Eventrac News

Roller Frenzy in Paris

12 Dec, 2024 02:27 By: Ceri Rees

As part of our run up to Paris Olympics, Wild Running Founder Ceri, has decided to
look back to his time spent as an English assistant in Paris in the late 1990s, when he also
wrote a regular newspaper column for The News, as their Paris correspondent. What was
happening on the streets of Paris back in 1997 and how have times changed?
In the 1990s, Kate Moss was still appearing in Paris fashion shoots wearing Adidas Sambas
and Gazelles were still a popular casual fashion choice. This year, Adidas will be sponsoring
the GB team kit, so expect to see a lot more of that around.
*. *. *. *. *. *
Like dance music in the early 1990s, rollerblading is threatening to become the new all-
embracing, gender mixing urban activity for the millennium.
Formerly associated with the more sports friendly Los Angeles, in Paris the patin patent has
gone plc, as even those with a near-death experience of the Walkman and knee-pad
fraternity are signing up to this new form of social transportation. The same people, to him
the label ‘metro, boulot, dodo’ could once have been affixed with super glue, are now saying
‘four wheels bad, six wheels good…rejoignez-nous’.

The city’s police force is training young officers to kerb cruise as a cheap method of keeping
pace with the increasingly mobile criminal.
Meanwhile, torporous teenagers and anti-fashion folk of all ages are being lured out of their
boudoirs and on to the boulevards for la Friday night fever on wheels.
On Friday evenings at the Place D’Italie, hundreds of people are congregating for the
nocturnal pilgrimage around the arondissements, led by a team of roller police and yellow T-
shirted staff, for what will probably soon be the jackpot job for jobseekers down at the
ANPE.

The ‘Paris Roller’ as it’s known, begins at 10pm after a quick briefing, which is broadcast to
the crowd over a background of ambient music. The PR, which also attracts skateboards and
pedallers, perhaps in solidarity against the city’s suffocating roads and sweltering metros,
meanders through Bastille, Pere Lachaise, in the North and East, and then back down to the
Nation.

From here it’s west to Beauborg, Gare du Nord, Opera and the Latin Quarter. Many more
join up along the way, latching on to the peloton from trendy streetside cafes. Many do not
make it back to the Place d’Italie, choosing instead to catch that last metro home, which
leaves at 12.40am. For those who do however, there is the prospect of a cool beer or three,
at one of the nearby thirst throttlers, on Rue de la Butte Aux Cailles, or des Cinq Diamants.
If you are the type who walks into lampposts, or gets stuck in revolving doors, don’t worry,
there’s still hope…in the form of a roller ramble for beginners on Sundays in Bastille. (Bd
Bourbon), starting at 2.30pm. Blades can be hired from ‘Nomads’ for 40F (double after 4pm.
Which if they meet your fancy, can be bought afterwards, for as little as 250F.

You can also hire the full monty gladiator pads, a better deal than paying premium
insurance rates.

The police close off most roads along the route. As you attempt to negotiate the Seine-side
promenades around Bastille, you may get the chance to compare your oil tanker turns with
one of the tour barges, whose cargo of Canon wielding visitors will be all too happy to
capture those upended moments.

This was the first in a shameless nostalgia blog series. But if you want a more up to date
glimpse at what athletes may be wearing in Paris this year, check out women’s adidas
tracksuits and men’s adidas tracksuits, men’s adidas running shoes and women’s adidas
running shoes.