Recently, draped in multi-colored fairy lights and blasting Christmas music, a group of more than 20 skaters weaved through the streets of Chicago to celebrate the holiday season.
Group leader Tom Grosspietsch, 65, said he hoped the skate would “lift morale” across the city in time for the holiday season, with the route intentionally passing through densely populated areas with restaurants and nightlife.
“It’s like the circus is coming to town, and everyone is honking and screaming and cheering from the bars outside,” Grosspietsch said.
Skating approximately 12 miles on city streets during regular Friday night “Road Raves,” the Windy City Skaters have been putting their wheels on the pavement for more than a decade. Their themed skates often highlight Chicago’s history and take participants from neighborhood to neighborhood to visit little-known landmarks, with past topics such as Malört, cicadas, punk rock and Chicago’s sewer system.
The group of recreational skaters has been meeting since 2008, using social media platforms such as Facebook and Meetup.com to spread the word about the skates, which typically take place every two weeks from May to October. Their Facebook group has over 3,400 members.
“We have a very diverse skateboarding audience, by age, by race, by background, by career, by job,” said Mary Meixner, a Chicago attorney who regularly attends Road Raves. “But at the end of the day, we’re all skater friends. We just want to skate. And I think that’s what’s really cool about these adventurous Friday night skates.
Meixner’s father owned an ice rink in Minnesota for more than 47 years, she said. She “grew up skating,” rollerblading for fun in addition to participating in figure skating competitions during her teenage years.
After moving to Chicago in 2001, she continued skating alone on the city’s trails until she encountered Windy City Skaters about five years ago.
In addition to the community, Meixner said Windy City Skaters’ routes are “truly educational” as she “experiences the city and skates in neighborhoods and communities that I otherwise would have no reason or incentive to go to.” “, she said.
Grosspietsch, who chooses the themes for each skate, studies Chicago history to plan his routes, which he then skates alone at least once on a trial basis.
Over the years, the group has hosted skates centered around the Great Chicago Fire, the Rolling Stones, labor unions and classic Chicago films like “The Blues Brothers” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
Themes are often “topical,” Grosspietsch said, reflecting current events and current events. He hosted a Road Rave focused on the history of Chicago political conventions during the DNC and a music festival-themed skate during Riot Fest.
As cicada broods emerged this summer, Grosspietsch organized a skate that took participants through insect-themed exhibits at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum and Field Museum, a cicada-free zone at Navy Pier and a cafe that served fried cicadas during another insect outbreak in 1990.
He also led a Jeppson’s Malört-themed skate centered around Chicago’s iconic liquor, for which stops included the Malört Distillery, several of Chicago’s best Malört bars, and the drink’s birthplace Near North Side.
Windy City Skaters also hosts a free, multi-day street skating event in September called Skate Chicago, with daily themed skates of up to 20 miles. One of this year’s skates focused on the “Wizard of Oz” story in Chicago, taking in sites such as author L. Frank Baum’s former home in Humboldt Park and Oz Park of the city.
Skaters from all over the country “come down to Chicago” for the event, said John Price, a regular with the Windy City Skaters. One of this year’s skates drew about 200 people, he said, including about “47 people from Miami alone.”
Price, 57, lives in Milwaukee and travels to Chicago every two weeks to participate in Road Raves. He’s only missed one skate in the past three years — and that’s because his car broke down, he said.
“The first time I went with Windy City Skaters to a Road Rave, we went on the 606 and at one point one of my shoelaces, the shoelace loop, went around my wheel and threw me to the ground , making a hole. in my jeans and like a big scab on my knee,” Price said. “These guys are hardcore…I was hooked at that point.”
Dawn Cooley, a minister who moved from Chicago to Minneapolis last year, has already started trying to “start something similar” to Windy City Skaters in her new city.
“I loved everything about it,” Cooley said. “As a newcomer to Chicagoland, it was an incredible way to experience the city in a way I never could have… And skating around Chicago, especially at night, when the sun went down, is simply the most magical thing.
Windy City Skaters is a “third place on wheels,” Cooley said. During the Road Raves, she said, it was “so easy to skate with someone and have a good conversation for 10 minutes, and then they move into the intersection and you find yourself talking to someone.” ‘another’.
Averagely lasting two and a half to three hours, Road Raves travel a network of bike paths and side streets, with brief stops at key sites related to the theme of the day’s itinerary, Grosspietsch said .
They are careful to “keep the group together,” Grosspietsch said, never extending more than two or three blocks and stopping to allow stragglers to catch up.
“It’s not a race,” Grosspietsch said. “No one wins. There are no medals, no glory, no podiums, no money. »
The basic rules of Road Raves include stopping at red lights and staying in either a bike lane or traffic lane, Grosspietsch said. Although most participants are inline skaters, bikers and skateboarders are also welcome, with skates typically attracting between 30 and 60 people.
Chicago has a rich skating community, people said, with groups dedicated to roller derby, rink skating, speed skating, ice skating and “JB Skating,” a dance style that originated in the South. Side of Chicago and generally practiced for the soul or the public. funk music.
Nate Hill, a 33-year-old who runs his own software company, became interested in skating after joining Windy City Skaters more than two years ago and said it was now “one of his activities favorites”. He now organizes group skates during the Windy City Skaters’ winter off-season and started a Reddit page to inspire a “common bond” between Chicago’s different skating subcultures and raise awareness of new skating events.
“One of my goals is to try to connect skaters from different communities,” Hill said. “I’m really grateful for what Tom (Grosspietsch) is doing, because it got me into skating. If I could somehow pay it forward and try to do the same for other people, it would be worth it.
One of the Windy City Skaters’ Road Raves, which they’ve repeated twice this year, focuses on the history of roller skating in Chicago. Stops along the way include the restaurant where promoter Leo A. Seltzer developed the blueprint for the sport of roller derby, the former homes of old roller skating rinks, the roller skate factories and the mail order warehouse of Montgomery Ward where employees roamed the large space wearing skates.
Grosspietsch, who has been inline skating for 30 years, noted that Chicago is an ideal city for skating given its bike paths and flat landscape. Rather than circling indoors, he says, “with inline skates, the whole world is your rink.”
He said his ultimate goal with Windy City Skaters was to “build a community.”
“We’re sort of outcasts,” Grosspietsch said. “We are skaters in the world of walkers, runners, bikers and cars…So we are inclusive, we let anyone skate with us. That’s why we let them do it. We wait for the slower skaters in the back to catch up. We don’t leave anyone outside. We don’t abandon anyone. »
