Jose Disla / Kind Grind / Maloof Skateplaza, NYC / 2010

Where do you live now?
I still live in Queens. It’s the best part of being out of N.Y.C. for me. You can enjoy the crazy city life yet escape it by being just 20 minutes away. And you can still own a car, which is a luxury out here, because parking still exists in Queens.

How did you get into blading?
My two brothers and I used to go down to Wollman Rink in Central Park to roll on the new “rollerblades” that were being introduced at the time. Back then we thought going fast was everything, until 1991, when we saw a demo from Team Rollerblade. After that we went back to Queens, built our own launch box, and it all kind of snowballed from there.

Who was the first sibling in your family to get blades?
That would be my brother Harry. He was the oldest and the first with a job. He was able to buy himself his very first pair of those very expensive toys. He was good about it, though; he would let Robert and I take turns wearing them. Robert got on those blades all the time even if they were a few sizes too big. Harry only had his pair of blades for a little while before Robert and I managed to get our pairs, shortly after that, through “hood” means.



Why do you think you and your brothers all skated?
Skating was something we did as a family. My parents used to take us to the roller rinks as kids. It was something we just kept doing as we got older and then we found blading. It was a wrap after that.

Tell me about the D-Clan.
The D-Clan moniker was given to us by friends we grew up skating with. The name was given to us for two reasons. One, it referred to the three of us as a whole, and two, we would always roll up to skate spots in the hooptie, banging the latest from the (Wu-Tang Clan). They were our favorite group back then.