Roller-skate or die!
One closet skater's gang initiation.

By Lynn Rapoport

TOO MANY PEOPLE have lived in my flat over the past 10 years. We try to clean as we go, but it's hard to fight the buildup of busted chairs, leaky film-developer bottles, skateboard decks, melted-down Jesus candles, and deteriorating, outmoded finery. Once in a while something that flirts with greatness floats to the surface. In my case it was a pair of white, size-seven roller skates with sparkly silver laces.

I have conflicted memories of middle school parties at seedy skate rinks – the older kids snorted coke and gave blow jobs in the bathrooms and issued threats when you came in to use the facilities. My jeans were never tight enough, my mother wouldn't let me feather my hair, and on more than one occasion I was lifted out of the way by guys who looked like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused.

So I might have dumped the skates in a box bound for Community Thrift and moved on with my life. But they looked so cute and tough and glittery, I couldn't resist trying them on, and what do you know – they fit like a roller-boogie dream.

They stood shyly communing with my languishing skateboard for a week or so, and then I took them out for a cruise in Golden Gate Park with a friend. We hobbled down the sidewalk toward the conservatory and began teetering up and down the pathways (something I later learned was a park no-no – perhaps no one busted us because we were going so slow that it didn't really resemble skating from a distance). A little farther into the park, the skate spot boom box played funk and disco classics all day long, and the fancy people did tricks like roller-splits and line-skating and other complicated dance routines. We eyed them warily and kept our distance.

I kept falling. My ankles hurt. Teenagers laughed at me. At the end of the day I limped away determined to try again next week. Instead the skates ended up under my desk with the laundry detergent, lonely receptacles for dust.

And that would have been the end, if it weren't for Quality Bad.

Roller-skating was not on my mind the night I went to Slim's to see the Butchies open for Amy Ray. That is, not until I saw a girl gliding around on a pair of black skates with red laces. She had long, multicolored pigtails, and she was decked out in a stripy baseball shirt, a cute skirt, red-and-white-striped tall-boy tube socks, a red felt cowboy hat, wristbands, and sunglasses. Another night, another club, another sighting: This time the place was crawling with girls on wheels. They didn't have matching shiny jackets with their names embroidered on the front, but they were clearly some kind of squad. Transfixed, I imagined myself among them, my skates rescued from dusty oblivion once again. My Doc Martens had looked so tough when I laced them up earlier in the evening, but who was I kidding? – I had to get into the gang.

I tracked down the girl in the pigtails and got a name (of sorts): Kevin's Mom. I asked about the wheels and got an invitation to join. Maybe I gave off the vibe of someone who really needed to be in a skate gang. Maybe she thought I'd look good in tube socks. Whatever her reasons, I was soon a proud recruit of Quality Bad, complete with a tough name (Rowdy), a T-shirt to prove it, and a world of new skate-quaintances. Some I see at least once a week at ATA screenings and poetry readings and dance parties in the neighborhood; others I know only by their gang names and their postings on the Q.B. e-mail list.

At first I was nervous – I could barely stand after putting on my skates, let alone keep up with a hardcore squad of rolling tricksters. But the joys of the Q.B. gang include a very generous standard when it comes to things like talent and active participation in wheeled activities. While the founding members are dead serious about their devotion to skate, many others keep in touch mainly through the list, notifying one another of political and cultural community events – members are encouraged to show up on wheels – posting random bits of poetry, tastefully spamming, and generally using the list as a mini-community message board. That and a web of friendships, plus a few romantic attachments here and there, is part of the glue that holds the gang together.

A recent initiate, I'm still learning the ways of the gang, and the origins of Quality Bad are somewhat shrouded in mystery. Sister Squid recalls being charmed by Xanadu as a child but thinks the catalyst was a group screening of Roller Boogie. The founding members had discovered they shared a fiery passion for the way of the wheel, and they hyped the evening with the motto "Let's get this thing rolling." Asked about the name, Railroad (who once found a pair of skates hanging from a tree by her car at five in the morning) and Kevin's Mom (who bought a pair for 50¢ in a thrift store in Wyoming and once got sent home from school for showing up on roller skates) tell a complicated story involving the Zapatista Caravan and a long bus ride of wretchedly bad puns.

Today Quality Bad is about 60 members strong, including affiliates, with some 20 wildly active local participants and chapters up and down the West Coast, back east, and as far off as Paris and Japan. "It's a global network!" Railroad tells me. Members go by code names and alter egos (and alter egos of alter egos) like Rodeo, Agent Angela, D-Star, Hubcap, Grandpa, Shopping Cart, Masking Tape, Hoodie, and Little Baby Monster Truck – playing fierce and funny at the same time. They have a skate library made up of thrift-store finds and donations. Oakland member Professor Lucie LaFlamme and her sister Missy Octopillar make their own skates out of old parts. Sister Squid's dad joined up during a visit to the coast but is getting his own crew together back in Massachusetts. Q.B. has also formed a loose coalition with a gang of local skater girls called the Mullet Killers. They're still devising a unified aesthetic involving matching jackets, but the basic components of the classic Q.B. ensemble are stripes, glitter, hot pants, leg warmers, tube socks, wrist bands, superhero capes, Sharpie tattoos, and supremely bad attitude. Quality bad attitude, actually.

Given how far-flung Q.B. is, it's hard to pin them down and say "this is what and why they are." They have different reasons for being in the gang, and what it is to be Quality Bad changes meaning from member to member (even the glitter isn't enforced).

Agent Angela says she wants to be just like writer-illustrator Erika Lopez when she grows up and talks about carrying on the traditions of the roller skaters who decades ago started up the party in the park. In the great social debate over blades versus skates, she's a fierce advocate for the latter (a conviction she shares with the gang as a whole). Part of that is about rejecting the technological for something simpler from the past. "It's about the youth, don't you think?" she says. "The whole thing with us being on roller skates is like getting in touch with your roots. Roller-blading is replacing roller skates, and we're trying to go back." Like a true secret agent, she's got some plans up her sleeves. She tells me with a straight face that the next project on her list – before creating a roller-skating rink for the larger community of Q.B.-style outlaws (a long-range gang plan) – is a roller-skating school for gerbils and hamsters, featuring cages "with mini-roller rinks and mini-stereos bumping Cher and Cyndi Lauper." It could be a cover-up, though. And it might have to wait while the gang works out the details of putting out a Q.B. newsletter and a Q.B. zine and recruiting a crew of younger girls to educate about the joys of outdoor skating.

Sister Squid playfully admits to being in a 1978 time warp in terms of style. The '70s were "a weird time," she recognizes, "kind of an age of denial." And it's not that she's lost in the past – her day jobs include working in an environmental-consulting firm and producing the KALW-FM policy-wonk show City Visions. But she sees Q.B. as a way to throw on a pair of skates and escape the stresses and seriousness of her day-to-day life – a viewpoint she probably shares with a city full of obsessed skaters outside the gang.

The gang is filled with poets and artists and teachers and filmmakers. Sister Squid's part of a women's arts collective called Herstory. Fairy Mere works with queer high schoolers. Agent Angela's an illustrator and muralist with work in zines and national queer publications and on the walls of San Francisco buildings. Frog resettles refugees and is organizing for women's arts festival Ladyfest Bay Area, along with Kevin's Mom and Hoodie and Masking Tape (full disclosure: I'm also an organizer). Kevin's Mom also works in the alternative press and once lived on a school bus for nine months, traveling around the country with nine other people making a documentary about community organizing – what she calls "an experiment in nonhierarchical, consensus-based living and working." Masking Tape teaches young girls technology and leadership skills. Hubcap organizes community events like screenings and readings and art parties.

They're mostly women, mostly queer, and they're fairly radical in their politics. They're at the rallies for juvenile justice and the peace marches and the RAWA events. A Q.B. member might have passed you a flyer for the "R X D = [Eros] X [Ethnicity]" installation currently at Intersection for the Arts, or encouraged you to show up at a benefit to send youths on a delegation to Cuba.

Maybe what the gang also shares is a desire to come out in numbers, to be a visible part of the landscape so they can have a say in what the city looks like – something that takes energy and force of mind. Railroad talks about Reclaim the Streets, a direct-action network bent on social and ecological change through strikes and street parties and other fun non-state-sponsored activities. "We share the same vision," she says. "That revolution can be beautiful and sparkly and furry and striped."

It's Quality Bad attitude that gets me and my skates to CELLspace on a recent Tuesday night to check out the weekly "Roller Jam." My Q.B. partner in crime that evening had to flake at the last minute (Quality Bad members have many superpowers but are not impervious to microbes), so I'm dateless and prohibitively self-conscious. The fancy people from the park are there, and I still have an imperfect understanding of how to use my stoppers.

Bad weather (and possibly the forbidding construction in the CELL entryway) has kept away the masses tonight. There are about 10 people spinning around the main room – a couple of guys promenade together; a woman turns in circles on her toes; another guy dances like mad to the funk coming through the speakers. I'm nervous, but the vibe starts to get to me – the amiability is reminiscent of those educational films about cults we were forced to watch in high school. People keep introducing themselves and encouraging me to join in. I'm reluctant, but they're awfully nice and, like the dance music, a little hard to resist. I lace up for a series of lurches around the floor and practice staying vertical while the rest of them do tricks and stay out of my way. (It must be cool to be able to negotiate your moves without capsizing the less talented, more nerve-wracked people on the floor.)

Jonathon Youtt, caretaker of CELLspace, talks to me about "SK8 Dojo," a regular skateboard clinic for youths at CELL, and how he'd like to see one organized for young roller skaters. Someone else mentions the Midnight Rollers Friday Night Skate, a weekly cruise through the city streets that dates back to 1989 and is organized by David "Godfather of Skating" Miles Jr., president of the California Outdoor Rollerskating Association (CORA). Participants have been practicing the integration of skate into their nightlife for years. They even used to make stops at nightclubs like DV8 and the Maritime Hall, according to Miles, who, by the way, deserves his own history book for his contributions to widening the world of "recreational asphalt," as he and his group call the outdoor skate zones they've worked to create.

Friday Night Skate is a skater activity, for sure, and it fits the gang M.O. of rolling on territory generally reserved for those in street shoes. It's also frequented by roller bladers, who are decidedly quantity bad, an important distinction. I don't want to be a roller blader – it looks even harder than skating and is aesthetically wack. But more to the point, I don't even know if I'm allowed to attend.

It turns out you don't get kicked out of the gang for participating in Friday Night Skate or Naked Skating or any of the other roller phenomena San Francisco has seen in recent years. You just have to make a choice between the blade and the wheel. "Roller bladers are just ice skaters from California," Kevin's Mom tells me. "There's too much equipment. It's not natural. They're afraid to take the shit that comes along with having wheels." Some (CORA and the parental figures of teen recruits, for instance) might say, "Safety first," but knee pads have little place in the Quality Bad universe – as Agent Angela puts it, "Girls like scabby knees, and it's really hot when we compare battle wounds."

"What we're thinking about," Sister Squid adds, "is a totally different thing. Quality Bad is creating a whole way of life. These people are just moving back and forth on roller blades."

Here at CELL, though, I see opportunity for gang activity. Roller-skating reclaims the best aspects of being young, when it was part of the summer dream, when you learned how and didn't worry so much about getting hurt, when you first experienced being awkward and graceful at the same time. And I can easily imagine Agent Angela cruising around the CELLspace floor teaching tricks to some young skater-in-bloom, proselytizing for the old-school roller cause.

It's Sunday afternoon at Roller Village, as the gang calls it, home to a proud tradition of outdoor skating that goes back to '70s San Francisco, Sister Squid's fabled era of mindless good times. For once it's acting the way it ought to – blazing sun, warm wind, sky so empty of clouds it's blinding. "Dancing Queen" is playing on the boom box, and the skate spot off JFK Drive by Sixth Avenue is crowded with wheeled creatures. A bicyclist rolls around the floor on his hind wheel; a woman skates backward in front of him like they're in some kind of urban ballroom-dancing class. A roller blader cruises under the cyclist's wheel, then launches himself over a guy crouched on the cement. It's like that scene from Fame where the kids go out and boogie in the streets. The crowd on the grass whistles and claps. C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" starts up for the second time in an hour, and someone on the floor pumps his fist in the air.

When Quality Bad arrives at Roller Village, the music doesn't exactly stop, but for a second it's like one of those teen-movie scenes where the tough kids walk through the cafeteria in slow motion and everyone puts down their milk carton to stare. They're a motley bunch, with primary-colored hair and dreadlocks and multicolored outfits thematically linked by inventive salvaging and a love for '70s-era sportswear. They're mostly on roller skates, but they bring with them a sweet-looking pit bull mix and a handful of skateboards. The dog provokes a yelp from a nearby golden retriever; the boards provoke muttered comments from a few of the bladers.

We set up on the north side of the floor, away from the main circle and the boom box. There's a little bit of bad blood, at least on Q.B.'s side, over an incident that took place there a year ago. Some of the gang were trying to efface a piece of graffiti on the floor of the Village that enthused, "I [heart] yr tits." It ended in a shouting match, splitting the skate spot into two factions: free speech versus freedom from objectification by slobbering pig-dogs.

Still, that was ages ago, and some members say maybe it's time to move on. And as Agent Angela points out, "You gotta give props to the people at the Village who've been doing their thing, putting it down for years before we came along. They bring the boom boxes; they bring the funk." Agent Angela is the most vocal about paying tribute to those who came before them. "I got my roller skates at a rink on the East Coast, and it was all senior citizens," she tells me. "The DJ was 80 years old, spinning waltz music; they were all doing the two-step, decked out in dope-ass outfits with purple tutus and pink leg warmers. This one lady was showing me her bruises. The guy who sold me my skates was like 91. I aspire to be like them in 50 years."

That's going to be us – I can feel it. The gang keeps growing, and in late July, Q.B. will be MCing events at Ladyfest Bay Area. After that the message will be out, and the skaters will be everywhere.

I look over at the main area. An older man is doing handstand splits on the grass. Every once in a while he comes out to do a slow, painstaking, impossible-looking roller-pose. The opening chords of Kool and the Gang's "Ladies Night" inspire a guy named Elliott to break into splits. He knows the words to every song, and he's wearing a red headband, a red tank top, black shorts, red leg warmers, and red skates – no glitter, but not too shabby.

Railroad tries to teach me how to skate backward. I think I might actually be improving, but forward still needs work. There's no denying it's easier to take chances when there's a colorful flock of skaters at your back. We talk about the need for more skate-friendly arenas. Roller Village is great, but it's not enough, especially considering weather patterns and the lack of a single dedicated local indoor rink. The gang is working on a monthly warehouse skate party along the lines of CELL's "Roller Jam," with Sister Squid spinning records on wheels. And one day, Agent Angela says, we're going to raise the money to get our own rink going, and we'll have theme nights like Gay Rodeo and Disco Fever.

"The world is our roller-skating rink," Railroad says. "When the sun is out and the mood is high, we take to the streets." Unfortunately, Q.B. members have been told to dismount at quite a few places around town. Supermarkets, for example, clearly an ideal zone for rolling, have not always been down with the Quality Bad presence. Still, plenty of victories have been won, with a scattering of clubs and bars and one excellently progressive bookstore showing tolerance – nay, appreciation – for the roller-skate lifestyle. And why not? As Kevin's Mom points out, "We're promoting ecofriendly travel!"

I feel certain all this glamorous skate visibility is enriching the community. Many people, surely, have been inspired to get some wheels after a stroll past Roller Village on a Sunday afternoon. But a mass Q.B. sighting at Rebel Girl, at the Dyke March, on a Mission Street stretch of sidewalk – that's what set Quality Bad apart for me from the beginning. They change the landscape of the city with their presence. It's not because Q.B. is full of hot individuals, though of course they all are. They decorate the city the way the most generous, high-spirited kind of art does – like murals and the wheat-paste chronicles of midnight marauders, like bands playing on top of buildings and site-specific performances that use the walls of the city as their set design. It's partly to do with the heroes Q.B. claims – people like Reclaim the Streets and the Radical Cheerleaders, groups who have found ways to deliver their revolutionary messages through outbursts of performance and unauthorized street parties. To some, that may not seem as hardcore as standing on the corner of 16th Street and Valencia, passing out copies of Socialist Worker, but it has proved irresistible to folks not normally drawn into the political fray. Practically every time the Radical Cheerleaders perform, a new chapter rises up (see www.geocities.com/radicalcheerleaders).

That's what it's like, hanging out with Quality Bad. The skates make them seem like a gorgeous force field – anyone who's ever mastered the art of skating knows what that's about.

The other night as I was walking to work, Lizz Roman and Dancers was doing a piece on the sidewalk outside ODC Theater. Over at the Artaud building, skateboarders were doing tricks in the courtyard. The fireworks going off overhead were marred by a UFO/blimp floating by, but otherwise the city looked the way I like it best, and I wondered what Quality Bad was up to. Probably skating through a gallery installation in the Mission or practicing their moves on a choice bit of parking real estate. "It's about just bringing a little bit of quality bad into everyone's life," Sister Squid says. The more the better.

Quality Bad is accepting donations of skates, glitter, costume stripes, stoppers, and duct tape for its skate library. E-mail the gang at qbskate@raza.org. 'CELLspace Roller Jam.' CELL goes roller disco. Tuesdays, 8-11 p.m., CELLspace, 2050 Bryant, S.F. $3-$5 donation. (415) 648-7562, www.cellspace.org. Midnight Rollers Friday Night Skate. A rolling skate party. Fridays, meet 8 p.m., Ferry Building, Embarcadero and Market, S.F.; begin skating 9 p.m. www.cora.org. Skates on Haight. Rent a pair for the day before hitting the park or the CELL jam. Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 10 a.m.-6 p.m., 1818 Haight, S.F. (415) 752-8375. Lynn "Rowdy" Rapoport, who's still working on her T-stop, can be reached at lynn@sfbg.com.