Roller Girls Rock NYC

Do you remember the Roller Derby when you were a kid?

Roller Girls

It’s back and in a big way all across the country. New York City has SIX all-girl amateur roller derby teams and it’s a blast to watch them.

This past Saturday night my friend Jerry and I headed up north to the City College of New York’s Harlem campus to watch the NYC 2010 Roller Derby Championship, featuring the “whips versus the wenches:” the Queens of Pain (of Queens) and the Bronx Gridlock. We weren’t disappointed for a single minute. The rest of the teams that make up the Gotham Girls Roller Derby league include the Manhattan Mayhem (my favorite team) and the Brooklyn Bombshells. There’s also two traveling teams made up of skaters from all the teams: Wall Street Traitors and the All Stars.

Flying ladies

First of all, every single person in that gymnasium had a great time Saturday night. From the skaters to the audience members to the “Jeer” Leaders.

I went to my first roller derby experience in NYC five and a half years ago on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. It was a rough affair. We first went through a medal detector, then sat on the gymnasium floor — where the skaters routinely plowed into us. Going to the Ladies’ room was a scary experience — you had to be escorted. A heavy metal band played and we all were invited to put on skates and participate ourselves after the contest was over.

Saturday’s event was slightly more upscale: taking place in a college gymnasium where we got to sit on bleachers. There were two concession stands; decent restroom facilities and a DJ spinning the heavy metal as a sound track for the whole evening. Being that it was also Halloween eve, there was also a costume party and a lot of interesting characters in the stands with us. We also had to go through the metal detector (does roller derby promote violence? I don’t really think so).

Jeer Leader..."scream for Queens"

The contest was non-stop fun and madness. There were two female play-by-play announcers who were absolutely awesome at their job. The contest itself featured characters with great names like “Suzy Hotrod,” “Ana Bollocks” “Murder City Mandy” “Speed McQueen” and “Luna Impact.”

In case you don’t know…roller derby is a pretty simple sport: Each team has a lead chick — the Jammer — who is the only one who can score. Her mission is to lap as many of her opponents as possible. The other members of her team work to block the other team’s Jammer and keep the path clear for their own girl to score. They’re simultaneously doing offense and defense.

Jammers ready for action

A lot of what we saw Saturday was theatre, the gals were decked out in serious padding, but not much else. If you remember watching roller derby as a kid on TV, the track back then was banked with rails. No so with modern roller derby. They skate on a flat track with a bit of a spongy surface for their safety and no side rails. Like the old days, today’s roller derby gals wear quad skates for maximum stability. We saw a lot of body checking but no hair pullling or slugging. But no matter what the women on wheels did, the crowd ate it up — and then some.

Roller derby seems to be making a huge comeback all over the country. NYC also has a men’s league. Saturday night we met some girls from Adelaide, Australia who follow the sport religiously down under and were excited that the NYC championship was happening while they were here on vacation.

Oh yeah…The Bronx Gridlock won and is the 2010 NYC champion.

If you like to skate and hit people — the league is holding auditions November 20. I kind of hope it’s open to the public to watch.

Here’s more information about the Gotham Girls, in case you happen to be visiting while the season is going on: http://www.gothamgirlsrollerderby.com/about but I have to warn you…most of these bouts sell out and it’s easy to see why.