Last weekend we went to see a bout between two teams of the Santa Cruz Rollergirls at the Santa Cruz Civic Center. What I totally couldn’t believe was that the place was SOLD OUT, and we could barely get tix to get in! People are so frikkin’ organized anymore.
The bout we saw was the Beach Flats Betties vs. the Lost Girls. I might pedantically mention that in Santa Cruz, the Beach Flats is a somewhat low-rent area, and of course “betty” is an old surfer slang term for “woman.” Everyone involved seemed kind of punk, in a 21st Century way.
I had a little trouble figuring out the rules for roller derby, but a friendly young woman explained it to me, and back home I looked it up in Wikipedia. Basically each team has a “jammer” who scores points by lapping the pack.
The women wore impressive shiny pants, and looked awesome on their old-school four-wheeled skates. I think that’s Raven von Kaos of the Lost Girls in the middle.
And I think this is Lulu Lockjaw of the Beach Flat Betties jammin’ through the pack.
The MC was a rather stout middle-aged woman in tiny jeans shorts and a miniature red cowboy hat. When some heavy metal music came on, she started capering around on the stage doing knee-bend dancing—what a hoot.
Even the intermission was great, they had unicyclists, mini cyclers, jugglers on stilts, and hula hoopers in wild costumes—everyone parading round and round the rink slowly to music, including the Ramones—just local amateurs of all ages having fun. It was like a Fellini movie.
It takes a relaxed Cruz-type vibe to carry off this kind of thing—some communities would be all SERIOUS about it. A wonderful evening.
