The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Midwest Shreds: Skating Through America’s Heartland by Mandy Shunnarah

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Detroit, Michigan

SKATER HOUSES

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Detroit is a city made for skaters. It is the home of the RollerCade,
the oldest Black-owned roller rink in the country, which has been
operated by the same family since 1955. It’s also the home of Detroit-style
skating, a synchronized couples skate. It’s a city that was made by and for
those who roll. And that’s without even mentioning cars.
The city’s skate scene can be depicted, too, without harping on its
infrastructure. Much has been written about the Motor City’s empty
buildings, with laments for the city often manifesting as poverty porn
or like a script for an apocalyptic movie. Too many hipsters have gone
with camera in hand in search of beauty in the destruction in the name
of creating art that so depersonalizes the destruction from the people
whose lives are most affected by it. But there is much more to Detroit
than this. In terms of street skating, empty buildings and unmonitored,
unguarded private property are the stuff of dreams, and skaters here,
like skaters anywhere, make use of what they have. I myself was born
in a city of broken concrete, jagged, bent handrails, unmown grass, and
abandoned factories whose tenants had moved overseas, leaving behind
husks of buildings, empty and wanting. My dad worked at a steel mill for
thirty-two years until the day its doors permanently closed, and I refuse

to pretend there’s a silver lining in deindustrialization and the poverty that
comes with it.
All this is to say, I went to Detroit in search of new stories.
I drove miles of winding roads past glittering lakes to arrive at Dan
Mancina’s house. His five-month-old Newfoundland puppy greeted me
with a howl and bounded to a hole he’d exuberantly been digging.
“Not much of a seeing-eye dog,” Dan joked as he pushed dirt back
into the hole and tamped it down.

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“I didn’t even skate at that point,” he said. “I was over skateboarding.
I was over the whole scene. LA was way different than the Midwest skate
scene, and I wasn’t really feeling it. It was just not what I thought it would
be. It was super cliquey.”
That, combined with his deteriorating vision, made him think he was
done with skateboarding for good. There was a two-year period where he
had no drive to skate at all. It was a dark, depressing time.
There’s something about skating that’s almost encoded into skaters’
DNA. If you have the inclination to skate, you won’t be able to stay away
from it. There’s an instinctual pull that won’t let you avoid the adrenaline
rush of wheels under your feet for too long.
“I’m way happier and I’m a better person when I’m on my board,” he
said.
When Dan picked up a skateboard again, he was more determined
than ever. He started making a series of videos to challenge the public’s
assumptions about what blind people are capable of, and he started filming
himself skateboarding. The videos took off on Instagram.
“It was weird having people call me inspirational at first. It’s still a
little weird,” Dan said, chuckling. “I’m just a skater. I don’t see myself as



inspirational, but it feels good to know people enjoy watching my skating.
And the bonus is that people are inspired by it, especially those who are
visually impaired or just found out they’re going blind. It’s cool to hear
from them.”
Dan is still primarily a street skater and will skate any accessible
place, especially if there’s a good ledge, round bar, or flat rail. He enjoys
going around and finding new spots, though he doesn’t often find them
at skate parks because accessibility is almost always left out of the design
process.
When Dan goes to a skate park, he has a process of walking the park
to figure out what he can skate. More often than not, the obstacles are too
small. Because Dan skateboards with his white cane, he has to be able to
locate the obstacle and get a sense of its height and length before he can
skate it.

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