Posted Oct 2002

Roller Skating Today (RST) What do you think of today's skate parties?
Bill Butler(BB)I think they’re horrible and awful because it is like never finishing school.  People travel from all over the U.S. to come to this one place at a given time, once a year, for what?  Just to skate around like you’re in another rink someplace?  I think it is wasted..it should be such that skaters should go to these places and there should always be a group of male and female skaters from each city of some caliber that would do a show, not to have people from different cities get on the floor and skate around...They should have each state have their best rep get on that floor...

....It should be a dynamic show and there should be prizes, prize money, car, trip for 2 or something like that.  I’m so engulfed in what I’m doing that what I’m telling you I don’t want to do because I know it takes a lot of time and planning.  But that’s what it should be.  I only go to Atlanta, I don’t go to these other trips, it’s just something for people that have got enough ingenuity to put together a bus trip so they can make X amount of dollars.

..it has to do with roller skating for sure but it’s not to be left like that.  Nobody goes to have a situation where the girls come to a particular place where there is a swimming pool and you get 11 guys going around picking up girls and throwing them into the water.  What is that?  That is stupid - is it because I’m 70 years old?  I don’t think so, I think it’s because I’m absolutely right.  I think a woman or man should go to a place, act like a lady and act like a gentleman, be respected and have these hotels wishing and hoping we come each year instead of saying “..if it wasn’t for the money they bring us I would just as soon they go someplace else.”...It doesn’t have the right ring to it, it is roller skating of some older people acting like fools.  That’s such a put down to travel that far to be classified like that and I don’t look at skating that way.

The type of skating I do I know has something to offer, I’m working on a piece now, hopefully Ophrah Winfrey likes it and she will have me do it, so I can do what I’m doing with you on that show.  So I can let people know there is somebody like me that understands it like I do and would like to see it done that way and give it that type of respect....

Do I like it? No.  Should it be changed?  Absolutely.  Who’s going to change it?  I don’t know...It should be more professional and what have people been doing all these years on roller skates?  What do they do?  There’s some people right now - they will tell you they have been skating 15 years and they don’t know how to adjust the roller skate, they don’t know the cushion, what it is about, what the parts are, if you laid the skate out in parts they wouldn’t know how to put it back together, they haven’t a clue, don’t know what the bearings are, etc...They can’t stop, they have to grab something, it is pathetic.

You go in this rink at a given time and you have people from X cities and you will notice who can skate or who thinks they can skate.....Anybody that gets on their hands and knees to spin around and jump and put their wet sweaty back on the floor so they make other people fall, how can that be roller skating?  Where do they get that from?  Where do they get the idea that that is anything close and by far what girl/young lady wants to be involved skating with somebody who does that in the first place?  I’m a skater that wants finesse, I want to able to skate with a lady, I want her to say “I skated with Bill Butler and it was excellent,” not “...he almost killed me, I was scared to death and he broke my trucks...”  I don’t understand it.  I think everybody should be aware that skating is a very serious sport if it is done properly....

(RST)So, things need to be elevated from the level they’re on?
(BB)Absolutely.  It should be.. that you can get information to other people that are interested and they say  “I wish they’d come to my city and do a show so my kids could see that” - not particularly me but anybody that’s capable of showing roller skating as it should be done.  I don’t say they should see my particular style, I say if you don’t see my style of skating you’ve missed something or had something to do with it some kind of way, you’ve missed it.

....it took me 25 years to get to skate with someone, not roll around with somebody, SKATE with somebody.  Why?  Because I had to teach it first.  Jammin is very funky, it’s for the guy next door, not particularly for the Olympics..I don’t want to see it as Olympic I want us to have it..because this is the one thing they can’t take from me out of everything else they’ve taken - they can’t take this - if I die tomorrow.

(RST) What about music?
(BB)  Music should be a DJ that has the following personality: he should love to play music, he should then have the ability to process music properly, knowing how to segue, knowing how to take that crowd into his hands and treat them and nurture them through that session and let them down easy at the end of the night so their body is totally relaxed and totally worked out....That’s a real DJ -  one who can come to the rink with 20 records, not 2200, and do a session because he’s that swift being that you only play a record once in a night.  He’s playing enough records to fill up that night, not one record more, not a truckload of records.  What are you going to do with them?  I guess it just looks good, here you come with 3 guys behind you with push carts.

Take a monkey and put him in the booth and teach him how to take tapes and put them in there but don’t let the public see who’s playing.  They’ll say, who played tonight?  And they’ll say as a joke “we call him the monkey man.”  They’ll say, when is the monkey man playing again? ...People don’t care who plays but they do care what IS played, and that’s what is wrong.   The DJs don’t have nothing creative about them, all they do is they have all these components, and records and no ability to play them in the way in which they should be played - that’s the DJ story.  I talk extensively about DJs and they use the term “suck” - well they all suck unless they’re the type I just told you.  They’re just looking to get paid, they’re not understanding what they’re really there for and what they should be doing and that’s the problem with the skating industry and this business of coming to that rink knowing you are going to send that crowd to the place they want to be.

(RST) Name some good things you have seen come along in East Coast skating.
(BB) When you say good things, that’s kind of hard.  If it wasn’t for everybody from all levels trying to get over, it’s hard to pick out what’s real.  What might be considered a good thing is because we  had the first and only roller skating business in Central Park ever.  There have been people, even as we speak who’ve taken the credit for that but just like in biblical days - this is nothing new, it is just what is factual?  I have documented stuff, I know what I’ve done in New York and all over this country...

What have I seen that made a lot of sense?  Not enough because if that was so, if I was able to tell you that you would already know it...It is unfortunate that it's not enough - I’d like to see competition between girls and boys pairs, girl pairs, boy/girl pairs, boy pairs, trios...if you went to Atlanta and put 3 people on the floor to skate together in trios, let them all skate in the categories I just said, no rehearsal...and put my guys out there, you’ll see what I’m talking about - they would skate them into the floor....I would like to see more progression in roller skating with the concept of pairs and trios....

(RST)  What do you see in the future for quad roller skating?
(BB)  Basically what I said to you, the technique is going to rise to the top because it’s bigger than all of us, “us” meaning roller skating.  So we should all protect it.  I want the technique protected like a dollar, you see a dollar flying down the street, you know you’d be running chasing that dollar as opposed to a piece of paper.  It’s still a piece of paper but it has value.  The technique has value, so if you see it, it’s like bone china, if you see it falling you better catch it before it hits the ground.  Don’t you dare allow it to break....

Under the circumstances, I’ve grabbed ahold of something that kids do and I’ve made it something worthwhile and I would like to put it in a place respectful, no big deal or hurrah just let’s get this done, let the right people benefit from it and we go on.

(RST) Who are the right people?
(BB)  WE should be the ones, I want black people to take their space in this roller skating....