Welcome to skate town

On any given Friday night around 9:30 on Main Street in Santa Monica, when most people are unwinding -- finishing a dinner out, dropping into spots like the Circle Bar for a vodka tonic, or settling into the Library Ale House to nurse a few pints with friends -- there’s a different end-of-the-week ritual racing down the street.

Music blaring, wheels spinning, adrenaline pumping, a weekly cavalcade of in-line skaters speeds by, creating a disco dance parade on wheels that’s called Friday Night Skate.

There’s something quintessentially Southern Californian about people with wheels strapped to their feet. The carhop, the roller derby, it all started here. Worldwide, the image of the Venice Beach babe gliding along the boardwalk wearing nothing but a bikini top, a thong and a pair of skates resonates as the California cliche with its nod to exhibitionism as much as exercise. From “American Graffiti” to Lucy Liu in “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle,” this city has long had a fascination with things that roll.

Today, aggressive in-line skaters show off at the many skate parks; roller-hockey leagues exist for kids and adults; in Venice, there are the wacky roller dancers; and we’ve even seen the retro-hip return of both the roller skate and the roller-skating rink. Skating manages to transcend age and even athletic ability. You can just as easily find a 6-year-old clearing ramps and half-pipes at a skate park in Orange County as a 76-year-old rexing (skating backward) at a rink in Glendale. Bottom line -- L.A. is still a world on wheels.

Wind in the hair, music blaring

Tonight is Susan Jones’ maiden journey with Friday Night Skate. The thirtysomething Beverly Hills talent manager is here with an actress client on kind of a “bonding night” and they’re hooked.

“Normally when I go rollerblading, it’s on the beach, headphones on, head down ... it felt good to be in a group,” Jones says.

This 12-mile “social skate” draws anywhere from 20 to 80 people each week, an eclectic mix that ranges from professional speedskater Jenni Armstrong to novices like Jones. The draw is certainly the camaraderie, the exercise, but in many ways, it’s also the music.

Everything from Coldplay to Motown pumps out of a 35-pound sound system strapped to the back of Chris, tonight’s sound man, 9-inch car speakers ensuring that the group won’t go unnoticed.

As they near the halfway point, veering around the corner of Ocean Avenue and 2nd Street, the skaters are in full stride, the wind in their hair, “I’m Walking on Sunshine” blasting out like an anthem. Cars honk, bewildered passers-by wave and cheer.

“Sailing through those streets, I feel like such a rebel, like part of a gang. It’s pretty long, though,” Jones admits, grabbing hold of a fellow skater to help break her speed at a stoplight, “but they say after the third time, you’re an old pro.”

Dan Benveniste, a 32-year-old engineer, has been a die-hard on the Friday-night skate scene for the past six years and says there are about 10 similar skates across the U.S.

“It’s really popular in Europe. In Paris, they get between 10,000 to 20,000 people every Friday night,” he says.

He’s not sure why L.A. doesn’t get those numbers yet, but suggests perhaps that smaller, more compact cities have more to offer visually in a 12-mile skate. “Even San Francisco gets a few hundred people, and I think it’s because you can see more neighborhoods in a two-hour ride.”

The group meets near the Santa Monica Pier every week, except for the first Friday of every month when they do a Hollywood route, including Hollywood Boulevard and the Sunset Strip.

“It’s a very lively skate because of all of the people around,” says Benveniste. “On Hollywood Boulevard, we become part of the tourist attraction. Tourists don’t know what to make of us.”

It takes a certain kind of personality to want to be on display in such a way, and there’s no better place to find the most vivid characters preening and strutting their stuff than in the skate circle at Windward and the boardwalk on Venice Beach.

Every weekend afternoon, the skate dancers perform here, doing everything from baggy-jeaned hip-hop moves to more graceful synchronized roller-figure skating, in outrageous outfits, including roller skates fashioned from cowboy boots.

One of the most outrageous on the Venice Beach skate scene, though, has to be Debbie Merrill. This tiny, taut, tanorexic bleach blond has been giving in-line skating lessons since 1986, usually in her trademark red, white and blue-striped leotard and matching blades. She’s a former figure skater and her school, in addition to basic in-line skating, teaches roller hockey, in-line figure skating and training for in-line skating marathons.

“I’ve taught people as old as 83 and as young as 4,” she says, weaving in and out of a figure-eight at a dizzying rate. “Another great thing is, almost any size can do it. I’ve had lots of clients who were 200-plus pounds and once they get the fear out of their heads, it’s a great form of exercise for them.”

Beyond bike paths

For the casual in-line skater, the perfectly paved beach bike paths seem like the natural choice for a smooth ride, but the miles of paths and strands that hug the coastline have so much more to offer than just Venice or even Hermosa Beach. The bike path from El Segundo to Marina del Rey usually has fewer people, as does the stretch from the Santa Monica Pier north to Malibu. But the truly dedicated will find more creative places to race without having to dodge sluggish pedestrians or reckless cyclists.

Rob Tokar, a 34-year-old illustrator from Manhattan Beach, is an avid in-line skater and says sometimes timing is everything.

“I get some of my best skating on the roof of parking structures in the wee hours of the night,” he says. “Also, very early in the morning or very late at night, downtown L.A. is great because there are huge, wide roads with virtually no traffic and it’s incredibly scenic.”

There’s another demographic of skater, though, who wouldn’t give the scenery a passing thought -- unless it was about how much they were chewing it up with daring stunts and hair-raising tricks.

The latest trend is aggressive in-line skating, quickly catching up with skateboarding as the hip hobby for teenagers and young adults. It essentially involves trick jumps, spins and unbelievable balancing acts akin to skateboarding moves, but on in-line skates.

For years, like skateboarders, aggressive in-line skaters honed their skills on high school and college campuses, where stairways, rails and concrete fountains were ideal for testing gravity-defying stunts like leaping in the air, grabbing your wheels and then sliding down a narrow iron stair rail.

But schools were getting tired of black marks and cracked pavement from relentless practice sessions and banned skateboards and in-line skates, so skate parks started cropping up all over Southern California.

In Torrance, Kyle Sutton, 20, a tall lanky blond, practices moves, repeatedly trying to fly from one narrow strip of concrete to another, even though they’re about 10 feet apart. He and his friends and girlfriend usually spend Saturday afternoons at the Charles Wilson Community Park. Sutton knows in-line skating still isn’t as popular as skateboarding, but says he likes it because it’s not as trendy.

He and his friends skate just outside the skate park, actually, which like most offers ramps, half-pipes and bowls as well as a separate roller-hockey rink for league games.

But Sutton and his friends won’t go inside this skate park because it’s too expensive, he says, and they enforce the wearing of helmets and protective pads.

“We don’t like to wear those because it restricts our movements, so we stay out here. We’re really street skaters,” Sutton says. “Anyway, it’s $8 and I’d rather go to a free skate park.”

There are several free skate parks in the area, including in Hawthorne, Paramount and Inglewood, and there are plans to build one in Santa Monica at Olympic Boulevard and 14th Street.

One of the best-known skate parks is actually indoors. The Vans Skatepark at the Block in Orange is one of two indoor skate parks in Southern California (the other is a Vans in Ontario) and one of a handful in the world. It’s a massive 46,000-square-foot complex, a skater’s utopia. Even if you don’t skate, the people-watching is great, from the 6- to 8-year-olds who look like mini-pros to older teens who might well be on their way to a career. Aggressive in-line skating is now classified in the extreme-sport category and the top skaters can get lucrative sponsorship and merchandising deals.

Thirteen-year-old Vincent Palasio comes to Vans as often as possible with his brother, and can spend hours working on his halfway hand-plant and 360-safety grab, moves that involve spinning around midair on a ramp while touching down with the hand, either on skates or the ground.

“I enter all the in-line skating competitions. Me and my brother’s dream is to get sponsored,” he says, before racing off to demonstrate another maneuver.

Rink revival?

Jeff Alley, 37, an independent filmmaker in Hollywood, has been playing in adult roller-hockey leagues for years. “I grew up ice-skating, roller-skating, skateboarding, anything with wheels,” he says.

He travels to Redondo Beach to the South Bay T.I.D.E.S. Roller Hockey once a week to let off steam on skates. “It’s $120 for about 14 games, and it’s completely worth it,” he says. “It’s the same kind of charge someone might get from a pickup basketball or softball game, but it’s on skates.”

Across the region, there are leagues for children, teenagers and adults, and the aggressive energy is exactly the same as in ice hockey. The rinks look so similar to ice rinks you’d swear you were watching ice hockey.

Of course, the roller world’s roots don’t lie in a hockey rink or on a vertical ramp in a skate park.

Long before in-line or online, there were good old-fashioned roller skates, what in-line skaters now refer to as “quads,” a reference to the four-wheel base. The predecessor to the “skate park” of course was the good old-fashioned roller-skating rink.

Rinks once dotted the L.A. landscape like Rite-Aids do today, but there are only a few surviving relics. These days, they’re actually having something of a revival, like that other retro pastime of the moment, bowling. In some circles, roller skates are much cooler than in-line skates, in the way that some people prefer trucker hats to baseball caps.

Puma came out with a roller skate last year, the “Rollerkitty,” and Skechers sneaker-style roller skates are so popular that Britney Spears was in negotiations to have a Britney skate designed for her.

At World on Wheels in Mid-City L.A., so many celebrities have either held or attended birthday parties, record-release parties or wrap parties here, the list reads like a guest list at the Lounge. Leonardo DiCaprio, Magic Johnson, Queen Latifah and Hugh Hefner’s favorite bunnies have all laced up here.

Thursday night is “Oldies but Goodies” night, their most popular night, with skating until 1 a.m. From 6 to 9 p.m., the DJ spins jazzy R&B;, and it’s a slower pace, a relaxed crowd, but by about 10 p.m., everything changes. The crowd -- most in their late 20s to early 40s -- are dressed like they’re going to a club. The more people that arrive, the faster they whip around the oval rink, a few more rpms.

And they don’t just skate; they groove, legs whooshing in and out to the rhythm of the beat, hips swaying, many moving seamlessly forward to back, and no matter how crowded it gets or how much dance certain people put into their skate, there’s rarely a collision. On the sidelines, three women and a man grind and sway to the beat like extras from a music video.

Bonnie Bright, a man in his late 60s, is sort of the maitre d’ of World on Wheels. He’s wearing a Kelly green polo shirt and matching ski hat and helps navigate the rows of broken lockers. He rents skates (and socks if needed), although the regulars in the Thursday crowd all seem to have their own skates.

Bright says, “Saturday nights, everything’s different. That’s ‘Space Is the Place.’ ” Saturday night is disco night, the night most Hollywooders head south to groove to some excellent disco music. There are hip-hop nights as well, which attract an even younger crowd, but most regular skaters agree that the scene for teens and early twentysomethings is at Skate Depot in Cerritos.

Most people discover skating when they’re young, and for some it’s a passion that never dies. Moonlight Rollerway in Glendale is one of those places that seems trapped in time -- worn orange shag carpeting lining the walls, the snack bar unchanged since at least the ‘70s. It’s the oldest roller-skating rink in L.A., the only one with a wooden floor.

Like World on Wheels, it’s popular with the fashion-savvy set on the weekends, and Wednesday night it hosts a well-attended “West Hollywood” night, but Tuesday nights are special. The rink’s owner, Dominick Cangelosi, plays live organ music, the same style that played here 50 years ago when the rink opened. And while it’s technically a 25-and-older night, most skaters are 60-plus and have been skating since they were in high school.

They don’t move as quickly as the younger skaters at World on Wheels, but they’re just as graceful, many couples skating so fluidly they look as if they’re waltzing on wheels.

Bill and Mary Chandler, 73 and 72, met at a rink in Pittsburgh in the ‘50s and have been coming to Moonlight Rollerway since they moved here in 1976. They come to socialize with their friends and to skate.

There’s a group of about 20 to 30, and although they’re of a different generation -- wearing different footwear and skating to different music -- they share the same bond as the Friday Night Skate group and the Thursday night regulars at World on Wheels. They’ve formed a community based on a common love of skating.

When it’s time for the last song, the lights come down and the disco ball spins a little slower while Cangelosi performs an organ rendition of “Unforgettable.” Bill and Mary sashay across the wooden floor, pitted from years of skaters, perfectly in sync. He’s slightly behind her in a classic couple’s skate pose, and they move as effortlessly as trained dancers.

When they return from the floor, Mary says, “This is what we grew up on, organ music. This is what was playing when I met Bill.”

A moment like that alone is worth the price of admission.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Safe skating

* Avoid road rash. Make sure to wear your pads and helmet. They will cushion the fall on uneven pavement for all levels of skaters, and give an extra boost of confidence to the novices.

* Hydrate. Remember that skating is a sport, so always have bottled water or a sports drink on hand. The sun and high activity levels can leave you drained and dehydrated, so maintaining your fluids is key to enjoying a great day of skating. Fainting on wheels is not a good thing.

* Master the essentials. Before you try tricks reminiscent of last weekend’s X Games, make sure you can handle the basics. Stopping, turning, slowing down and merging through traffic are the building blocks to bigger and better skating. If you do not have these simple skills perfected, you will more than likely have broken bones to show for it.

* Try the buddy system. Although most people like skating solo, try to skate with a friend or group. Skating with others is more safe than skating alone. If you are injured while skating and can’t move, there is someone to go get help. Besides, anything is more fun when you can laugh at your friends.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Wheeled world

Friday Night Skate

Meet at 8 p.m., roll out at 8:30 p.m. every Friday in Santa Monica. Starts at the cannon near the entrance to Santa Monica Pier (on the corner of Ocean and Colorado avenues). For information,

(310) 57-SKATE or www.fridaynightskate.org.

Great skate parks

* Vans Skatepark at The Block

at Orange

20 City Blvd. West, Orange

* Vans Skatepark

4758 E. Mills Circle, Ontario

(909) 476-5914

* Charles Wilson Community Park

2100 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance

* Papa Jack’s Skate Park

23415 Civic Center Way, Malibu (310) 456-1441

* Pedlow Field Skate Park

17334 Victory Blvd., Van Nuys (818) 266-6991

* Northridge Skate Park

9305 Shirley Ave., Northridge (818) 341-4758

* Hermosa Beach Skate Track

710 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach

(310) 318-0280

Great places to blade

* The Strand, Hermosa Beach

Hermosa and Pier avenues, Hermosa Beach

* Santa Monica State Beach

Pacific Coast Highway,

Santa Monica

* Pan Pacific Park

7600 Beverly Blvd., L.A.

* The Strand, Marina del Rey

Washington Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, Marina del Rey

Roller-skating rinks

* Moonlight Rollerway

5110 San Fernando Road, Glendale

(818) 241-3630

* World on Wheels

4645 1/2 Venice Blvd., L.A.

(323) 933-3333

* Skate Depot Cerritos

11113 E. 183rd St., Cerritos

(562) 924-0911

* Northridge Skateland

18140 Parthenia St., Northridge (818) 885-7655

* Rollerdome

950 E. Avenida de los Arboles, Thousand Oaks

(805) 493-8800

Roller hockey

* Burbank Roller Hockey Center

3211 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank (818) 845-0960

* South Bay T.I.D.E.S.

Roller Hockey Club

2606 Ripley Ave., Redondo Beach (310) 543-9939

Web sites

beachskaters.com

www.fridaynightskate.org

www.skategreat.com