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hh, the sweet smell of the skating
rink. It's the first thing you notice
when you walk into Skate-A-Round
U.S.A., and it reminds me of all of the suicides I
drank, all of the fifth grade politicking and all of
the audience syndrome of my young and clumsy
life. I am not sure how ever,/ single roller rink
in the country looks like it's been around since
exactly 1977, but I'm sure it has something to do
with the way our brains process the depressing
shade of yellow in which they are painted.
Tonight is different from the strange, sober
disco; from the eardrum-thumping memories of
my skate nights as an outsiderish tween. Tonight
it is quiet, it is no one's birthday and
there is no 30-something DJ who still j|
lives with his mom initiating a ro
mantic Boyz II Men backwards skate. E
Nay, tonight, I am here to watch the p
Classic City Rollergirls do whatever
it is roller derby queens do. I really
have no concept of what that will be.
I come in late, and a slew of helmeted
babes in elbow pads are circling
the skating rink on the carpet. I'm
not sure why I expect to see roller
blades, but don't get it twisted: they
are wearing roller skates. I am ap
proached by Vic Busto, their coach,
who tells me that the girls are doing
endurance exercises, and he tells me
where to stand to avoid getting clob
bered by skates. I am glad he is there,
as "getting clobbered by skates" is
my fourth worst fear between "a bad
guy breaking into my house, breaking
my arm off and choking me with it" and "being
kidnapped by crazy sea people who want to use
me as shark bait but torture me first." I check my
neurosis at the door and waltz into the middle of
the rink like I am not even terrified.
KEEP ON TRUCKIN'
Busto makes an announcement: "We're doing
trucking and trailering today." All of the rock-a-
billying skate girls partner up. Trucking is where
the front girl steers, and trailering is where the
back girl steers. There is a really Southern air
to the colloquialisms they use to describe their
actions. Truckin'? U!S!A! The coach jokes with
them, settles them down, circles, fixes their
skates when they jam up and paces in his Johnny
Cash black from head to toe in dangerously soft
shoes while his girls, like little caterpillars in a
row, pull each other along. I expected a bad-ass-
bitchiness about them, but there is more of a
slumber party vibe, a giggliness, even if most of
the girls have in mouth pieces and could prob
ably kick my ass before I would have a chance to
do all the karate I learned during that one class I
took when I was 12.
Next, they do an exercise called "Queen of the
Ring," where, as far as I can tell, the object is to
slam into other girls on skates and try to knock
them over. All of my instincts say "pull her hair"
or "trip her" or "push her over" or "cry," but ap
parently none of that is allowed. Busto points to
Carmen Slamdiego, a leggy roller girl with pony
tails and says, "Keep an eye on her. She is a hard
hitter."
Oh, right, right, right. She looks like a bru
nette Ice Capades Barbie. She looks like an angel
on wheels. Two seconds later, I am proven wrong,
wrong, wrong, as she turns out to be about as
gentle as a drunk linebacker. So far, I'm not sure
what the object of this is, except to roller-skate
while hurting people, but sitting on this wall like
a shy 5th grader is the worst. I don't care about
getting clobbered any more. I want skates on. I
want to slam into people. I want to be a roller
derby girl.
‘HIT HER, GET HER"
The girls on the sidelines scream "hit her, get
her, knock her down," and it seems really to hurt
when they falL When the blowouts do happen,
they usually happen in small piles of girls like
dolls tossed across the rink. The coach is really
gentle once they fall, which is funny, since he
goes from "I want to see you slamming into each
other" to Bill Cosby-esque comforting. When they
get a little tired, the aggressive bits subside and
they stop, because the coach is tired of watching
them "couples skate."
This seems like it would be endlessly fun with
beer, but beer is not permitted during practice or
games for insurance reasons.
I didn't know, when I arrived, what exactly
roller derby girls do, or that they exist outside
of my and Quentin Tarantino's dreams. A little
flashback: turns out, the 1930s were pretty de
pressing, so a struggling film publicist named
Leo Seltzer held a dance marathon that even
tually became a roller-skating marathon that
eventually became the Transcontinental Roller
Derby. The game these days is divided into three
periods, just like hockey, not that anyone in
America knows how to play hockey, either. Each
period consists of jams: which is two
minutes when each team's jammers
try to break through a crowd of crazy
skating women without committing
any penalties. This gets kind of dicey,
and subsequently vicious, which is
where the real thrills come in. The
jammers from each team are basi
cally racing through a crowd of ladies
trying to block them from finishing
first The jammers get points by do
ing several things: 1) by passing the
other team's blockers, 2) if the other
team's blocker fouls by doing things
like holding the jammer, tripping Her,
or throwing an elbow pad, kicking her,
etc. After all the jams, the points are
added up, and the team with the most
points wins. It is a beautiful and vio
lent orchestration.
The Classic City Rollergirls (who,
by the way, are the hottest of any of
the roller girls I've seen in my research thus far)
started in the spring of last year on MySpace.
Honey Bee-otch, Carmen Slamdiego and Latina
Thunder are some of the original members, and
they're still with the league of 30+ girls who now
play. Anybody over the age of 18 can join the
league, with no experience at all, and apparently
some of the best skaters didn't know how to
skate at all when they joined.
Their.first official bout is at Skate-A-Round
USA on July 29 at 8 p.m. I am told that they go
even wilder and wail on each other in the bouts,
which is why there is a "suicide zone" in the au
dience and loads of insurance involved. I will be
there; they will be ferocious, and the spectacle
will be oh so lovely.
Bunny McIntosh
The Classic City Rollergirls will be stage assistants at
the Flagpole Athens Music Awards Show at the Morton
Theatre on Thursday, June 21. See p. 27 and the back
cover of this issue for details on the show. For more about
the girls, see www.classiccityrollergir1s.com.
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