Any­one that knows me well, will tell you that San Fran­cisco and Chicago are prob­a­bly my favorite cities in the U.S. (in that order). This may ruf­fle some feath­ers, but I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with New York. In all of my years vis­it­ing, and briefly liv­ing in, New York, the city so often feels gritty, ridicu­lously crowded, and just so…New York. There are times, how­ever, when I dip into Cen­tral Park, and it’s as if I am in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent world.

Even when there are usu­ally lots of peo­ple in Cen­tral Park, it still feels like a more peace­ful place. A cou­ple of weeks ago, Carla and I were walk­ing through Cen­tral Park, on our back from brunch at the Whit­ney Museum, and we heard some music and spot­ted rollers skaters. Appar­ently, roller skaters have been com­ing to the park every week­end for years. This was all new to me, though. I was really into roller skat­ing when I was in high school, sow we to check out the scene. Not sur­pris­ingly, Carla saw some­one she knew groov­ing her way around the make-shift rink. (You can she rolling through in the back­ground of the first video, with a part­ner, around the 0:30 mark.)

Irre­spec­tive of my bad/bum ankle, these folks made me want to break out some four-wheel skates and relive some mem­o­ries cir­cling the rink at Roller­world in Kala­ma­zoo, Michigan.