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VIVE LA ROLLER BLADE! | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The roller blade may be an '80s American invention (the first roller skate was invented in the 17th century by an eccentric Belgian, Joseph Merlin), but in Paris the sport has evolved into an amalgam of recreation and public demonstration, all subject to much philosophical analysis. As the roller crowds grow larger, legislators have been debating whether "les rollers" should be officially defined as a pedestrian means of locomotion (under article 217 of the Code Civil), as a means of transport (article 1384) or as something entirely new. Editorialists, meanwhile, have been discussing the pros and cons of in-line transportation. "It's fast, silent and non-polluting!" endorsed the pro-environment Le Figaro. "Le roller is not only the pleasure of skating together, but a philosophy and a social phenomenon," sums up Boris Belohlavek, a 27-year-old computer engineer and the president of Pari-Roller, the group that runs the Friday rallies and maintains a Web site devoted to roller blade events. "In Paris more than other places, people feel a need to take to the streets as an expression of freedom," he tells me. "They also want to relax after a hard week of work and commuting, to get out of their offices and especially out of their cars. People from many walks of life can find themselves together in an atmosphere of conviviality. That's the ambience we're trying to preserve." Not content to let all this feel-good energy go to waste, Belohlavek and his associates recently organized a roller telethon for muscular dystrophy and an AIDS awareness night, in which hundreds of skater-activists distributed condoms. "French society has become fragmented, with a certain feeling of crisis and malaise, and people feel a need to find their way out of their sense of dissatisfaction and isolation," suggests sociologist Gerard Mermet when I ask him to explain the roller mob mentality. Mermet links the continuing popularity of the roller rallies to France's World Cup victory last June, when more than a million people turned out on the Champs Élysées to joyfully celebrate a French triumph rather than the usual protest sob story of job cuts, union strikes and other economic woes. "French people are longing to reunite, to exist as a single group," Mermet continues. "Yet roller blading also enables people from different backgrounds to break free from the dominant social mold. Young people want to be modern and break with tradition, executives want to feel more dynamic than their colleagues, parents want to show their children they can adapt with age and the police want to lessen their image of repression." Just a few years ago, roller blades were a rare sight in Paris; skaters, mainly youngsters, preferred the traditional, less expensive four-wheel "quad" variety. It took the month-long transportation strike in December 1995 to crack the market, as hundreds of thousands of grown-up commuters were forced to explore alternative ways of getting to work. In 1997, 1.5 million pairs of roller blades flew off the shelves at Paris stores. The Friday night rallies, started by a small group of friends, grew from a few dozen participants in 1994 to more than 5,000 last June. The numbers inspired the prefecture to create the world's first roller blade national police unit. "It's the French mentality to control things rather than forbid them," says Gerard Chauvet, the cheerful commandant in charge of the eight-man roller brigade. Chauvet recruited a French Olympic speed-skating champion to coach the roller cops, whose skills include blading up and down flights of Metro stairs and making arrests on wheels. On Friday night the unit divides into two-man teams to escort the in-line masses, interacting with skaters, irritated automobilistes and the occasional skateboard anarchist while trying to prevent accidents. The officers spend the rest of the week patrolling the capital, dispensing skating tips and catching pickpockets and other roller delinquents. "I can really say I'm at harmony in my work," smiles 36-year-old Brigadier Pascal Fubini, a former beat cop who now spends eight hours a day on his Rossignol skates, the nifty sneaker kind with detachable in-line wheels, which enables him to also pursue people on foot. "I'd like to do this until I'm 60, if my knees don't give out," he laughs. Listening to him talk about roller blading with his 8- and 14-year-old sons on the weekend, I reflect that I've rarely met a cop who seems to be having so much fun combining work and pleasure. Whether you're chasing criminals, preventing accidents or taking in the sights, the Friday night skates are a sublime way of getting around the world's most beautiful city. After the first 15 minutes of terror, I'm gliding and slaloming with the pack, the wind in my face, the rush strangely akin to that of skiing. The route changes weekly, but tonight we'll do a 15-mile loop past Notre Dame, Montmartre, Pigalle and the Place Bastille, winding up back at the Place d'Italie shortly before 1 a.m., in the nick of time to catch the last Metro. Hearing that the organizers get monthly permission from the police to swoosh down the (cobbled) Champs Élysées, I vow to make Friday night a regular roller date. We stop for 10 minutes at the foot of the Montparnasse tower to allow the mile-long crowd to bunch up again, making it easier for the walkie-talkie linked police and yellow-T-shirted Pari-Roller volunteers to block intersections and clear away vehicular traffic. While many skaters take the opportunity to sip mineral water from plastic bottles, even more are lighting up cigarettes. No head protection, smoke-clogged lungs: It's the Gallic concept of health and fitness. We're off again into the euphoric night, speeding down the Boulevard St. Germain, taking a hard left onto the Boulevard St. Michel. Crossing cobbled bridges to the Right Bank of the Seine, our Tour de France-style turn onto the Rue de Rivoli inspires cheers and whoops from the roller crowd. With Christmas lights sparkling in store windows and the rain glittering off the pavement like an impressionist painting, a spontaneous shout -- "On n'est pas fatigue!" (We are not tired!) -- rises into the damp air. Stunned tourists emerging from late-night brasseries snap our picture, while on the upper floors of Haussmann-era buildings, bemused weekend party-goers wander out of lighted rooms onto rain-soaked balconies to wave and chant with us. It occurs to me that, coming from so many parts of Paris and so many different walks of life, we could just as well be waving the tricolor and shouting, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité!" The French spirit thrives on these in-line wheels, on the biggest moving block party in town. SALON | Jan. 5, 1999 Susan Hack is a writer who lives in Paris.