Part 2: Kim Perkins Interview - a2a Champ Talks About How She Came to Inline Racing

Planet Interview: Kim Perkins

Ultra-Distance Champ Talks About Her Life and Career in Inline Skating

Kim Perkins: First Geek, Then Chain-Smoker, Then a2a Champion

By Robert "Just the Factoids" Burnson

(page 2 of 4)

Robert: Did you run at all?

Kim: Oh, hell no.

Robert: Not even in gym class?

Kim: Under duress.

Robert: And how did you do?

Kim: Well, the thing is: I didn't like it and if you don't like something and you are doing it grudgingly and you would rather have your eyes poked out with a hot stick, you are not going to do very well at it.

Robert: So really no history of sports in school?

Kim: No. A singular hatred for sports and everybody associated with it.

Robert: And then where did you go to college?

Kim: To Oberlin College in Ohio. It's a little liberal arts college.

Robert: And what did you major in?

Kim: English with a minor in history, which is what you do when you are planning to be a journalist.

Robert: What did you do when you got out?

Kim: It was in the late-eighties, when everybody from the humanities was deciding to go into film, so on a complete whim, I switched tacks and decided to go into film. And I landed an internship at a production company in New York City. So the week after I graduated, off to New York I went.

Robert: And that's where you started skating?

Kim: Yes. It was 1989. And I was living in the East Village and chain smoking and going to cafes and having nothing to do with sports in any way, shape or form. But one day, I saw someone going down Broadway on a pair of skates. He was going at incredible speed in a tuck, and I said, "That's what I want to do."

So I got a pair of skates, and I put them on and skated around my kitchen, and then put them in the closet for three months. They were bad rec skates. They were like wearing lead weights on your feet.

One day, I decided to go to the volleyball area in Central Park, which is where the skaters went. And I put on my skates and skated for awhile, and I totally loved it.

I skated around for a while and I remember coming back to my apartment and sitting there in a hot bath because I was so tired and sore and thinking, "This is the best day ever."

And then two days later, I went back and I ran into this guy named Crazy Jeff. He was part of the downtown pool league I was in. And he was just magnificent on rollerblades. He would just do these insane things on skates. And he taught me how to stop, and I remember skitching pickup trucks in Herald Square, and not knowing that that was not normal. (laughs)

I kept coming showing up to the volleyball area, and I started to know some other skaters. But then people started to do what I thought was a normal jock thing: They started making fun of my cheap skates.

So I did just what I would have done in junior high. I said, "OK, so fine, you don't like me. That's it. I'm never going to see you again. Bye."

I spent the next ten years just skating by myself and really having a good time and never being off my skates, I mean never. (She laughs.) But never skating with another human. Always only by myself.

(continued)

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