Why Nuevo Roller Derby Rocks

[akirlu]

A couple of years back, when Steve Green was coming to Seattle on his TAFF progress, I was cudgeling my brains for a quintessentially American thing to do while he was visiting. By serendipity, I found out that the Rat City Roller Girls were skating a bout at ShowWare Center -- the sports arena that is just half a mile from my house. Roller Derby! thinks I. What could be more quintessentially American than Roller Derby? Now, I confess I was thinking of it in terms of being a quaint curiosity of Americana, not unlike going to see a demolition derby and fireworks display in Modesto for 4th of July, or attending the Lion's Club Barbecue and Library Sale among the vanilla-scented pines of Idyllwild one Labor Day weekend.

I had never been to a live roller derby bout in my life at that point, and almost all I really knew about it came from having seen it on television decades before. I invited Randy Byers along, and at first he seemed reluctant. He was thinking of it as still a salacious, leering, heterosexist faunch-fest, I guess. By then I had educated myself a little, though, and I was able to suggest that it wasn't that, not anymore anyway. Roller derby had found its feminist side in the intervening thirty years, I said. And in the end, Randy came along with the gang, and we all enjoyed it. I think I had tears in my eyes a couple of different times. Because it's that empowering, that inclusive, this modern reincarnation of roller derby.

Now Kyle Cassidy has discovered roller derby and he distills the appeal far better than I ever managed:

...one of the things that makes this so special is that most sports take you when you're in peak form and discard you when you're no longer there, and here I'd found a group of women welcomed as they were, celebrated for their talents, into a sport that would only make them better, stronger, faster. It was really life affirming. I left with a mixture of athletic awe at feats of strength, bravery and endurance as well as this wide-cast net of love and support.

Yeah, you soak in the acceptance, the encompassing love, even sitting in the bleachers. The fans, the players, the officials, even putative rival teams, they're all about the sport for the fun and the getting together and the rush that they share when they do. The woman in her 60s rockin' the mini-skirt-and-torn-fishnets with death skull make-up while leading cheers, and the multiple hairy, portly dudes yelling their hearts out in tights and tutus, and the skaters fat and thin, young and old, tattooed and plain, they're all letting it all hang out there, their enthusiasm and their determination and their sheer joy of being. And it's a real privilege to be in the middle of that. I really must go see another bout soon.

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

It's really quite something at Key Arena, especially now they're getting 6000+ per bout.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the new season :)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of interested in Lucha Vavoom, myself, but this reminds me that when my cousin took his family to Colorado a month or so back, he asked me if I knew any good tacky places to take his cynical daughters, and I thought of the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Odditorium in downtown Estes Park (where he was staying for a week), which I had never been in. This was perfect for him, so it was a big disappointment when I checked up and found that it was no longer there. San Antonio, St. Augustine, Jackson Hole, and a number of other places have them, but nothing in Colorado any more.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Hard to believe.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

There was a Believe It Or Not outlet in San Francisco, near Fisherman's Warf, when I was a kid. I don't remember much about it now, other than some Very Long Document inscribed on a grain of rice. No idea if it's still there.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Ah, this is NOT independent of the reason I know something about modern roller derby! I'm working towards going to shoot Lorraine's team playing sometime in the next few weeks.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, Kyle's discovery isn't, no. Mine was.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

A couple of local Chicago fans are involved in roller derby, including one novelist.

I think this is a form of entertainment that is really not for me, but I'm glad my friends enjoy participating so much.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It might be hard to tell until you've seen a bout or two.

[mangoman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I had a very similar experience. Here in the UK there's a roller derby league, and the local team Auld Reekie Roller Girls (arrg.co.uk) have their home bouts only a few hundred yards from where I live. I'm a keen photographer, and went there just thinking of it as a photo opportunity, but within 20 minutes I'd become enthralled by as a sport. And the atmosphere is great. And the home-made cupcakes are good, too.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It's funny, in researching roller derby in advance of Steve's visit, I discovered there was in fact roller derby in the UK as well. Even in Birmingham, so quite near Steve. So much for the 'quintessentially American' thing. But I decided to take a flyer on bringing Steve along for it anyway, and I'm glad I did. We didn't get home made cupcakes but that seems very much in keeping with the hand made, DIY-or-Do-Without approach that roller derby seems to take hereabouts.

[mangoman.livejournal.com]

Well, obviously it is quintessentially American, but women here have adopted it, together with delicious cupcakes, also quintessentially American. :-)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Just like giant toll-house cookies (as opposed to biscuits) the size of draft horses' hooves are quintessentially American, I suppose?

[mangoman.livejournal.com]

yum yum. They sure are. America does indeed have much to offer to the world. We can only get them the size of ponies' hooves here.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

This is, presumably, in part because you do not have BJ's pizzerias and, by extension their dreaded pizzookie.

[mangoman.livejournal.com]

Crikey blimey!!

We do have Millie's Cookies (http://www.milliescookies.com/), but like I said...