New York City Inline Skating Guide

Group that organizes regular evening indoor (dance) skating sessions late fall to spring at the Salvation Army gym on Kosciuszko St. in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. More info is on the rinks webpage.

Brooklyn Speed was a group of inline speedskaters who maintained a separate identity, with their own skinsuit design, sponsors, etc. After their lead organizer left NYC around 2018, they have essentially become the the Brooklyn members of Empire Speed (see below). Their regular Sunday morning traing session is now Empire Speed's Sunday morning session.

A union of quad and inline skaters who have been skating on the "Dead Road" in Central Park since the late 1970s. The CPDSA officially organized in 1994 to fight the city's newly imposed park limits on group sizes and sound systems absent a permit. In the decades since, they have set up a sound system with DJ-selected music for dance skaters on weekend afternoons, roughly 1:00 to 6:00, mid-April through October, except when the park is hosting or preparing for a Road Runners race or other special event.

Probably the oldest formally organized skate group in the city, formed in the early 1990s and for a time a part of NYRSA (see below). They are a volunteer group who provide free stopping clinics at the West 72nd St. (Strawberry Fields) entrance to Central Park on Saturday afternoons April through October, offer paid lessons at other times during the week (typically weekend mornings but maybe weekdays after work hours), and may tour the park loop looking for skaters and other park users in trouble.

An inline skating organization formed in early 1997 to replace the defunct NYRSA (see below). Empire primarily serves recreational, fitness and speed skaters, with group skates, skate tours, speed training sessions, etc. Empire sponsors NYC's oldest group skate — the Tuesday Night Skate — but since about 2005 its biggest activity is a weekend-long fest (the first full weekend of August) called the Big Apple Roll, with multiple group skates over four days.

Other various Empire group skates may occur on weekends. See the group skates page as well as the calendar.

The speedskating and serious fitness skating part of the Empire Skate Club. They train on the Central Park and Prospect Park loops spring through autumn.

Trainong session usually begin around late March with Sunday morning sessions on the Prospect Pakr loop, then a month later they start rolling on the Central Park loop on Thursday evenings. Sessions will continue until autumn, with the CP meet-ups ending around late September because sunset is too early, but the Prospect Sunday meet-ups continuing perhaps another month.

The Prospect Park session start from the Bartell-Pritchard entrance to the park, but the time varies during the season. It tends to get earlier during the heart of summer as the skaters avoid the growing crowds of morning joggers.

The Central Park sessions meet at "the Curb" or "the Bench", a few yards north of Tavern on the Green on the west side of the loop. Meet-up time is about 7, but the individuals may do a loop before gathering to get instruction from the coach around 7:30.

During winter (November through March), some of the group may move indoors to a roller rink for fitness and technique coaching. (During the 2010s, indoor training was at the Branch Brook Park rink in Newark, NJ.) Some may also participate in USA Roller Sports indoor racing.

Announcements about Empire Speed activities, including very late updates, are most reliably found on their Facebook page.

Group in Nassau County out on the Island who used to organize races in the 1990, and continued for some time afterward to organize other activities such as group skates. Ceased to exist as a formal group as of 2015.

No longer exists. NYRSA was the NYC inline organization from 1988 to 1996, peaking in 1993-1995 when they sponsored group skates, organized races, ran a skate school, and briefly organized a rollerhockey league. Originally known as the Big Apple Road Rollers, NYRSA maxed out with a dues-paying membership in the high hundreds, perhaps more than one thousand including participants in the rollerhockey league. But growth was apparently too fast and spending definitely too much. The club was in debt by late 1995 and quietly folded up late the next year.

An Empire Skate Club event. See the group skates page.

See the group skates page.