Hot Wheels

Published: Marie Claire, Australia, ELLE, Canada

Hot Wheels

Part spectacle, part sisterhood, the fast, fierce and fabulous roller derby is back!

It’s Saturday afternoon at the Millennium Skate World in Camden, New Jersey. The afternoon kids’ party has moved out and the roller girls have shipped in. Under the gaudy, oversized tinfoil palm trees that hang from the ceiling, New York’s Gotham Girls and Philadelphia’s Liberty Belles limber up for their evening bout. In training at least three times a week, these women are well-toned, highly skilled athletes. With names like Greta Turbo, Surely Temple, and Ana Bollocks, it’s the humour mixed with a high-grade sporting campness that appeals to the skaters.

“Are we ready to get this thing started?” Gori Amos, the announcer for the evening, shouts into the mike. “From the mean streets of Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the boogie-down Bronx we have the Gotham Girls Roller Derby!” The crowd screams and whistles as the girls skate out onto the track to Jay-Z’s ‘I got 99 problems’ “She does it for the love!” shouts Gori Amos, as Donna Matrix skates out onto the track, playing up to the crowd with her leather bondage paddle.

The two groups get into their starting positions, crouched down like coiled springs ready to propel themselves forward around the track. There are five player to a team – one pivot, three blockers and one jammer. The rules are basic, the scoring system based on the ability of the jammer to pass as many opponents as possible while lapping the track. Blockers on the other ream use their legs, shoulders and arms to stymie her efforts. The jammer scores appoint for every opponent she passes during the three  20-minute bouts.

The crowd is settling down to a buzzing murmur and is looking around in anticipation.

On the whistle, the pack skates off so fast you can feel the tail wind on your cheeks. The jammers jostle to get through the pack, while the blockers use all their skills and force to stop them. This can be brutal, as body blocking allowed as is elbowing in some leagues.

Blink and you’d miss the tangle of skaters heading, out of control, towards you. The animated crowd tilts backwards in a reverse Mexican wave, trying to anticipate the next fall as the girls whip around the small track. Goodie bags in the VIP seats go flying when a tangle of roller boots and frill-covered booty fly towards them. Injuries to players and fans are not uncommon.

The Roller Derby story begins in America during the Great Depression. By the 60’s and 70’s bouts became so popular they attracted as many as 30 – 40,000 fans with the skaters becoming household names and magazine cover stars.  One of the most famous was Anne Calvello, who didn’t hang up her skates until she died last year, aged 76, from liver cancer. Calvello was famous for her duels with the blonde bomber, Joanie Weston, and has been immortalised in the 2006 documentary Demon of the Derby.

High overhead costs contributed to the sport’s demise in the 1970s, but in 2001 a team called the Texas Rollergirls reignigted interest in the sport. Then last year reality TV caught up , screening the rough and tumble in the doco-style Rollergirls. Now teams have sprung up all over over the US, Canda and the UK and even Australia.

Gotham Girls’ Ginger Snap is a typical modern rolelrgirl – she’s mean in a kitsch bubblegum that bites kinda way. Over the thump of Blondie’s ‘Call me,’ Ginger Snap shouts, ‘Roller derby is the only rock and roll sport.’

In their early 20s and mid 30s, the skaters have day jobs as scientists, attorneys and executives. Gotham Girl Ginger Snap (a.k.a. Natily Blair, 29) is a graphic designer from Manhattan. ‘I love the fact that women are doing it because they love the Derby,” she says, jamming her cowboy hat over her ginger braids. “The group is so diverse. I have so many great friends from circles that I would never be a part of - we just don’t share the same airspace in NYC. It can be hard to make new friends but now not only do I have 64 friends in this area I have over 30 leagues full of 64 girls. That’s a lot of couches I can stay on.”

Spitfire Flare (a.k.a. Kelly Katko, 30) skates for the Liberty Belles. “It’s a pretty colourful sport,” she says, stretching her hamstrings. “You get to meet new girls all the time - it’s like a huge sisterhood.” When she’s not busting on the track, Katko is an administrator for a high-end hotel chain. The girls choose their own names, like Rosie Bloodbath and Violet Temper. “My name had to be fairly chilled,” explains Spitfire, “If I had a meeting with all the executives and my boss pulled out a newspaper cutting of me calling myself Poca Ass or something it wouldn’t be a good scene.”

What makes the Roller Derby unique is that it is controlled and operated solely by female skaters. In 2004 the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFYDA) was formed to promote and foster the sport. The philosophy is “by the skaters, for the Skaters,”

The girls embrace the DIY spirit and draw on their own resources. In addition to organising and publicising their bouts teams produce their own website, radio shows, podcasts, DVDs, calendars and t-shirts. They have their own PR managers, marketing managers and make-up artists. Everybody skates for love, not money, and any profit they make is ploughed straight back into running the league.

Gori Amos sums up the girls’ ethos perfectly, “I love that this is a bunch of strong women who aren’t afraid to be strong and sexy at the same time.” Each team has its own uniform, the Philly Roller Girls are a blaze of electric blue butt-skimming dresses emblazed with a lightning flash, while the Gotham Girls are a grungy mix of black and red. Each girl gives her outfit its own individual flare - adding customised leggings, painted t-shirts or underskirts. Helmets, gum shields and shin and kneepads are compulsory.

Bonnie Thunders (a.k.a. Nicole Williams - a 23-year-old biologist from New York) had been a figure skater all her life until she joined the Gotham Girls. “Having people fall in front of me is nothing new, but having people hit me and knock me down is a little different,” says the brunette. “I tried out for the Gotham Girls last fall. And 125 girls turned up to fill only 25 places. They were looking for people who could make the Derby their own; girls who had a good attitude.”

And attitude is where it’s at for these girls. The section in the rulebook that gives penalties for the use of hands and forearms doesn’t bother Gotham Girl Beyonsláy (a.k.a. Jackie, 29, a New York attorney). She prefers to ‘booty block’. ‘I was at the Gotham Girls’ championship game in October 2005 and from that moment knew I had to try out. I saw the game on Friday and by Monday I had the boots I’m wearing now.

‘I saw the girls and their skating ability and I knew I could do it. I was a competitive figure skater from the age of four. I’m a big girl and what I Iove about the derby is that we have girls who are short, wide, petite, and tall.  Whatever your size you can use it to your advantage,’ explains Beyonsláy, ‘It is a thinker’s game and there is a lot of strategy. It is like chess, if you interfere with a block you have to think how that will change the movement of the game.’

‘It is very empowering that the derby is run and operated by women. That is why everybody is so proud of the league,’ adds Beyonsláy, ‘it would be a very different game if it was run by men.’

Liberty Belle Roxi Gunz (a.k.a. Nikki Knight, 32, a paralegal from Delaware). agrees, “It’s more fun without the guys,” I don’t get a whole lot of free time because I have two children, so this is my outlet. And, if I’m having a bad day, I play so much better!”

Photography: Courtesy  ©Dan Hallman