Post II: National Museum of Roller Skating

When I saw that we were required to visit a local museum for our next writing assignment I was less than thrilled. I am not the biggest fan of museums, but when I saw the list of suggested museums, one sparked my interest. Seeing the National Roller Skating Museum brought back many grade school memories. At my grade school it was a tradition to have an all school skating party every few months and that was definitely one of the highlights of the school year for me and my classmates . There was always a swell of excitement during classes before the night of the skate party. The hallways were filled with talk of who was going to be there and who would skate together that night during the slow songs. By middle school most of the kids stopped going to these skate parties and began to go to dances and the football games, the skating parties were for the younger kids. That is how I remember roller skating, it was something that was fun when I was younger, but it was not very popular anymore. This impression of roller skating and my limited knowledge of the sport left me with low expectations for the museum.
Entering the museum, I felt as though I was entering a cramped office rather than a building dedicated to the history of roller skating. After navigating through a room full of desks, I spotted something reminiscent of a museum. This portion of the museum was filled with antique skates and artifacts from the history of roller skating. From this display I discovered that there are several different varieties of roller skating . One display that caught my attention was that on roller derby. I had actually heard of this form of roller skating as it has in the last few years been shown on various sports television stations. I am not a fan of the modern form of this sport but it was interesting to learn how the event evolved from a roller marathon to wrestling on skates. Despite my low expectations and first impression of the museum, the visit turned out to be quite fascinating and I am now more interested in visiting other local museums to see what the city has to offer.