It’s 9 p.m. on a Tuesday and more than 40 women are waiting impatiently for a children’s church group to leave the hardwood skating surface. With the wobbly youngsters out of the way, the women–many tattooed and pierced–rush to the floor.
“Tonight we are going to learn how to take girls down,” an instructor bellows. Cheers go up.
After several failed incarnations, roller derby is undergoing its latest renewal in Chicago, the birthplace of the slugfest-on-skates. And the Windy City Rollers, a local all-female ragtag league of derby skaters, are starting to pick up steam.
In the last few years, more than 28 all-female leagues have popped up across the country in major metropolitan areas like Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia, and in smaller locales such as Madison, Wis.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Raleigh, N.C.
Each league plays by its own rules. There is no commissioner, no governing body, no world championship and no cash windfall. Still, the women skate, and they skate hard, as their coffee-and-plum-colored bruises attest.
“I like to knock girls down without any feelings getting hurt,” said CoCo Bang Bang (Sandra Skrzycki), a 6-foot-tall, pink-haired Windy City Roller. “It’s a cross between `Fight Club’ and `Joy Luck Club.'”
Gary Powers, who runs the Roller Derby Hall of Fame out of his Brooklyn, N.Y., home, said the women are using a little bit of sex appeal and swagger to draw attention to the 70-year-old sport.
“They sure are bringing out a lot of fans,” Powers said. “Back in the day, some people overlooked the sport because women were involved and others were attracted because of that. I have to wonder what the racy uniforms and crazy names have to do with derby, but it might work.”
Earlier derby leagues failed because the sport fell out of fashion and money dried up. Derby purists and former skaters are skeptical that the latest wave will succeed, but the new crop of skaters claims they are in it for the long haul.
Erwin Miller, a self-proclaimed “derby nut” and a former skater who runs a comprehensive Web site dedicated to the sport, said many of the all-female leagues have lost focus of the sport and are mimicking wrestling.
“They go out beating on each other,” Miller said. “They all have outlandish names. It’s not about scoring points, it’s about showing off. They want to be rock stars.”
They may not be full-time rock stars yet, but the Rollers attracted more than 1,500 spectators to their first public bout, a 4-hour sold-out exhibition June 12 at the Congress Theater.
They market a combination of sport and entertainment. It’s part B-movie fantasy that borders on titillating, part skate show with punk rock ethics and a set of rules.
The women wear their injuries–broken ankles, split chins, stitches and perpetual bruises–like badges of honor. They are mothers, clothing designers, bartenders, hairstylists, teachers and lawyers.
“All of these girls have enough self-confidence to come out here, be aggressive and hit each other,” said Shirley Temple of Doom (Cat Shively), a 4-foot-10 waitress from Chicago. “Then we go to the bar and start drinking.”
The Rollers’ roster has about 70 women ranging in age from 22 to 45. The “derby girls,” as they prefer to be called, are divided into four teams of colorful characters with campy nicknames and over-the-top personalities. They now play against each other, but organizers say they plan to battle other leagues someday.
Some Rollers said they want to remain true to the tradition and rules of the game and want to impress fans with their hard hits and skating prowess. Others said it’s their sweaty sex appeal that will fill the stands.
“There’s a lot of showmanship, but it’s definitely a sport,” said Angel Dustt (Candy Amato), a Windy City Roller who paced the sidelines with a clipboard during a recent practice. “It’s athletic. It’s not like wrestling.”
Rollers coach Bettina von Brickhaus (Susan Sabin) said the Chicago skaters need to rely on their flair to succeed.
“Guys like girls in short skirts skating,” she said. “They’ll be showing cleavage, legs and tattoos. We are a lot of sport with a lot of style and flair.”
The idea for a Chicago roller-derby league came from Austin, Texas, where one of the first in the latest crop of all-female leagues started in 2000.
Skater Juanna Rumbel (Elizabeth Gomez) was on a road trip with former co-worker Sister Sledgehammer (Kelly Simmons) when they saw what they thought was a tattoo on the belly of a waitress. It was “derby burn,” the waitress told them.
She was a member of the Texas Rollergirls. When they got home, Rumbel and Sledgehammer hatched their plan.
They created Windy City Rollers LLC and held fundraising events. The also researched the sport, which started in Chicago in 1935 at Rickett’s restaurant. Leo Seltzer, a Chicago promoter, came up with the idea after learning that a majority of American men and women skated, according to his son Jerry and several roller derby historians. Seltzer was looking for an attraction to fill the Chicago Coliseum, which he regularly booked. He created the Transcontinental Roller Derby, a marathon-like endurance race that pitted couples against each other to see who could skate the longest. It later changed into a more physical game with fights, flying elbows and a scoring system.
Traditionally, two teams face off in bouts, which are made up of four periods. There are five skaters per team and points are scored during jams–instances where the typically wily and speedy skaters try to slip around or through a pack of defensive blockers. Points are scored when jammers break through the pack.
Bouts are typically played on a 100-foot banked oval track that allows skaters to gain speed while rounding corners, but most of the new all-female leagues skate on a flat oval track.
At the sport’s height in the early 1960s, spectators packed stadiums and could watch bouts nightly on television. But a lack of financial resources and player squabbles soon felled the sport. There was resurgence in 1972, after Raquel Welch starred in the movie “Kansas City Bomber.” But the national roller derby league disbanded a year later. In 1999, The Nashville Network created “RollerJam,” a super-sexed, wrestling-like version of the game that catered to cable television viewers. It lasted two years.
The Windy City Rollers plan to last longer than “RollerJam.” They are, after all, investing their time (commuting to Palatine and Lombard for practice) and money (skates can cost more than $100).
“We want to bring the sport back to Chicago,” Rumbel said recently, explaining their long-term goal. “We also want to promote female identity, sexiness and fun.”
And the skaters seem to be enjoying it. Preseason scrimmages have created rivalries between teams–especially the Double Crossers, the attitude-inclined Oakland Raiders of Chicago roller derby.
During a recent practice, tensions and tempers rose when Double Crosser Courtney Shove (Carey Captain) threw a shoulder into Crimson Crusher (Julie Adams), causing her to sprawl on the floor. Crusher tried to get up but stumbled like a drunken sailor. The blond, blue-eyed Shove, who weighs in at “a buck-forty,” shrugged.
“I didn’t hit her that hard,” Shove said. “I’m glad she didn’t start crying.”
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bmccarthy@tribune.com
