John Haynes / October 31st, 2011 / Blogs
Occupy Wall Street + Blading

A surreal scene at Zuccotti Park on October 31, 2011.

Everyone is talking about it, some people are afraid of it, some dismiss it, and some identify with it. Everyone is talking about it. Why do big businesses, despite help from the Federal Government (read, you and I), sit on ever taller piles of cash while the rest of us struggle for enough money to afford health care, new blades, etc? I have thought about this before, and since I am a blader, I can’t help but think about where blading fits in. We are a rare breed. I am guessing most of you have met the owner of a company that you love. You may have Julio’s autograph, or maybe you told AJ where a good restaurant is when he came through your town, or maybe you were standing close to Shima during BCSD. So while people protest Wall Street, we blade. Both are necessary; both are exactly what the world needs now.

A protestor at Zuccotti Park on October 31, 2011.

Many of our pros have not gone to college or even finished high school simply because they wanted to spend more time blading. No one cares that much about something they do, and those passionate folks are tightly linked to the companies they represent. A basketball player doesn’t care about his sneaker sponsor, an energy drink doesn’t care about any single individual drinking their product, and Tony Hawk doesn’t care who plays his video game (caring about profits ≠ caring about individuals). Skate companies care; this is maybe why they are not as profitable as any of the aforementioned. We are the protest, you are the protest, and those fed up folks Occupying Wall Street are late to the game we have been playing for years. We have been occupying the streets for years, and choosing small companies that care over big companies that don’t. If you are reading this, congratulations, you stayed, you kept blading, you kept caring. You are the solution. Blade on. — John Haynes

Photo by John Haynes

Discussion / Occupy Wall Street + Blading

Leave a Reply to Dan Browne Cancel Reply

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  • Dan Browne - November 6th, 2011

    John Haynes

    I wrote a big long thing about how this article sucks and that rollerblading has no correlation whatsoever to the protests against the federal reserve and the deregulation of our financial sector, however it got deleted because i forgot to put in my email in the box. so here’s the watered down version.

    Rollerblading isn’t “profitable because they are in no way shape or form similar to the investment banks on wall st. There are multiple reasons.

    Rollerblading companies do not have depositor money to play around with, therefore there is little room for corruption. Rollerblading companies are small because they only deal with their consumers money. They sell kids their shit, they use that money to make more shit to sell. They rarely see any profit for personal gain, it all goes back into the company. Therefore, most of what drives these companies are the passion and love for rollerblading.

    your metaphor for rollerbladers protesting the corruption of the Federal Reserve and the deregulation of the Financial sector was just utter shit. At not one point in time did your writing make sense there. I bet 1/4 of the rollerblading population could name the chairman of the Federal reserve or understand the abuse of derivatives and Credit default swaps that brought about the 2008 financial crisis.

    from interviews where words are pried from pros mouthes as though they were sitting in a dentist chair, to utter shit articles like this. You have further proved to me that One magazine will relentlessly write senselessly about not only rollerblading, but topics they have no understanding of or involvement with whatsoever.

    Sincerely,

    Dan Browne

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