 and I'll be your host for this episode. We'll be talking about skating around Davis, and we have two local legends with us, Francis A. Bonn-McKee and Ed Harney. Francis is an outdoor skate park instructor and anti-click scene writer, and Ed is a figure skating coach and national figure championship director. So let's get started. What types of skating do you do? Me? I skate in... Any skating that I can do, anywhere that I can skate, anywhere that I can get away with it is where I try to skate. I definitely go to skate parks, I skate around town, dance in the streets, Cesar Chavez Park, like, anywhere. Yeah. So we'll catch you around Sacramento. Yeah, you'll probably see me skating around just about everywhere. Yes. And Ed? Mine's more on the inside the rink competitive type scenarios where I do figure skating and I actually still also play roller hockey in Woodland where we have a league. We also play there as well, but my main thing is figure skating where I coach. I compete a little bit on the side every now and then just because I still have that bug. So it's more that takes up a lot of my time with figure skating obviously because I enjoy it. And when did you start skating? What age? Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, I started skating for the first time in when I was really little at Kingsgate, way out on Franklin Boulevard in Elk Grove and I was terrible at it. And I would fall all the time, it was awful but I kept going. I don't know why. Pizza, maybe soda was probably like a added perk, you know? But I was terrible at it and then I didn't skate for a really long time until I was probably about 22 years old. And that's when I started skating again out in Hawaii. I played for a roller derby team out there called Hawaii Pacific Roller Derby and I played there for two years and then I transferred over to Oakland and started skating there for the Bay Area Derby Girls. And I skated there for until about 2012? No, that's not right. I started skating with them in 2012. I skated with them for I think maybe like maybe four years, maybe five years? I don't know. That's a significant amount of time. Yeah. Yeah. It was a while. What did you get, your start? Mom and dad met in a rink. They were competitive skaters. I was literally skating in the womb. So I literally skated my whole life. McKinney? Yeah. Ride on now with those wheels. Ride out with skates on. I started really competing when I was five. I actually was a speed skater back then and obviously done pretty much all the gambit speed and figure and hockey and all of that. Literally, my whole life. Uh-huh. Yeah. Right now, do you have a focus on a type of skating that you do? Mine is obviously still the figure, but I still have my one night of hockey. I still like to have that, but I'm very involved with the figure skating as a coach and as you mentioned, a director where I'm actually doing a lot of the contests as an official now. So that's why I don't skate as much because I'm more on the stage with the blue blazer. One of those guys where I spent a lot of time volunteering, I'm on a lot of committees and I do a lot of that kind of stuff for figure skating. And do you have any current inspirations or did you have any childhood inspirations that kind of led you to like keep skating today? Patrick Swayze. Patrick Swayze, okay. Oh, I'm gonna throw something out at you. Let me know if you remember this. What's that movie called, that roller skating movie that he was in? It was really, it wasn't the worst roller skating movie ever, but it was up there. It was like Rollertown USA. Rollertown, now that was one, yeah, back at the disco days. Exactly, there was a couple. Roller Boogie, Rollertown, yeah, yeah, there was. Oh man. Well, he does like this whole scene where he's dancing around this like super extravagant roller rink that I don't think actually exists. But, or maybe a dead, who knows, I don't know. But he is wearing like all leather with like a leather vest and just a real cool guy and he's like whipping his belts around and stuff. And it kind of reminds me of the choreography from Dirty Dancing a little bit. Yeah, but it was before Dirty Dancing. Anyway, Patrick Choisey's kind of amazing and that was a magical moment. That was a big inspiration, huh? Well, not the biggest inspiration, just like an inspiration maybe. Maybe it's the leather, but Estrogen. Estrogen as well, yeah. It's a huge, yeah, somebody who, if you don't know who she is, look her up. She's online and she does amazing stuff on her roller skates, just these feats of strength and these acrobatic moves, this skater named Kid Ace. She's amazing. She just did this really sick backflip in a bowl recently that just blew my mind and it was incredibly graceful. She has like this dance background that she's applying to her skating that looks really beautiful, but aggressive at the same time. So I've got heroes, but I wouldn't say that they're necessarily like people that I've grown up watching. It's just, I collect heroes as I go. Right, and speaking of which, we're gonna show a clip of some of the skating that happens at the skate park. Woo! Yeah, we'll also do tricks. So you can narrate what's going on. Oh, this is Shasta Park and we're with the Chicks and Bowls crew here in Sacramento just playing around and practicing some stalls, handstands. They're going by so fast, I can't call them all out. Just practicing with a group of women, the whole point of Chicks and Bowls is about getting females into the parks, getting them into meeting other women who are interested in a similar thing, interested in learning about their body and how to move in a space that has a lot of variables and playing tricks on them, like learning how to find your balance between your tracks on the coping, how to slide, how to come back into the bowl, how to push yourself and maximize what it is that you can do out there. Yeah, absolutely. It's been a really positive impact for me. I know that getting out and skating no matter what form helps me feel centered, grounded, helps me feel more connected to my community, not just the skate community, but the world. I feel like I can take a lot more on. Feels like you have a little super power in your back pocket and then you get to share it with people. Yeah. So I love it. And Ed also has some really wonderful photos to share of his history of skating, so we have. Actually, that's my daughter. It's, like I said, family affair. I grew up with my mom and dad. My kids also skated, obviously in 1997. That was a long time ago, but she actually was skating up to this a couple of years ago. Now she's taking the coach's reins and carrying on the tradition. As I said, as a director, I'm actually also, as the director, get to MC. Most of the, I'm on the microphone, announcing the names, doing a lot of stuff. Somebody happened to get a shout at me with my blue blazer and I was talking and obviously being a little animated with that particular shot. There's always people in the audience shouting down at you and I'm always trying to look up and be as friendly as possible. And actually, there's my skating. Like I said, I do dabble with that every now and then. That was actually last year in April, up in Washington. Looks like a dance routine. Yeah, that's, I'm actually probably doing a foxtrot right about there, because I do kind of the ballroom dancing, tempos, foxtrot, tangos, waltzes on skates. So that's kind of what that is. So that's my, my side job is a little competition on the side. That's awesome. Tango on skates? Absolutely, absolutely. Do you do it with a partner? I have had a couple partners over the years. I'm not right now, because that's a lot of time commitment, which I don't have because of the official side, but skating with a partner is always a lot more fun. Yeah, and as you mentioned, there's chicks and bulls chapters around the world. All over the world. And as someone in Davis, I am hoping to get that movement and momentum going here. It's a college town. And that woodland rink that you mentioned, I believe that used to be in Davis, and it got shut down, right? Right down the street down here. Yes, we used to play right there. And so obviously the 90s with rollerblading, that kind of made a lot of skating go away. And I'm wondering how would you suggest, like how do you bring people or tell people, like how do you share the sport of skating to people who might not be comfortable on wheels and have never done this before? Like I didn't really start skating until I was 24. Right, for me, I mean, might probably a little bit different than yours. I can use the 70s, 80s, and 90s mom and dad skated, hey, get your kids back in. Remember you used to skate when you were in high school and come back, because it was so popular back then. So that's kind of my thing is like, hey, come on back in, make it a family night. Kind of a lot of the rinks have those kind of evenings and stuff is make it a whole family thing. And that kind of gets maybe the bug into them and maybe they want to go into competition or do that kind of thing. I feel like that's really helpful for getting kids back into it because you're bringing your parents in, the kids are coming in, and then there's classes and all kinds of stuff that you can get involved in at the rink. I know for adults, like once you kind of get into like the college scene and things after that and you don't have kids, like getting those people into skating is like a different, I don't even know how to describe it, but it's like a different thing. You gotta take a different path with it. And there's lots of fun stuff out there, there's camps that you can go to and you don't have to be an expert at it. You can just show up to these camps. Like we've got a camp coming up next month that's gonna be really magical, super fun, over a hundred classes at Woodward West, which is a killer location to explore and adventure as a skater. And there's a hundred classes that you can take and just learn all the aspects of it. It'll be spread. And what do you say that they're like, skating is pretty much an ageless and timeless sport. I see people of all ages from like barely two, three to like 60s, 70s at the skate rink, right? There's even, yeah. Absolutely, our national championships, we have kids from five, we have at least a couple that are at like 85. Yeah, one of our biggest events at nationals is the adult divisions, the 65 and over. It's a huge event. So yeah, it is ageless and they love it. You just see the big smiles as they go around skating. Yeah, I definitely would like to encourage people around Davis to hopefully see me skate on the street. Like I recently just saw a roller blader around town so I'm like, okay, I need to track that person down. There's one. I chase them. I'll go, hey, hey, roller skates! Or whatever they got on their feet. And I'll chase them down. I'll be like, where'd you get your skates? How long have you been skating? Like get in there. Just, hi, who are you? I see you've got skates. I roll too. What's up? Yeah. Where are you like, do you want to go trail ride? What do you do? Yes. I don't know. I'm very out there though. Uh-huh. No, I've noticed both at Skate Parks and at the Skating Rink but he'll skate in that everyone's been really supportive and very encouraging of you to go at your own pace but still try and learn and pick up new tricks. And I think a college campus would be the great platform for it here in Davis. Absolutely. So as we wrap up, I'd like to go over the few websites and resources that we have that we can share. So for indoor skating, we have USA Roller Sports and Foothill Skate Inn where you can see Ed teaching everyone proper techniques and how to safely skate. And we also have the Chicks and Bulls where there is a Sacramento chapter but not a Davis one yet. And anti-click scene. Yeah, anti-click scene. Check it out. We've got our newest scene out right now featuring skaters from around the world including a legend from the Southern California scene, Duke Rennie. He's been skating since the 70s and competing and he's been around and seen it all and he is still shredding it in the parks. It's amazing to watch. Like Roller Skating keeps you young, man. Yeah, absolutely. It really does. Absolutely. It keeps you young, keeps you happy, keeps you sane. Oh my gosh. Thank you both so much for being here. This has been a blast. Thank you for watching in the studio. And thank you so much for joining us here at Davis Media Access.