Dolls On Wheels

The Classic City Rollergirls Mean Business

originally published June 20, 2007

Ahh, 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 every 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 lives with his mom initiating a romantic Boyz II Men backwards skate. Nay, tonight, I am here to watch the 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 approached 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 clobbered 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 trailoring today." All of the rock-a-billying skate girls partner up. Trucking is where the front girl steers, and trailoring 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 probably 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 apparently 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 brunette 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 depressing, so a struggling film publicist named Leo Seltzer held a dance marathon that eventually 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 basically racing through a crowd of ladies trying to block them from finishing first. The jammers get points by doing 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 violent 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 audience 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.classiccityrollergirls.com.