Raise of hands . . . who here has seen the movie Whip It? Drew Barrymore . . . Ellen Page . . . Roller Derby? No? Well, if you have not see the movie, first of all, you should. It was really good. If you have seen the movie (and enjoyed it), you are probably going to enjoy this post. Because it is all about the Roller Derby!!
I had the chance to once again meet my fellow blogger, Thoughtsy of Thoughts Appear, and this time we stepped it up a notch. We made our date meeting happen at a Roller Derby in downtown Baltimore. So, when we decided to go to the Roller Derby, we both had visions of tough, scantily clad, punk rock chics racing around and taking each other out with a well placed elbow or hip or foot, with lots of blood and bruises . . . such as the movie prepared us to expect. Once again, though, those silly hollywood peeps raised our expectations. What we encountered was nothing like the violently hardcore depiction of this sport as dramatized in that movie.
What we ended up seeing, though, was a really fun sport with some very talented and athletic ladies who employed more skill and strategy than brute force. Here’s how it goes . . .
Seriously . . . read this shit. It will explain much better than I can.
Once Thoughtsy and I understood what we were watching (there is definitely a learning curve), we really started to enjoy the bouts. It was a really fun and different experience.
Check out this Roller Derby video that I recorded.
What I probably enjoyed the most from the entire experience (except for the crazy people I saw and took pics of . . . of course . . . coming soon to a weekly whacked near you!!), were the players’ and referees’ names! Here were some of the best ones:
- I.M. Pain
- CC Bang Bang (who’s number was 9mm)
- Crowella De Vil
- Trixy Von Doom
- Holly Go Hardly
- Deathany
- Feral Kat
- Winnie the Shrew
- Collene Oscopy
And my (and Thoughtsy’s, I believe) personal favorite:
Let me tell you, the announcers at one point actually congratulated themselves for their repetitive correct saying of that girl’s name. There were kids there. One slip and it all could have gone terribly wrong!
Dirty Marty . . . our sure-tongued glittery announcer.
Of course, this led to discussion as to what Thoughtsy and I thought our Roller Derby names should be. We had some trouble coming up with anything. Anybody have any ideas??
The refs names were as good, if not better:
– Serial Kilter:
– Professor Murder:
– Loch Ness Tomster:
– Chris’d Off:
– H.R. Rufnstuf:
– Vanna Down By the River:
And, in case you were wondering, no . . . this is not the only example of women at the derby who were super comfortable with their bodies and who were shoved into way too tiny short shorts or skirts. I say Bravo to them. I would never have the guts to wear something like that.
There were 2 “bouts” scheduled that night (a bout is like a match or game in other sports). The first was between two undefeated teams: the Night Terrors vs. the Speed Regime. The Night Terrors wore blue and white, the Speed Regime green/orange. Not the most flattering of uniform colors, unfortunately.
(Please understand that all of the pics of the races are incredibly blurry as they were going much too fast for my poor little iPhone to capture. Add to that a huge ceiling-to-glass partition net blocking our view and the pics are hopeless. But I will show you the best of the bunch, just so you can get an idea . . .).
This is the Speed Regime warming up:
Night Terrors:
Let the bout begin!!
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As I said, there was not a lot of violence, more maneuvering around the other skaters with an occassional hip check here and there (totally legal, by the way), but there was one moment where 2 of the Speed Regime skaters somehow got tangled up with each other, resulting in one somehow getting injured enough to crawl off the field and need some medical attention. She was ultimately just fine, but while she was laying on the ground, being looked over by medical professionals, all of the players, and even the refs, were incredibly respectful:
Everyone got down on one knee waiting for the girl to be treated.
Then, it was right back to the bout:
At one point, the bout was all tied up:
But not for long . . . the Speed Regime, while an excellent team, was no match for the Night Terrors. Especially, Crowella de Vil, who seemed to be their best Jammer. By the end of the bout, the Night Terrors had run away with it, with the score resembling one at a basketball game.
Once the bout between those two teams ended, it was halftime. On deck were two more teams ready to do battle. But first . . . cupcake eating contest!!
And let me tell you . . . I almost had to hold Thoughtsy back from running up there and volunteering her services for that contest. She is such a joiner!!
The next bout was between 2 teams with much better outfits (Uniforms? Costumes?). It was a bout between the Junkyard Dolls (in pink/black) . . .
. . . and the Mobtown Mods (in red/white):
(Note that we are now down on the floor watching this bout, but they were still moving a bit too fast for my iPhone to keep up. No netting, though, so there’s that at least!).
Bout on:
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Unfortunately, these two teams were not undefeated, as was evident by the greater amount of falling down that they were doing, and by the incredibly mismatched score after only about a half hour into the bout. So, at that point, Thoughtsy and I decided we had our fill of Roller Derby for the evening, and did what anyone would do at that point . . . we went to get some pie:
One of the items on Thoughtsy’s list of 35 before 35, is to have some pie at Dangerously Delicious Pies, which just happened to be a couple blocks away from the Roller Derby arena. So, obviously we had to go there after the derby . . .
These pies have been featured on the Food Network, on several different shows, and are supposed to be the best pies in all the land. I had obviously never heard of them. However, if they are good enough for Elvis, then I’m game:
I ordered the Baltimore Bomb, which is a pie with a vanilla custard base and melted Berger cookies on top. What’s that? What on earth is a Berger cookie, you say? Oh, you poor sweet soul. It is only the most famous and delicious of the locally made cookies. With a vanilla wafer bottom and an abundance of the richest and most delicious chocolate fudge on top (seriously peeps, it’s like 1/3 cookie to 2/3 chocolate . . . so flipping good!).
So, here was the pie made from these wonderfully scrumptious delicacies:
I figured a pie made of delicious cookies could not be wrong, right? Nope. It was just ok. It tasted a little like a coconut cream pie, which I guess was the vanilla custard, and I really couldn’t taste the very distinct Berger cookies. Which was a shame. I had very high hopes, which also might have been part of the problem. I probably should have gone with the chocolate peanut butter now that I think about it . . .
Thoughtsy got the mixed berry, and the very sweet guy who served us our pies thought that the pie he gave her was the wrong kind, so he threw in an extra . . . for free. That’s right . . . if you are keeping count, that would now be three slices of pie for the 2 of us:
Now, I love anything free. But unfortunately, neither of us were a fan of the mixed berry crumb pie. I do believe Thoughtsy enjoyed her mixed berry, though:
And yes, it was actually the correct pie after all. And it was good enough that she even ate almost all of the crust. Which everyone knows is just a holster for all the pie filling goodness. So, that must have been some good pie! (Read Thoughtsy’s review of her pie here).
So, all in all it was a very enjoyable night. Another fun outing with Thoughtsy. Now, to figure out where we will go next . . . hopefully we will find some other fun and interesting place to go before we meet up in New York for BlogHer in August! I don’t know if I can make it that long without another Thoughtsy fix! 🙂
