Pari Roller

I first discovered Pari Roller by accident when Giang and I were heading out to the bars and happened to run into the event in action. The video at the end of this post shows our initial shock of the event. At first I threw out the idea of doing this since I was traveling and Giang was still semi-temporarily stationed in Paris. But eventually that mentality would change.

I hadn't roller bladed since Middle School, and living in Kansas City, there wasn't much opportunities. I decided to splurge and buy a pair of roller blades. Giang was in the same situation and decided to jump on board. We went to Decathlon, a sporting goods store. I bought the cheapest Decathlon branded skates that came to 40€. We roller bladed home from the store to help get the feel back. Once home I immediately took off my brakes.



Every Friday and Sunday, Sunday is for beginners, there is a huge roller blade Paris circuit with police escorts. The route is different every time, but the distance is roughly 30km. The start of the skate off is at 10pm and goes till 1am. That following Friday, Giang and I left early on skates towards the Montparnasse Bienvenüe metro stop where the gathering spot was located. On our way there we met up with several other skaters and followed them there.



There was one skater with a huge speaker box with four 6.5in speakers playing techno music. There were so many skaters it was hard to maneuver a lot of the time. I ended up skating near the speaker guy and these group of 3 skaters would keep passing us and cut us off, then slow down, and then pass us again, bumping us every time. We were so sick of it. By the fourth time I decided to bump check the guy that kept passing me into a tree. We never saw those guys again. Immediately afterwards I skated by some police officers. It was all good.



Giang ended up taking a fall. Luckily he was wearing knee, elbow and wrist pads. However he did end up scraping his chin, which is pretty amazing if you think about it. Nonetheless we continued on. The ride was amazing and the route led through a lot of the sights of Paris, such as the Eiffel Tower.

People skating in front raise their hands in situations when a skaters falls, there's rough concrete, or any situation where we all need to slow down or stop. Usually the sharp scent of burnt plastic warns you well a head of time as people grind their brakes or their wheels to stop. It looks like it is raining in the pictures below, but actually its just that my lens on my point and shoot is really dirty.



Here is a video summary of us discovering the event and then us participating in it and finally what went down.