This Is Not Your Dad's Roller Derby

Growing up as a kid in Southern California, I grew up watching the Los Angeles T-Birds roller derby matches at the old Grand Olympic Auditorium. A few years ago, I remember stumbling back into the old 1970's-era matches on ESPN Classic. I still cringe at the archiac sports video quality from that era. To this day, I will sometimes yell out when I am excited about something "FI-I-I-I-I-VE T-BIRD POINTS!!!!". I did not care much for the men, but it was fun watching the girls engaging in those moving cat-fights on the banked track. To me, I found this more exciting than professional wrestling (with the exception of the tackyness of GLOW).

While traditional roller derby still exists, I also saw a very interesting story on KTLA awhile back about a resurgence of banked track roller sport that is more on the dark side. This story outlined the Los Angeles Derby Dolls, a group of girls bringing roller derby into the 21st century. Their slogan "skates, skirts, scars" really describes the high-speed action that crosses sport, live music and the tattoo scene.

While checking out the myspace page of one of my neighbors, I discovered that we have a similar league (not sure if they refer to them as "leagues") out here. The Arizona Derby Dames consists of several teams including the Coffin Draggers and the School Yard Scrappers. They are having an event coming up a week from Saturday (3/24/07) here in Phoenix.

Myself, I am not into the dark/tattoo scene (yet a good chunk of my wardrobe is black), I would be more of into the lolita scene, but I can say, this roller derby sounds like a lot of fun! I would love to see it someday! Hope it spreads, but does not go corporate. GALS-- KEEP ON THRASHING!!!!