Rollerblading is not dead just deep underground. Bearly Dead looks at the rise and fall for the fasting growing action sport of all time.
Rollerblading Facts
- 18th Century: The first “rollerblade” was invented.
- 1991: Rollerblading becomes a $200 million industry.
- 1997: 29.1 million rollerbladers.
- Senate, a rollerblading company, sold 750,000 T-shirts in one year during the late 90’s
- “We are the skateboarders of 20 years ago.” Arlo Eisenberg
Rollerblading was originally known as aggressive inline skating. This documentary, contains a short history of the inline skate, the rollerskate and the skateboard. It also covers the use of the inline skate as a training tool and the boom of companies like Senate. For the rest the documentary is a compilation of a lot of skating footage and chronicles skating from the time it became popular in the nineties to around 2005. Rollerblading had a tremendous impact as a result of the exposure of the X games. The sport had to fight for a place between BMX (which was dwindling at that time) and skateboarding. The popularity of rollerblading dwindled after that, the documentary tries to explain why. Critics will say that the documentary is more like a rock video promoting inline skating. The video contains many shots of professional skaters doing what they are best at. The documentary also contains old footage and TV broadcasts. There is also mention of the IMYTA (I match your trick association), an informal competition among skaters.
Because rollerblading has now, more or less, gone underground, it no longer appears alive, hence the title “Barely Dead”.
There have been a number of “skate documentaries”, Black Market being one of them. Before that there were “Hoax” and “Hoax 2”. The skaters that made these “documentaries” claim that they were actually performing professionally, while claiming that they were making a documentary. Hence the name hoax. And because the first video was successful, another was made: Hoax