Is Rollerblading in Philly dead? Not until the Kelso brothers stop skating.

The days when Rollerbladers could make a living off daring stunts like handrail grinds and gaps over huge stair sets are long gone. But brothers Sean and Colin Kelso, two of Philadelphia’s most legendary in-line skaters, are still pushing the sport’s boundaries nearly three decades after they first strapped wheels to their feet.

Their clothing company Bacemint’s latest video SPACEMINT2 debuted Nov. 5 at California’s Blading Cup, the most prominent “aggressive in-line skating” event in the country. The feature is a 15-minute follow-up to a 2020 release that captured the Kelsos skating in the early days of the pandemic. “It’s a combination of all the skills we’ve acquired over the years,” Sean said. “There’s lots of fancy footwork, tricks, and switch-ups.”

In the 1990s and early 2000s, when skateparks were less common, the Kelsos earned the respect of the Philly blading scene through eye-watering street stunts, often called hammers.

They started Rollerblading in their native Abington in the 1990s.

At the time, there were tons of other kids Rollerblading. The brothers fine-tuned their skills on suburban curbs, at a local middle school, and through roller hockey, which was also experiencing a boom at the time.

Colin was known for his huge gaps. He once hucked a 540 over an 18-stair at the Philadelphia Municipal Service Building, across from City Hall.

Sean was known for his daring grinds down challenging handrails, but one of his most memorable tricks happened at the Washington Monument Fountain across from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The two-tiered structure is ringed with a series of metal animals. Sean jumped onto the bull on the right hand side of the upper staircase and rode along its back before gapping through its horns and across the lower stairs.

The Kelsos started taking the train into Philly in the late 1990s in search of new skate spots. But the brothers were far from the first aggressive skaters to make a name for themselves in the city.

Before them came legends like Jimmy Shuda, who once did a grind down a kinked handrail at SEPTA’s Penn Medicine station. It’s the same staircase Samuel L. Jackson’s character Elijah fell down in the 2000 movie Unbreakable.

“You can see the marks from my skates in the shot,” Shuda said.

This earlier generation of Philly skaters developed a strict code for tricks meant to make Rollerblading look as stylish as possible.

“Rollerblading is the easiest thing to make look stupid and the hardest thing to make look cool,” Colin said.

In 1998, Shuda and another prominent Philly skater, Jeff Frederick, enrolled at Drexel University with the main goal of spending more time skating the city’s street spots.

The next year, fellow Rollerblader Chris Majette joined them. He was an award-winning photographer and spent his free time documenting street skating in Philly.

The Kelsos both had impressive sections in Majette’s films, Underestimated (2002) and Opinions (2004). That’s how they ultimately got sponsored by Powerslide, one of the world’s biggest in-line skate manufacturers. The Kelsos now ride for a newer skate company called Them.

For the brothers, who live down the street from each other in Port Richmond, nowhere in the city is off-limits. Much of SPACEMINT2 was filmed in Kensington.

Although there are still big gaps and tall handrails in their latest videos, now that the Kelsos are getting older (Colin is 37 and Sean is 36), they’ve taken their skating in a more technical direction.

The way they power through rough pavement and contort their legs to bounce, spin, and slide across gritty streetscapes is a elevated by the brothers’ signature filming style, centered on their mastery of the fish-eye lens and ability to get extremely close to each other’s tricks.

For less-experienced videographers, there would be a high risk of the camera breaking in the event of a fall. But the Kelsos understand each other’s skating so well that they always know when to pull back.

Skating has kept the Kelsos’ relationship exceptionally close. “It all ties back to this love for Rollerblading we share together,” Sean said. The sport has long been a labor of love for them.

“We don’t have the luxury of being taken care of by the industry,” Colin said. Both brothers work full-time in the pharmaceutical industry.

When the sport first came about in the 1990s, it quickly became a cash cow for ESPN through the X Games. But by 2005, in-line skating was completely removed from the event.

This was partly due to a homophobic smear campaign launched by some in the skateboard industry. Some were unhappy with the attention the younger sport was getting and were worried about losing money with the large number of kids buying blades instead of boards. Those sentiments begat derogatory terms and occasional violence.

“Nobody wants to be an outcast,” Colin said.

There was also a lot of hostility toward the X Games and other corporate contest circuits, particularly among core street skaters, who considered Rollerblading a form of self-expression.

“Skating is something you can’t win,” Colin said. “Contests were only created for an audience that needed winners and losers.”

The aggressive in-line community became increasingly insular as the entire Rollerblading industry continued to contract. That trend didn’t stop until the pandemic hit in 2020, when more people became interested in individual outdoor sports.

But little of that money has made its way to the Kelsos or their counterparts.

Today, there are few serious rollerbladers in Philadelphia. Anthony Marchione, a skater who was featured in the original SPACEMINT, just turned 29, and is one of the youngest members of the region’s core Rollerblading community.

“There’s no kids that are into it, which is a real drag,” he said. “There’s not a big enough scene in Philly to nurture the youth.”

Shuda has managed to get his 9-year-old son James into Rollerblading. He also plays roller hockey.

These days, the father of two lives in Media, where he’s part of the Delco Skatepark Coalition, an organization which fights for more facilities to be built in the county. His daughter Francesca, 11, is a boarder sponsored by the company Meow Skateboards.

Marchione said today’s youngsters are often shocked and awed when he straps on his skates and starts doing tricks.

None of these legacy rollerbladers are planning to slow down. The Kelsos are currently shooting a new video featuring Shuda’s skating. Marchione’s band Ceramic Animal just finished their nationwide tour. Now that the guitarist has some down time, he’s also looking to hit the streets with the Kelsos.