like to watch plays instead of television. We turn on the heat, so don’t know what it’s like to use fire to stay warm. The list goes on and on. For each new experience, and old one is lost or sidelined.

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  6. Wonderful retro collage, Tiffany! Yeah, rolling skating was a riot – every weekend at the local roller rink (a school gymnasium). Before that, it was steel wheels on skates with straps & a wing nut – one size fits all. Thanks for evoking the recollection of those good times with your artwork 🙂

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  8. Skating rings was even better than the mall,it was a way of life,what we looked forward to on Friday and Saturday at the skating rink,we had more life back in the day and it felt incredible,truth is alot of technology made more folks lazy and also more depended on big brother,going to the skating rink, Mall, biking, arcade, record store, movie’s, we had things to do and look forward to and if you wanted to play Atari it was a by the way thing,thank you for the taken it back, peace and the best

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    1. Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the arcade, that was a great place to spend Saturdays also! And the record stores, oh my, I spent a lot of time there! Remember when you had to stand in line, overnight sometimes, to buy tickets for concerts?? Kids today are so spoiled!

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      1. Tents, and keeping eyes all awake,kids, grown folks all are spoiled, having to get directions back in the day,now it’s all on your phone,you can clap and turn your lights off,it’s a different world from the technology aspects

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