Ready to Roll

“A huge part of roller skating is about reclaiming space. It’s about feminism and being empowered as a woman”

W hen you approach Athens’ old Hellinikon Airport, sun-bleached road signs direct you towards Domestic Arrivals and International Departures. But nothing has taken off here in decades. Old planes sit eerily silent next to the perimeter fence, and the control tower gazes out over a runway with grass breaking through its cracks.

This afternoon, a group of female roller skaters have found their way into the old departure lounge. They cruise around, exploring its forgotten corners and slaloming between its battered pillars. As the sun begins to set over the runway outside, its rays stream in through the dirty glass windows and bathe them all in an otherworldly golden light. For many of these women, skating here has always been a dream. Some glide effortlessly around the space, jumping and spinning, while the other women freestyle, laughing and joking as their wheels kick up clouds of dust.

(Left to right) Stefania Malama, Suzana Bakatsia and Sofia Argyraki skate through the airport’s empty terminal building

Suzana Bakatsia, Constantina Xafi and Lydia Panagou wait for the sunrise on top of Lycabettus after skating through the night

As Athens tentatively emerges from a decade of economic chaos, young female roller skaters are fighting for space in their city. This generation of Greeks grew up with few opportunities, but that taught them a valuable lesson: if you want to follow your passion, you have to make it happen yourself. While support and infrastructure for young people fell victim to Greece’s historic economic crisis, Chicks in Bowls Athens are using roller skating to create their own community, express themselves and forge a new relationship with their city. Day in, day out, they’re showing up at male-dominated skate spots, demanding respect and inclusion.

“All skateparks here are male-dominated, however you look at it,” says Constantina Xafi, 28. “We all roll, and it’s OK for all of us. Whatever level you are and whatever type of person you are, you deserve space at the skatepark.” Xafi is one of the group’s driving forces. She works in theatre, founded her own screen-printing business, and volunteers as a teacher with Free Movement Skateboarding, who offer free skateboarding lessons to young Greeks and refugees. Xafi is working towards her dream of creating a skatepark full of bowls suitable for roller skaters but open to all. However, of all the types of rider who call skateparks home – on skateboards, BMXs, scooters or inline skates – roller skaters are almost always women. And building a strong community has been game-changing.

“After I started roller skating, I began to imagine rad girls conquering the city on their skates,” remembers Chicks in Bowls Athens co-founder Sofia Argyraki, 31. In January 2015, Argyraki went to skate the now-demolished DIY BMX ramp in Vrilissia, a town in Athens’ northern suburbs, with friends Christina Rodopoulou and Akylina Palianopoulou. The trio spent the best part of the afternoon attacking the ramp together, encouraging each other to push harder. Stoked after their high-energy session, they created a group to encourage other women to share their passion for ramp skating.

Today, Argyraki’s dream has come true: the group has grown to around 30-40 female roller skaters who link up regularly to skate their favourite parks and explore new corners of the city together.

The ancient metropolis of Athens is no skater’s paradise; it’s a chaotically planned and densely packed city, scattered across many steep hills. It’s also home to numerous potholes and broken pavements, which are particularly hazardous for the small urethane wheels on roller skates.

If you want to skate ramps in Athens, there aren’t many options; the city doesn’t have lavish municipal skateparks or an administration particularly tolerant of DIY spots. Some suburbs have small parks, but the best spots have been built by skaters themselves, whether it’s the sprawling DIY park in Galatsi or Athens’ only bowl, the experimental skate/art space Latraac in gritty Kerameikos. But, despite less-thanfavourable conditions, the city is home to an increasingly vibrant community of skateboarders, BMX riders and, most recently, roller skaters.

“It’s nice to explore the city on skates, but it’s not ideal, not easy,” Xafi says. “Once you start hanging out with people and skating regularly, they tell you about new spots that are nice to skate, so you can go and check them out and discover new places.”

Lydia Panagou, 23, who has become one of the group’s most accomplished skaters, agrees. “The thing I like most about roller skating is that it brings me together with others,” she says. “We organise meet-ups, we have our music, and we travel around the city to our favourite spots. Each person moves and dresses however they feel. It’s important to be one with your skates: the style, the aesthetics, the rhythm. That comes out when there’s a harmony and you feel comfortable with yourself and the people around you. Your friends encourage and uplift you.”

Panagou introduced her childhood friend Suzana Bakatsia, 22, and the pair now skate whenever they can. “I tried with Lydia’s skates and it was strange and unfamiliar at first, but then I really felt a rush of adrenalin,” Bakatsia says.

Anyone can hit up Chicks in Bowls Athens on Instagram and join one of their regular skate sessions, from first-time skaters to visitors keen to find a local crew. “Having a community is really important,” says artist and architect Foteini Korre, 29. “Many spots are far away, which puts you off going alone. But when we travel and skate together, we help and support each other, and you feed off that energy.”

Before she joined, Korre had grown increasingly intrigued by the roller-skating scene she saw emerging in Athens and around the world, but didn’t know how to find her way in. Eventually, she discovered Chicks in Bowls Athens on social media. Two years later, she looks back fondly on her first session, outside the Athens Conservatoire, a historic performing arts centre. Its long expanse of smooth marble, mercifully shaded from the beating sun, is where many Athenian skaters take their first steps – or rolls. “I enjoyed falling over all the time and pushing myself,” Korre says. “I loved that I was doing new things with my body and I felt so supported by the girls. There was a big sense of achievement.”

Skating isn’t something Korre, or the other girls she knew, did during childhood. “My generation of girls didn’t have the opportunity to skateboard,” she says. “We were expected to play with dolls, or stay at home and do chores, while our brothers played in the streets. I started roller skating at 28, and I wish I had the chance when I was six. It’s hard when you realise in your twenties you want that wasted time back.”

Male-dominated skateparks aren’t unique to Athens, of course. Around the world, huge efforts have been made in recent years to make skate culture more inclusive, but it remains largely a boys’ club. “To go into that space as a female when the majority of skaters are male creates this automatic divide,” says Chicks in Bowls founder Samara Buscovick, aka Lady Trample. “Whether it’s intentional or not, there’s a feeling that all eyes are on you. It can be really intimidating, especially if you’re new. The majority of interactions I’ve had in parks have actually been really positive, but there’s still a sense that you’re an alien in their space – you have to prove you belong.”

Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, and now based in Kremmling, Colorado, roller derby pro Lady Trample was introduced to bowl skating by her friend Michelle ‘Cutthroat’ Hayes back in November 2012. It immediately became an addiction. During a group session a few weeks later, a friend exclaimed, “It’s so cool to see all these chicks in bowls!” – and the name stuck. Seven years after Trample began building this inclusive community, Chicks in Bowls (now CIB) has more than 300 chapters worldwide.

“One of the beautiful things about CIB is connecting with your local chapter and not feeling so isolated on that journey,” says Trample. “A cultural shift has taken place; there’s now greater representation of both females and quad skaters in the parks – they have become safer spaces to enter.”

Yet there is work still to be done, particularly in Greece, historically one of Europe’s most socially conservative countries, where patriarchal attitudes die hard. For the women of CIB Athens, there are sometimes frustrating reminders that the city is still playing catch-up. “Public space is mainly occupied by men, and that’s a fact,” Korre says. “You see it on the streets: if there’s only space on the sidewalk for one person, a man will just walk straight and you’re expected to move. It’s the legacy of women being shut in their homes for so many years with no rights. Women here were only given the vote in 1952.”

Greece’s skateparks reflect the situation in wider society, which is moving slowly forward, but not fast enough for many. “I know I’m far from a pro skater, but some young men in the park have completely disrespected me,” Korre says with a sense of exasperation. “A huge part of roller skating is about reclaiming space. For me, that’s political on its own – it’s about feminism and being empowered as a woman. Most people in the skateparks are cool, but you sometimes have to deal with sexist and misogynistic behaviour. The more we show up where people skate, the more accepted we get. Now most have started facing it that we’re here to stay.”

For the city’s young female skaters, there are so many more reasons why having an Athens chapter of CIB – and the community it helps to build – is so important. “The truth is that I love Greece, I love Athens, and I love the place where I’ve grown up,” Panagou says. “Somehow we’ve got used to living like this, but things are difficult for young people.”

The Greek debt crisis erupted in late 2009 and became the worst economic disaster in European Union history. Young people were hit particularly hard, with youth unemployment peaking at more than 60 per cent. After years of austerity and cuts to spending, many of the services that young people rely upon – schools, universities, sports facilities – are in urgent need of repair and investment.

Politicians have announced repeatedly that the crisis is over, yet Greek young people have seen little improvement in their prospects. Most available jobs, usually in tourism, are poorly paid. This leaves the likes of Panagou, who is about to finish her degree in Art Theory and the History of Art at the Athens School of Fine Arts, with an agonising choice: “It’s hard for anyone my age with hopes and dreams for the future. To find work in the arts, I’ll probably have to go abroad. But I’d love to find something to keep me in Greece and be part of the change.”

With its economy so dependent on tourism, Greece is predicted to be severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This city of seemingly endless summers has financial storm clouds circling over it once again. While Panagou tries to focus on finishing her studies and working out what she’ll do next, roller skating provides a much-needed release. “It’s not just studying – I feel stress and pressure from the city and the rhythm in which we live,” she says. “Roller skating helps me get away from all that. Going out with friends to do our thing, landing tricks, or just laughing and talking about random stuff – it all feels good. It honestly helps us get out of what is, for most people, a really tough reality.”

Hellinikon’s dusty, long-neglected terminal building is a roller-skating playground for the CIB Athens crew – a place to hang out and try out new freestyle moves

Xafi and fellow roller skater Eva Balasi, 30, have linked up for an evening session at the Vyronas mini ramp, nestled in the forest beneath Mount Hymettus. After burning through all their energy, they’re catching their breath at the foot of the big concrete ramp.

“Most ramps in Athens are built for skateboarders and are tall, slippery and dangerous for quads, like this one,” says Balasi, who broke her shin in two places after falling here in March last year. Yet, even with a 34cm titanium rod in her bone marrow, two screws in her knee and two more in her ankle, the fashion photographer couldn’t stay off her skates – six weeks after the operation she was skating again, despite being told to rest for six months. “Skating is about falling,” Xafi adds, philosophically. “When you fall, you have to get up and stand back on your feet.”

She continues, “For me, feminism is about spreading equality; I don’t see borders in roller skating. When you see boys and girls supporting each other, that’s where the magic happens. There is no need to say who does and doesn’t belong to this place – everyone belongs to wherever the fuck they want to belong, wherever they feel free. In Greece, we don’t have the infrastructure or opportunities for young people. But that’s the beauty of DIY: we have streets and we can come together to build whatever we want. We can be the change we want to see.”

Watch the CIB Athens crew in action in the short film Athena Skates at redbull.com