This is a moment for roller skating. Old-school, four-wheeled roller skates—“quads,” skaters call them—gliding on oval floors underneath disco lights, or aggressively digging into outdoor trails. Think of Usher rolling out with his wheeled troupe during the Super Bowl 58 halftime show, doing spins, skating through the space between Will.i.am’s legs and having a hell of a good time. Watch Marvel’s Echo, which has a “Die Hard in a skate rink” episode. Better still, simply look up and down the 18b Arts District’s Main Street on any given weekend evening for the skaters taking advantage of the neighborhood’s extra-wide sidewalks, floating happily through the bar-hopping crowds.

This isn’t just a great cultural moment for skating; it’s a great moment to put on skates and have fun, period. And this classic all-ages activity is thriving in Vegas, where nearly every flat surface has roll potential. Local skate shop owners say that since the pandemic, interest in roller skating has ballooned across the Valley. And undefeated boxing champ and Vegas resident Floyd Mayweather Jr. took his love of skating to a new level when he purchased Crystal Palace, a 35-plus-year-old skate rink on Boulder Highway, renaming it Skate Rock City.

The Weekly staff isn’t hell on wheels, though we’d like to be. (And at least one of us owns a pair of Riedell R3s.) We’ve talked with the skate shop owners, nightlife promoters and roller derby skaters driving Vegas’ skate mania, in the hopes that one of them can teach us to skate backwards. Seriously, how cool is that?

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