Roller Derby Rules

On Saturday, I went to the local roller derby: the Rat City Roller Girls. And it was great. I thought it was going to be kind of "alternative" and "ironic" and "underground". And, you know, I was prepared to enjoy it. But then it turned out to be a huge, surprisingly-professional show, but with the energy of a crazed underground sport. So I really, really enjoyed it.

First, let's make it clear that this was not fixed. I am completely confident that the cool punk-rock chicks on wheels were fighting as hard as they could. That's because when they went down, it looked like it hurt. Especially the times the medics had to come out to tend to sprains or broken bones (which only happened once, and it turned out to really be a dislocated bone -- anyway, my point is that there were injuries). I suppose there might have been scoring shenanigans, especially since it was pretty hard to keep track exactly what was going on, but I don't really think so.

Here in Seattle, there's a lot of entertainment options that don't really have the budget or other resources to do their shows correctly. Like we've got a semi-pro wrestling league, but I don't think they can afford a proper ring. Or the local burlesque troupes (there are like five!) that don't usually have live music or even a terrible comedian between acts. How can you have burlesque without a terrible comedian? Come to think of it, I should really contact one of these groups and offer my services. Try and tell me that modern semistripping wouldn't be more fun if it was interspersed with:

"Your grandfather is a little deaf, isn't he?"
"A little? Why, yesterday he conducted family prayers kneeling on the cat.

See? That little gem is from 3500 Jokes for All Occasions, printed in 1942. They sure knew how to do their terrible unfunny comedy in the 1940s.

Okay, anyway, about the roller derby. They had a full-size actual rink. Well, I think it was full size. It looked about as big as the one I vaguely remember seeing on television in the eighties after Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. And the sound system was great; it's not easy making things sound good in a hangar. But they had a DJ playing songs that were right at "background level" under the announcers, who were always perfectly understandable, even as one of them wandered around the crowd with a wireless mike. And then the halftime band sounded good too. That takes a lot of audio equipment. And that's not even mentioning the cool lighting system and the remote control blimp.

How did they pay for all this? Well, for a start, by having a huge sold-out crowd. There were, I would conservatively estimate, lots and lots of people there. Maybe a few thousand. And then there were the souvenirs. Cool T-Shirts and stickers and posters. Memorabilia for the teams in the league (the Sockit Wenches, the Derby Liberation Front, Grave Danger, and the Throttle Rockets). There wasn't anything for specific skaters, but I figure that can't be far behind, what with the cool names (my favorite was "Li'l Hateful").

Look, it was just really cool, okay? Go read Chiara's entry about it, because it turns out she went too. I should have written this faster, because I keep being about to explain how Rhias and I were "clapping and cheering and throwing devil signs at each other and making 'Can you believe how much this RULES?' faces at one another," but then it turns out that Chiara already wrote those exact words. She was up in the Crash Section (right up ringside where there's a serious danger of having a skater end up in your lap at 30 mph), where apparently people were more calm. Back in the bleachers where I was, everyone was shrieking and shouting and shaking pitchforks (we were in "The Graveyard", where everyone roots for Grave Danger, the devil-themed team). There was quite a lot of enthusiasm, as well there should have been.

Roller derby rules.