A Brief But Spectacular take on spreading 'Rolligion'

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: David Miles Jr., known as the Godfather of Skate, has been the driving force behind the roller skating scene in San Francisco's Bay Area for decades.

He runs what's called the Church of 8 Wheels, a roller rink inside an old church.

DAVID MILES JR., The Godfather of Skate: Well, you know, a lot of people take skating for granted.

They like to skate and all, but, for me, it's everything.

It is my entire life.

When you get that good James brown song come on, you know, you're thinking about that beat, you're thinking about doing that step, crossovers and spins.

You just do it according to what the beat says.

The city of San Francisco lets me do what I do.

Here, I am the Godfather of Skating.

I kind of didn't really even find myself until I discovered skating.

I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.

In Kansas City, I was a bricklayer, every day, every day.

Nah, man.

When I first came here, I didn't know not one person.

It wasn't until I went to Golden Gate Park that I fell in love with the city.

I always talk about it as -- you know "The Wizard of Oz," the movie?

Dorothy's in the house.

It's spinning around.

Everything's in black and white, right?

And then they open the door and it's all full color, people dancing and skating.

And ever since that very day, I have been out there promoting skating, representing it.

This is like my life's calling.

The Golden Gate Park Skate Patrol was basically formed because, we're talking 20,000, 25,000 roller skaters that would come out.

It was overwhelming the infrastructure, basically.

You need bathrooms.

You need food.

You need everything when you have thousands of people gathering in a spot.

So, the Recreation Parks Department was going to ban roller skating in the park, unless they was -- to be able to come up with a group of people that could handle the problems.

When they came up with the idea of this roller patrol, I just happened to be there that day.

This guy with a clipboard came by and started saying, hey, you want to do all this?

And they threw me in charge.

Ever since then, I got the group trained in first aid, CPR.

We became people that were a help, not just roller skaters.

I see people talking about San Francisco all the time as if it's dying, as if it's gone.

And San Francisco is a fantastic place.

I have done things there I could never do anywhere.

Back in 2013, I met a guy that told me about this church that was empty, and I asked him, could we have a skate party there?

The rest is kind of history.

The Church of 8 Wheels is really just a group of people that love skating.

It's never the building.

It's the people.

We do our skating with a certain energy to it.

All the problems of the world we all hear about, you go turn on the radio now, everything's bad.

But there's a bubble over this thing where you go to escape that.

When you look at what a church really is, it's a place where people congregate and they gather and they celebrate life.

And we just do it on skates.

And when you are around that, it is rolligion.

You spread it.

My name is David Miles Jr., and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on spreading rolligion.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.