• OfficeOps’ Skate Party

  57 Thames Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, 718-418-2509; officeops.org

  De La Soul, the hippie hip-hop band, once sang a catchy song about the joys of weekend roller-skating (“Five days you work / One whole day to play / Come on everybody / wear your roller skates today”). Now there’s a distinctly rock-and-roll version of this most social, not to say healthy, form of R&R: Every month, in a converted factory in the part of Bushwick that’s been renamed East Williamsburg, hundreds of enthusiasts from all walks of city life skate around and around a large metal cage, while a band plays fast, loud music. OfficeOps also hosts skateless concerts, plays, and yoga and photo classes, but nothing matches the appeal of the rock-and-roll skate party. It’s like Xanadu meets Slacker meets Hackers (the event is broadcast live for the homebound in an online Webcast). One of OfficeOps’ seven founders, Virginian Kevin Lindamood, says they scored the establishment’s rental skates from “a roller-skating maven named Luther” in high-pressure negotiations, during which Lindamood and company actually stormed out into the parking lot and were chased down by Luther’s minions, ready to bargain—challenging the wisdom of that roller-rink standard, E.L.O.’s “Don’t Walk Away.”

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine