Qail. Melbourne Museum, Carlton. Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung.

Skating is a joyous and blossoming activity that welcomes people from all ability levels, ages, body types, gender identities, sexual orientations, neurotypes, ethnicities, disabilities and socioeconomic backgrounds to come together as one, with a shared common goal. That goal being to get as many likes on Tik Tok as possible.

But really, as a self-obsessed, attention-seeking metro-sexual, I was looking for any way to justify wearing arse-hugging purple velvet flares out in public. And if skating is what it would take, then that’s what I'd do.

Myself and my fellow exhibitionist skaters typically congregate just outside the appropriately named Royal Exhibition building. Here a selection of movie-goers, museum staff, children, parents, bird-watchers, drug dealers and cyclists typically sit around the space to cheer and boo the skating community on as we twirl, dip, twist and jam to the same 5 disco songs over and over. It's a space where women and LGBTQIA people lead. A space where flamboyance and athleticism are combined. A space where people who failed the beep test in year 10 can be sports stars. We teach each other, support each other in lockdown, and apply bandaids to knees that have been fatally attacked by pebbles left on the ground. It is a space where we can feel loved and supported by friends without saying much at all, even when we have only one thing in common. That thing being wheeley shoes and an ever growing array of bruises in strange places.