"On the low end, under $150, most of the Rollerblade boots are superior, but on the high end [it's] pretty close," Brine says, citing Roces' and Ultrawhells' use of a more durable wheel.

There is even a new skate on the market called Metroblade which includes detachable wheels a la Inspector Gadget. "You can go to work in them, take off the wheels and walk around," Brine says. But Brine is skeptical about the new product, which he labels as gimmicky.

"I don't know how much you'd want to do that. They look more like a roller blading boot than anything else, certainly no a stylish shoe."

But traditional blades will be in vogue or some time, Brine thinks. "It's here for a while," he says

The terminology of this relatively new sport is still in a protean stage. Fans describe the slippery move of the skaters in expressive, everyday language.

This lack of a firmly established insider's jargon makes the sport surprisingly accessible to newcomers. There is no esoteric nomenclature to be committed to memory before truly understanding rollerblading. Anyone can talk about it.

"May favorite thing Trevor does is when he starts skating pretty slow and then smashes into the curb and uses the momentum from the crash to do a front flip and lands back where he was," says a wide-eyed Aurora Lucia, 11, who often sees the team practicing where she skates.

"I like it the way Victor spreads his knees apart and then goes up on his front wheels only and goes backward through the cones zigzagging really fast. That's rad," says a friend nearby.

The skaters themselves are sometimes at a loss to describe in words what comes so naturally to them on wheels.

"I do this trick in the show ... sort of a sideways criss-cross thing ..," Victor trails off. Frustrated, he gets up and demonstrates what he means: starting with his feet in first position, he weaves them back and forth and somehow propels himself sideways through a series of traffic cones. The bright orange beacons flash in and out of view rapidly as his legs work through them, churning like an egg inch as he threads down the line. The move speaks for itself.