General Stuff

Skate Shops

Club Blue Room

Based on the corner of Edgware Road and Marble Arch, Club Blue Room are one of the largest skate shops in London. Their staff are friendly and extremely knowledgeable, and their skate stock is pretty vast and includes decent hire skates. I highly recommend them.

Slick Willies

Down on Gloucester Road, Slick Willies is a small shop with a pretty reasonable stock. Their staff are friendly and they offer hire skates, although I have not been impressed by the quality of these. They do offer one service worth of note for most skaters: if your bolts get stuck in the frame they have a tool that should be able to remove it for you.

Loco Skates

I've never visited this Eastbourne based skate shop but I've heard some extremely good things. They've recently (October 2008) revamped their website and prices seem quite reasonable when compared to some of the London stores.

Other Instructors

I have, in my skating history, attended lessons given by all of these inline skating instructors so I know that they are extremely good at what they do.

SkateFresh

Run by Asha Kirkby, SkateFresh is one of, if not the, longest running skate schools in the UK, certainly in London. Asha's a wonderfully talented and graceful skater, and the ICP UK director, as well as one of the top instructors in the UK. SkateFresh do lots of work with children, but cater for, pretty much, all inline skaters.

LondonSkaters

An extremely familiar and popular face on the UK skate scene, Mike van Erp is a really good inline skating instructor. His speciality, in my opinion, is that he can make you skate faster and his website, LondonSkaters, is a great resource for skating related information.

Skate Freestyle

Not only is this probably the best looking skating site I've seen in a while, it's also the online home of Naomi Grigg. She happens to be ranked something like 3rd in the world for slalom and a really friendly person.

FlowSkate

One of the few skate instructors outside of London, Leo Oppenheim is not only an experienced skater, he's also one of the most enthusiastic people I've ever met! Aggressive skating is his background and, apparently, backflips off a ramp are easy.

Organised Street Skates

NOTE: All of the street skates listed here are free, just turn up at the right time in the right place and skate. For the UK based skates, at least, no donations are taken over the web; they will accept donations but contact them first for information on how to do this legitimately.

The London Friday Night Skate & Sunday Stroll

Run every week, throughout the year, the LFNS and the Sunday Stroll are staples of the London skating scene. The Sunday Stroll is an entry level skate run at a nice steady pace for novice skaters every Sunday afternoon. Friday nights are the home of the LFNS, which is a much faster and longer street skate. If you're looking to get onto the Sunday Stroll consider my Sunday Stroll course.

The LondonSkate

Probably the most enjoyable street skate in London with, what can only be described as, a noisy-and-fun environment, the LondonSkate is run on Wednesday evenings during the summer months.

The Pari-Roller

If you're in Paris on a Friday evening and are looking for around 10,000 people to skate with, drop by Montparnasse Station. Super smooth streets, a fast pace at the front and a slower pace at the rear, and police on skates (with guns!). It's a great skate and should be OK for those of you who have done a LondonSkate.

Online Forums

Serpentine Road

The online home of UK inline skaters. Be warned that, whilst they are really nice people, the tone of some replies might offend!

Camberley Skaters

Forums, tips and information from the Camberley Skaters. They also have a Twitter account where forum posts get tweeted: @cskate.

Eastbourne Skaters Association

Forums and regular events organised by the ESA in Eastbourne. Membership is just £5 and gives you some discounts on equipment, lessons and events.

Roller En Ligne.com

A French forum for inline skaters which covers pretty much all aspects of inline skating. It's all in French so either you have to be pretty good at reading French, or you can try the (sometimes weirdly) translated version via Google.

Cone Crazy's Forum

Belgian slalom club, Cone Crazy, have a forum that follows a pretty similar structure to all the others.

4WheelFreestyle's Forum

Another European slalom club, 4WheelFreestyle from Germany, have a forum much like other skate forums. In German.

Magazines

rueda mag

With both Spanish and English versions this online aggressive skating magazine has a wonderful interface: it feels like you're actually reading a magazine but with a more dynamic page.

Kingdom Magazine

A UK aggressive skating magazine which you should be able to pick up in skate shops.

One Magazine

Another aggressive skating magazine (are these the only magazines people are interested in reading I wonder?) but this one you can read online in PDF form.

Skate Manufacturers

Seba

Seba, or Universkate (if you're asking for them abroad), have a range of skates designed by Sébastien Laffargue, who happens to be one of the best skaters in the world. I have a couple of pairs of their FR1 model, which has become popular amongst London skaters, and know that people rate their Seba High model.

Powerslide

Powerslide make many types of skates, from recreational to speed skates. Their SHMR technology, used primarily in their speed skates, allows the boots to be heat moulded any number of times. They've taken that technology and applied it to my new favourite slalom skates, the Powerslide FSK Hardcore Evo (read my review).

Rollerblade

Synonymous with inline skating, Rollerblade have become a household name. Their Twister skate, which is oddly missing from their website, is a pretty decent skate for a beginner as it has decent ankle support (but try on other skates because the width might not fit your feet).

K2

If you're a beginner you could do worse than look at the range of skates offered by K2. Lots of my students turn up in either their Exo ALU or Athena ALU skates, depending on whether they are men or women, and seem to do well. I do think they are skates you grow out of, progressing into something a little more robust as your skating gets better.

Deshi

Deshi are an aggressive skate manufacturer but, by the looks of it, their new Carbon skates are going to be similar to the Seba FR1 skates in size.

Remz

Although I've never tried their aggressive skates they do seem pretty popular amongst professional skaters, so they must have something right? Their website is pretty funky too, especially the 'Live It' bit!

Razors

Aggressive skates come in many flavours but, I'm reliably informed, Razors are "the best". Better be because I picked up a pair of the G7 skates at the beginning of 2008, but have yet to actually get out on them in earnest.

Websites

912 Crew Blog

The 912 Crew are some of the best French freeride skaters and I'm particularly keen on their videos.