It's the summer of '78 and if you're looking for good times there is just one place to go: the local roller disco, where the music is hot, the girls are hotter, and the entire atmosphere is dynamite. It is here, under the swirling colored lights and the spinning disco ball that thousands will experience lessons in friendship and love--and sometimes life teaches that you have to really get down in order to get back up on your feet. It all begins with Xavier Smith, also known as X, a young roller wiz who, along with his crew, once ruled supreme at their South Side of Chicago rink, the Palisades Garden. But when the doors of their favorite hangout close, it marks the end of an era and the beginning of another that sees the boys venturing into completely foreign territory: the North Side's swanky Sweetwater Roller Rink, with its sleek, well-to-do roller-boys and gorgeous girls in short-shorts. For X and his friends, Sweetwater is a brave new world that gives way to an impossible dream: to win the rink's annual Roller Jam Skate-Off. It's more than just a chance to take home a trophy for X--it's his opportunity to fulfill the potential his mother always saw in him and prove his own self-worth. Now, as these spirited South Side skaters take on Sweetwater's greatest champ--that superfine roller god named Sweetness--they're going to have to rock, roll, bounce, boogie--and find their own true rhythm in the process.
