Fast girls on wheels give roller derby a new spin

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

AUSTIN, Texas — Donning red fishnets and olive drab miniskirts, the women of Seattle’s Derby Liberation Front roll onto the track raising revolutionary fists in the air. The team’s mascot, Dr. Five, strides across the arena in fatigues, mirrored sunglasses and a red beret. It’s showdown time at Playland Skate Center.

In the lineup are Kim Reaper, D-Bomb, Sybil Unrest and Ann R. Kissed — who as a newcomer is considered “fresh meat” on this team. Two key players — Burnett Down (injured) and Captain Lorna Boom (pregnant) — are on the sidelines, worsening the team's already poor odds against the more seasoned Honky Tonk Heartbreakers of Austin.

"We're up against what is probably the best team in the world," says Ida Slapter, aka Meghan Smith, who has been known to show up for her day job as a receptionist with her nose out of joint and sporting a shiner. "They're very, very aggressive."

Despite Ida’s misgivings, the Derby Liberation Front proves itself a scrappy and determined underdog. Overcoming a series of missteps — rules breaches that land its skaters in a mock electric chair serving as the penalty box — they surge in the second-half and nearly topple the Texas team.

Yes, roller derby is back. A new generation of women has rehabilitated, and adapted the rowdy, raucous sport that rolled into obscurity in the 1970s. There are 30 new leagues — nearly 100 teams — competing within the two-year-old Women's Flat-Track Derby Association. About 60 more leagues are starting up across the United States, according to the WFTDA.

The audiences are growing too.

On this night in Austin, hundreds of fans crowd into the Playland arena at $15 a ticket to see the inter-league bout between the Derby Liberation Front and the Honky Tonk Heartbreakers, the reigning champions of roller derby.

The buzz over what remains a women-only phenomenon isn’t confined to Texas, the birthplace of the Roller Derby revival.

The Derby Liberation Front's league — the Rat City Rollers, which is only in its second year of competition -- recently sold out a 1,500-seat arena outside Seattle for an exhibition match. The same sense of excitement is filling skating arenas in Gotham City, the Windy City, Sin City, the Twin Cities and elsewhere.

Is it show, or is it sport?
One of the roller derby's charms is its improbable blend of real athleticism with high camp.

"The draw is part sex (appeal), part sport, part freak show," says Ziv Kruger, a music lawyer in Austin who also is a volunteer photographer for the Texas league. "Everyone goes for their own initial motive, but most develop a second relationship with the league — and that's as sport fans, like any other sport has."

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Roller derby was created in 1932 by entrepreneur Leo Seltzer, who conceived of it as an endurance competition in a period when dance-a-thons were all the rage. The theatrical violence and other antics that became the hallmark of the game were added by a rival derby outfit in an effort to lure crowds.

Despite such attention-grabbing tactics, roller derby petered out by the early 1970s. An attempt to revive it by a 1980s television show “Roller Jam,” which injected a new element of danger by adding a pit of live alligators in the center of the track, was short-lived.

Its current incarnation traces to the 2001 formation of the Texas Rollergirls league, which grew into a legal nonprofit organization in 2003.

"We knew we had to do something when we suddenly had more money than you could stuff into a panty drawer," says Michelle Bowlin, a member of the Hotrod Honeys known as “Eight Track” and a certified public accountant who helps manage finances for both the Texas Rollergirls and the national association.

The sport embraces some of the retro aspects of the old roller derby, including the use of "quads" — the old style four-wheeled roller skates.

But this is not your mother’s roller derby.

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