At the (Men's) Roller Derby

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to take in the Championship bout of the inaugural season of the Twin City Terrors, the new local Men's Roller Derby league. I know a few days ago the ladies of Minnesota Roller Girls had their championship, but I was recovering from San Francisco trip and was unable to attend. I understand it was quite the match.



The men's bout, no doubt a much more modest event, was held at The Cheap Skate, a little roller rink in Coon Rapids, of the kind you didn't think was even still around. It's like any other roller rink still standing in this country, a strip-mall style bunker slapped with bright paint, a few video games in the corner, a concession booth selling soft pretzels and stale nachos. A funky raccoon (The rink is in Coon Rapids), shooting the moon on standard skates, is painted on the walls, smiling over the crowd. They'd set up folding chairs on the skate surface, and a few hundred people had shown up to watch, in order, the spectacle, the skating, and the crowd. 

We wander in and stand about for a second, taking in the scene, as we were meant to. Roller Derby, like the images you remember from whatever pop culture instilled in you, may have its heart in sport, but its spirit is still in the theater. Skaters come up with clever names based on pop culture and twisted into puns on the ironic hyper-violence that steeps the sport. There's Zack Stabbath, Komrad Iron, and Eagon Strangler, (whose number is the square root of negative one). There's not as much punk-rock come goth-kitty as you'll see in the women's sport, and the efforts to cross that vibe over came mainly from the women's league skaters, who'd come to cheer the men in their fledgling effort. The crowd goes along with this Halloween-y vibe, buzzing in the pre-game glow, respectfully standing through the national anthem, then cheering when the first jam starts and the skaters head around the track.

For several minutes the two teams skate warily, testing each other out for strengths and weaknesses. Roller Derby is, in short, a chase game. Two skaters, called jammers, start at the back of the field, and score one point for each skater in the lead pack they pass during a two minute "jam." It's the job of the rest of the field to alternately block the opposing jammer and create space for their own to move through. The result is a moving skirmish of bodies jockeying for position, knocking each other out of the way, and of the nimble jammers dancing through the throng of thundering flesh which will, inevitably, come crashing down like bowling pins to the hard concrete floor.

This league started when some of the male skate-enabled personnel - referees and track-wipers and various hangers - on of of the two local women's leagues, Minnesota Roller Girls and North Star Roller Derby, got together for a scrimmage - just for fun, as it were. Soon, as things will which involve war, and women, and sport, things escalated. More men became interested, shirts were made up, a hall rented. Soon enough, a league had formed and bouts were scheduled, and enough people willing to pay paid for entrance.

True, there are only two teams in the league so far - the Skate Pauli Boys and the Destruction Workers. Many of them appear to be not in top physical form, or have collected many years since their athletic prime, or both - the Turbanator, for instance, appears to be well past fifty, though his long graying beard is neatly forked into twin Viking braids, which lends him a berserker air not backed up by his skating style. The uniforms are t-shirts screen-printed by a local company, and the stage presence, like the skaters themselves, is awkward and ungainly. To truly enjoy the bout, you had to squint a bit, and imagine the future, and consider that greater things have had humbler beginnings.

In the second half, the Skate Pauli Boys begin having their way with the Destruction Workers. One jam alone yields fifteen unanswered points. Spills come from exhaustion, and as the score mounts up the players become listless. Jams lose urgency as the jammers refuse to chase the pack, and everyone seems ready for the afterparty at the Mermaid. Then Turbanator goes down hard. He gets to his knees, then slips again. After a few heart-stopping moments, he gets back on his feet and begins skating again, chasing the pack to the rising roar of the crowd, to whom he waves his appreciation. In the end, the final score is 91 - 46, Skate Pauli Boys, and their inaugural season, three heartfelt bouts over two long months, is over.

Twin City Terror is currently recruiting new skaters.

To view them in action, I've embedded a YouTube video from an older bout in Milwaukee: