In London, rollerskating’s revival rumbles with the city’s soundsystem culture

“OK clear the rink, speed skaters only!” 

It’s Friday night in RollerNation, a large rink sitting in the middle of a grubby street in Tottenham. Kacie – the 21 year old rapper, rollerskater and host of tonight’s party – is on the mic, ushering the more inexperienced skaters off the main floor, leaving a hardcore of 20 or so agile looking kids, late teens and people in their early 20s slowly cruising round the perimeter, waiting for their moment. 

The DJ has paused the music, which until then has been an inner-city soundtrack of dancehall, UK Funky, rap and R&B. Once he’s sure the rink is only populated by the headstrong, he slaps the cue button and the frenzied drums of M‑Beat’s evergreen jungle classic ​‘Incredible’ rattles through the room. It’s the clarion call – 30 years after its first release, ​‘Incredible’ has become an anthem to a new generation of Londoners. The skaters hurl themselves at top speed, most of them skating backwards, ankles flicking in time with the 165 bpm snare clatter. The DJ applies more pressure, cutting up a chaotic blast of ​’90s D&B; the warm bass of DJ Die’s ​‘Set Speed’ throbbing under the haunted piano of Ray Keith’s ​‘Terrorist’. The rink whirls faster.

“It’s speed skating,” Kacie explains, surveying the scene from the decks, ​“It’s where you go as fast as you can, usually to drum & bass – I don’t want to say it started in London and that not be true, but you don’t really see it anywhere else, like, you wouldn’t see it in America. They love it though – you see skaters ​’round the world trying to do it online, we call it chopping and shuffling, chopping is the maneuver when we skate backwards.”

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Back on the rink, Kacie has decided they’ve had enough of clockwise. ​“Switch!” she yells into the mic, and the skaters, at this point flying above 20 mph, stop themselves any which way and change direction. Some screech and turn, some wipe out and end up legs to the sky, groaning and laughing as they lever themselves back off the floor. This is just one, particularly British, facet of the new skate subculture that has been bubbling up in the rinks, car parks and streets of London. 

“Speed skating and backwards skating exist outside the UK,” explains Adam, aka SkateSounds, over the phone. ​“But it is how you skate in the UK,” he laughs. ​“It’s a UK and London thing to go fast and backwards.”

Adam, a regular on London’s scene, runs the SkateSoundsLDN TikTok account, where he bangs out uptempo street bangers for skaters to use in their clips. The music itself is a chaotic, dayglo mesh of styles; jersey club, drill, trap, dancehall – and this fusion of music and skating has become an integral part of the London scene.

“Skating is like dancing – you can’t have dance without music, so most skating is based around music. There is a very specific style of London skating, which is very Caribbean influenced. The scene is 50% Black at least, and it’s a young community – a lot of these kids are listening to contemporary bootleg music like Jersey club, nola bounce, zess bounce, which is a Trinadadian genre, now there’s all these teams in New York making new zess mixes, posting them on TikTok and the UK teams are using these zess and Jersey edits.”

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He’s correct in that skaters love posting clips, soundtracking thrill rides through the urban sprawl with the energy of the fidgety new genres they favour. A perusal of TikTok will show you regular viral moments – a clip like Trackz44 chopping through the busy thoroughfare of King’s Cross set to Kacie’s jumpy drill track ​‘Badina’, has had over 8m views alone – marking a point where the scene is making its own soundtrack, and the results are spreading far and wide.

This collision of music and energy has created something surprisingly old-fashioned, yet enduringly powerful; a scene where people meet in person. Skating is more fun in groups, and the scene finds itself playing out in two very different types of spaces; the official, commercial rinks such as RollerNation, and the unofficial car parks and concrete stretches where kids can meet up in semi-organised chaos, caught in a cat and mouse game with the authorities, who have little truck with the city being turned into a playground. In the context of a capital homogenised into the bland, Ballardian violence of empty luxury flats, private members clubs and surveillance technology, the very act of an impromptu gathering, with no entrance fee, no ID check, no data capture and no profit margin, becomes an inherently radical act, and the councils have been striking back. 

“They put up these barriers to stop us skating,” Kacie gestures over to a set of large, blunt and very immobile bollards. I’ve come to meet her at a content shoot in North Greenwich. We’re down past the Thames, the river wide and dazzling as the sun bounces off the grey green water. There is a concrete walkway here, and the late evening light is drenching it in nostalgic sepia. A few months back, it was perfect for skate meets, like the one Kacie held last summer where a couple of hundred kids pulled up to hear tunes and have fun. Now it’s been bisected by the council’s barriers, and the skaters have to content themselves to a shrunken arena where high speeds aren’t possible.

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“We have no public spots left,” she laments. ​“They physically close them off, or if they haven’t physically done it they find an excuse for us not to be there; security, dogs, gates, locks whatever it is. People argue that there are rinks, but people that are underage can’t get in because the rinks are 18-plus. Or they’re young and just don’t have the money for the entry fee.” 

“Its a paradox of activity,” agrees Adam. ​“It’s equally exciting and electric and constantly growing but also the underground parking lots are getting shut down and shut off, there are police coming to skate events so the teams are reluctant to create events because of rowdy teens, and the big rinks are being shut down as well. A skate rink is a hard-to-sustain business model, skaters don’t drink and it’s a huge space! In my opinion it needs someone who is willing to lose money on the best cause in the world, to take these kids off the streets to take them away from their troubles at home and give them an escape in a way that isn’t going to be profitable. I see these warehouses in New Cross and southeast London that are just these empty buildings that could be converted into a rink, but it’s gonna be haemorrhaging money.” 

As it happens, his wish may have come true. The burgeoning youth skate culture (and its corresponding unpopularity with local authorities) has led others to act. Down in Peckham, Bradley Zero and Nathanael Williams, owners of much loved vinyl-forward venue Jumbi, have decided to throw their hat in the ring, at least for the summer. In July they opened SubSkate, a warehouse behind Jumbi that acts as a combination of skate rink and love letter to soundsystem culture. Williams draws a direct link between the joyous resistance offered by both.

“Roller skating lets people take up space in a city where sometimes it can be difficult to accomplish joy.” he tells me via voice note, as I ask his motivations behind opening SubSkate. ​“In a way skating is offering something to young people which soundsystems once could – a way to gather and be loud and be yourself, it’s a way for young and older people to regain agency over space in London. We wanted to create something that was a bit of a throwback and a step forward – something rooted in soundsystem culture, that’s unpretentious and a bit of a rebellious act. To bring all of that under one roof and put some parties next to it felt like a really fun thing to do – a fun but powerful thing to do!”

To bolster his claims, he cites the free sessions they’re running for kids on Wednesdays, and takes pride in detailing the pedigree of some of the rig in the building, with speaker stacks taken from legendary London club Turnmills and iconic reggae soundsystem Mighty Ruler. 

The opening night of SubSkate is one of the hottest of the year. Skaters come glide in, taking turns around the rink to amapiano. It looks like one of Williams’ objectives have been met, and couples in their late 40s can be seen slipping past kids in their early 20s, united in elegant – and in some cases less elegant – rotation. In the heat of a Peckham evening, as amapiano gives way to dancehall, which then is replaced by the requisite wild tempo of jungle, it feels like the most London place you can be. Kacie, again showing up as host on the night, sums it up in simple, utopian terms that are rare to hear in 2025 London. 

“This,” she indicates towards the rink, packed with skaters circling as the music blares, ​“It brings people you would never expect yourself to have a conversation with together. It doesn’t matter about your background, or who you love, or your race. You can just come! As long as you have eight wheels no one cares about the rest.” 

Ian McQuaid is a freelance journalist and author of Woosh, the UK’s first drill book. Follow him on X.

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