Roller Skating

Eager to avert a lawsuit, the Cypress City Council unanimously voted Monday to order an environmental impact report on a proposed skate park in Veterans Park. Skaters and park opponents packed the council chambers, sitting on opposite sides of the room. Plans for a park for skaters and skateboarders have been a contentious subject for the last three years, with committees and task forces looking at every alternative.

Friday, 10 p.m., Place d'Italie. Francis Thomas, a.k.a. "Fanta Boy," is here with his wheels on, ready to roll. All week, the lanky, unmarried immigrant from Cameroon has waited for this moment. It's what he daydreams about while working as a security guard: the wind in his face, the pavement under his feet, the thrill of streaking downhill at 30 mph. "Once you've tasted the Friday night ride, you become impatient for Friday to roll around again," says Thomas, 25. "You can't live without it."

The butt lights flickered on at dusk under a watermelon-colored sky. They blinked red, with naughty, traffic-stopping insistence, which is why they're attached to the working hips of dozens of in-line skaters. My friend Nancy and I were in San Francisco for the weekly Friday Night Skate, where hundreds of skaters typically roller blade down streets, up hills, over railroad tracks and through tunnels.

Jerry Conklin is on a roll. The 66-year-old Westlake Village software consultant is a roller-skating purist, a fixture on the trail at Westlake. Four of every five days, he can be found zooming by in-line skaters and bicyclists on his clunky four-wheeled clodhoppers. "Everyone's smiling as I go by: 'Look at the old man,' " Conklin said with a fair amount of self-deprecation and a still-discernible Brooklyn accent. " 'He should be doddering with a cane.'

The inline skating people smiled and stuck out their hands and all John Goldman could think was, you know, chaos. He figured the X Games were about to break out in the middle of his traditional running race, the marathon he wants to make the most prestigious on the West Coast. Goldman, race director for the Long Beach Marathon, which on Sunday will be up and running again after a three-year hiatus, knew the trend toward variety in such events. But inline skating?