[ electronic dance music playing ]
MAN: Every city --
Chicago or New York, San Francisco,
everybody's got their own style of skating.
You could call it rhythm skating.
MAN: We're not professionals.
We don't get paid, we don't get medals.
I don't think we look for them, either.
MAN: You know, everybody thinks
it's like roller disco with disco balls
and bell-bottom jeans.
They just have, like, no conception of what it really is.
MAN: It's not your grandma and grandpa's organ music style.
It's...
[ laughs ]
It's get down and boogie.
We call it rexing.
It's done to the beat of the music.
[ dance music playing ]
They call me Spinner.
It's a name they gave me many years ago
because I like to do a spin on the corners.
MAN: We call it soul skating.
Strictly from the soul.
They say I'm good. I don't know.
I don't do any jumps, flips and twists and...
I used to, though.
But now I'm 65, and I'm broke down
and I gotta take it easy.
I love to burn that energy like I was still a young kid.
It makes me feel good
and keeps me, some say, looking good.
[ chuckles ]
A lot of work, lot of work.
[ Michael Jackson's "Thriller" plays ]
MAN: I'd say my style most closely resembles
J.B. skating, James Brown skating.
James Brown had what we call footwork.
I would always ask people, "Am I doing this right?"
People would say, "There's no handbook."
No, you learn the basics
and then you put your own panache on it, if you will.
My name is Ezell Watson III,
and my skater name is Mighty Chondria.
Strolling is something that I learned in Dallas.
A stroll is a synchronized way of skating
where you're usually moving around the entire rink
and doing a series of different steps.
SPINNER: They will follow the exact same pathway
as the next person.
You all get in the same rhythm
and you're just floating along, and it's beautiful.
It just brings back all these happy memories
of me being in line.
In the early '80s, I heard about
another session that was supposed to be really good.
I went there, and I was blown away
from the way people skated.
It was called rexing, and I'd never seen it before.
The man, "Doc" Titus, that was teaching it,
he taught me how to do the 180 jump.
He has kind of changed my life.
I mean, I had been racist at one time in my life.
Because of Doc, I was so open to multiculture people.
My friends and I -- white friends, black friends --
we've started putting together a club.
We were trying to build something in Portland
where we didn't have the prejudice,
we didn't have white or black, we had cross-culture.
And we became cross-culture Rhythm Rollers.
[ dance music plays ]
EZELL: I've skated Dallas, I've skated in Baltimore,
I've skated in D.C.
I've skated quite a few places, and everywhere I go,
I've noticed a higher proportion of black skaters
than what I noticed in Portland.
JON: In Portland, it's more whites than blacks.
It doesn't make me a difference,
because, I mean, we all just skate.
You know, we're rollers. It's what we do. We roll.
And it ain't about your color, it's just...
Do you got a beat?
If you ain't got a beat, then come over here,
and I'll show you how to get a beat.
EZELL: Some of the hurdles that I have faced in Portland
with respect to skating...
have definitely been because of race.
But your love for skating,
be it black, white, any color in between,
your love for skating keeps you coming to the rink.
Love has a way of breaking down barriers.
[ dance music playing ]
Hey, all right!
[ indistinct comments ]
MAN: I definitely would appreciate
just having more rinks around
and just having younger kids more into roller skating.
[ dance music playing ]
My name's Noah Bowers.
I'm 22, and my skate name is Choo Choo,
which I actually got from my parents.
MAN: It's actually brought my family together.
My son is 22 years old.
WOMAN: Noah skates four days a week.
My husband skates like two to three days a week.
Even though I work from 6:00 to 4:00,
7:00 comes, I want to skate.
MAN: I didn't know I liked dancing until I started skating.
Once I got on skates, I felt like I had an excuse
to try whatever I wanted to try as far as dancing goes
because if you look silly, you're on skates.
You know, I just worry about the situation of skating.
You know, I know there's a lot of rinks closing.
We see it here in Portland
and you can see it across the country.
Tonight we're in Gresham, Oregon,
and we're at Gresham Skate World.
And it is the last event for 2Raw here at this place
because this place is closing down
like so many rinks across the United States.
So we're here, and we're throwing our last jam here,
and we're trying to get the word out
that we're not dying,
that we're just moving to Oaks Park,
which is another local rink.
[ hip-hop music playing ]
JON: We're trying to keep a dying thing going.
And I have a lot of friends just like me,
the die-hards, we'll skate until we drop.
[ birds chirping ]
SPINNER: Oaks Park is the only remaining skating rink
within, I would say, 150 miles.
Some of my friends I've skated with
for 35, 40 years are down here every Tuesday night.
It makes my heart feel good just to see
how many people are down here
and the young people that are coming in,
how they are affected, how they are touched by it
as it touches me.
[ hip-hop music playing ]
[ Jaheim's "Put That Woman First" playing ]
Whoa!
BEAU: You actually really get to see, you know,
what someone is feeling on the inside
when they're doing this, and you really can.
You know, when someone is really in the moment,
you really see it in them.
NOAH: I definitely used to be a very shy person.
But just finding roller skating definitely helped me
get out of my comfort zone and just be able
to just have fun in front of everybody.
SPINNER: We're jumping, we're spinning backwards
and spinning around, we're having fun.
For me, skating in this style and in this community
represents everything that's right with the world.
[ "Put That Woman First" continues playing ]