One Night In Portland, Hola! Rose City Rollers

So do I go to the West Coast Beard and Mustache Championships or the opening night of the Rose City Rollers Roller Derby season?

These are the decisions I’m forced to make now that I live in this delightfully random city.

Chicago was great and all, but weirdness doesn’t exude from its pores like our wonderful little kingdom of Portlandia.  And I say our, because this feels like my home now.  I’ve made some incredibly interesting and genuine friends and done stuff I’d never thought I would do…

I’ve been asked to be a maid of honor.  I went on a ten day silent retreat in the Washington country-side.  I sat through an entire opera.  I saw a new age electronic show and bounced on a springy dance floor.

I completely get why people Keep Portland Weird.  Because weird is good.  Weird is fun.  Weird is waking up and having no idea what you’re doing that night and then ten minutes later you fall into a confusing cornucopia of awesome that just makes you sit back and say “Yes, yes… and yes.”

My friend Amy just described living here as being part of an improv troop.  “You don’t say no.  You just go with it.  The person across from you steers you in a certain direction and you go.  You can’t say no.”

Then you send it down another path and find out who the cool friends are, the ones that follow you into your own little weird darkness of the unknown.

Which is why I shouldn’t have been surprised when I asked the mostly-anti-sports Amy to go to the roller derby, and she replied “Of course.  Sounds awesome.”

It also shouldn’t have surprised me that she knew one of the Rollers, a Miss SoulFearic Acid, a member of the Roller Derby National Team, which I had no idea existed until Saturday night.

So we stroll into the Portland Coliseum, take our seats in the Break Neck Betties fan section, and ask the couple in front of us what the hell is going on.  I’ve never been to one of these things and had no idea what the rules were or how anything really worked.

The two were charming and jovial and excited about their daughter-in-law, Frisky Sour, and her recent Rose City Rollers championship with the BN Betties.

Rules-wise, in short, there’s one roller on each team called a “jammer,” who happens to be the only player on the team that can score.  She scores by lapping players on the other team, getting a point for each person passed.  It’s also very much so like hockey, when a roller commits a penalty, she’s forced into the penalty box, putting her team at a disadvantage, a large disadvantage if she happens to be the jammer.

Let’s go bullet-style with the rest of this rollerskating festival.  Learning a new sport makes me an attention deficit mess, so I’ll scatter you my favorite (there were many) memories about this glorious event.

• There were six refs.  Six!  And they were quite the characters.  Characters on roller skates at that.  One of them wouldn’t stop dancing on his wheeled high-tops, his lankiness flowing like a rhythmic gymnast.  Another one would follow the “lead jammer” (the first jammer out of the pack), pointing at her and gliding like a post-Olympic Brian Boitano who decided to grab a couple cheeseburgers over a visit to the salad bar.  And that’s not to say he couldn’t skate.  The big guy was a marvel on wheels.

• More than half the crowd had never been to a derby before, which leads me to believe that more than half the crowd had no idea what was going on.  This, nonetheless, had no correlation to how excited everyone got about the derby.  People were not there to text and tweet.  They were there to ROCK.

• I really liked the commentators.  They talked more than commentators at any other sporting event I’d attended.  Loved all the little explanations and play-by-play, and they just happened to sing the melody and lyric(s) to “Tequila!” because naturally, there was a roller nick-named TeqKillYa.  I spent a couple minutes trying to decide whether I’d rather feel the aftermath of a tequila hangover or a TeqKillYa hip check.  Tequila by a hair, if only because it probably meant I had an awesome time the night before.

• The coaches were phenomenally dressed.  One had orange dreads.  One was dressed as a bettie, Marilyn Monroe wig and all.  One team had a mascot who just hula-hooped through the entire derby.

• Matches are an hour long.  An hour!  I got tired just watching.  These chicks are in phenomenal shape.  Quads of steel.

• Ladies would throw ‘bows before (and after) the ref’s whistle would blow.  The looks they gave each other rivaled the Kobe Scowl.

• The Power Plays are huge.  They’re called “Power Jams.”  Penalized players take a seat in the Pabst Blue Ribbon Penalty Box.  Get seven penalties, and you skip the Box and head straight to the locker-room.  Yup, serious stuff this roller-derby ejection is.  And yes, the PBR Penalty Box.  If that doesn’t make you want to crack open an old, warm hipster brew…

• These ladies throw blocks that 2008 Hines Ward would be proud of.  During the first match, featuring the Heartless Heathers and the Guns N’ Rollers, one roller took out three ladies on the other squad with a huge hip check, opening her jammer for a seemingly easy 4 point pass.  So nasty.

• The crowd then did “the eagle dance,” which of course entails flapping your hands like our lovely symbol of American awesome, when Guns’ co-captain Scald Eagle made a huge play in the first half.

• There were definitely beer guys and popcorn guys and cotton candy AKA sugar cloud guys as well.  Kids were all over the sugar clouds.

• At halftime of the first match, people from the crowd played Louisville Chugger, or as the roller derby likes to call it, The Whack Off.  Google Louisville Chugger if you’ve never found yourself playing this dizzying past-time in the basement of your local fratstablishment.

• Bachha Nailya (these nicknames are incredible) pulled off a nasty highlight reel pass when she leapt through a whole line of blockers and then completely broke the ankles of another Roller a la ‘00-’01 Allen Iverson in his ever-so-nasty prime.

• Speaking of nicknames:  French Tickler, The Blast Unicorn, TeqKillYa, Bella Constrictor, Havana Good Time, Micro Bruiser (how local), Squid Vicious, Untamed Shrew, Frisky Sour, Hurt Vonnegut, Megahurtz, SoulFearic ACID, The Princess Snide, Hurricane Skatrina, Illegally Blonde, Napolean Blownaparte, and my personal favorite Minstrel Psycho.

• After the first match was done, which was a huge rout by the Guns, there was an interesting group of performers.  Six ladies.  Hawaiian/Asian tops.  Pink ruffly boy shorts on bottom.  Part 1950s dance moves.  Part Asian synchronized swimming.  Scandalous high heels.  I was a bit confused by this mesh of styles, but I was even more confused because shouldn’t halftime of a lady’s sport have male performers?  Isn’t that only fair?  And it’s not like the crowd was all men.  It was about 50/50 male-female.  A bit disappointing.  I loved the ladies of course, but equal opportunity halftime shows, eh?

• The second derby was a rematch of last year’s championship.  The High Rollers were looking to get revenge on the Break Neck Betties, last year’s queens.  The woman from the couple in front of me turned back to Amy and I and goes “You thought that match was intense?  Just wait for these two.”

• A couple moments in, her prediction held true.  No love lost between these two squads and the jammers for both teams were, to say the least, quite elite.

• During the introductions, Amy’s friend SoulFearic Acid brought a roar.  The crowd’s energy was really starting to build.  This had a main event feel.

• The match started and an early lead was taken by the BNB, consequence of an insane 25 pointer by Joyride, a lanky jammer who passed every member on the High Rollers five times.  Five!  Most rounds only score 4 or 5 points.  At the time, it was the highlight of the night, especially for us BNB supporters.

• And I say “at the time,” because shortly thereafter the crowd was introduced to Napolean Blownaparte, the Rollers powerhouse of a jammer.  She dropped 30 points in one round, and 43 in the first half.  The 30 point round showed off her insane lung-capacity, as the Betties’ blockers, with hands on their knees, just couldn’t contain her.  It was one of the coolest sports feats I’d ever seen live.  Juking, jiving, hopping… there was no move she couldn’t pull.

• And as soon as I thought I’d seen it all and the excitement had hit its high, I was introduced to the halftime mini-tricycle race.  It was a definite “You had to be there” moment, but I’ll attempt to explain.  Three initial heats.  The first was won by a blocky, little guy.  Amy and I then decided that short guys with thick legs would win this thing.  Although apparently our tricycle scouting skills weren’t prepared for what we were about to witness.  The second round started with the announcer asking the contestants “Who here has drank the most?” with a ladyfox in a cocktail dress flapping her hand up, followed by her trying to cheat three times, which then lead to her actually dominating her two opponents in epic fashion, concentrating harder than the professional dart guys on ESPN The Ocho.  The third round, in an upset of gigantic proportions, a grey-haired grandma destroyed her two opponents, setting up a championship battle of block-guy, drunk fox, and grandma that, I s&%t you not, was one of the most incredible sporting performances I’d ever seen.  And to top that off, on the line was a bright green PBR messenger bag filled with EFFING GIRL SCOUT COOKIES.

• This match was so intense, I have to go to a second bullet point.  It started off with the drunk lady’s early demise with a sputtered start.  She was completely out, but the grandma and short guy were neck and neck, with grandma on the inside track, their wheels colliding like old Roman chariots.  The crowd then started to see what was going on, and in “NO WAY THIS IS HAPPENING!” fashion, started to rise and cheer and scream.  We wanted grandma to win.  We needed grandma to win.  They rounded the final corner, grandma pulled away, and we all went wild.  I’ve been to some insane sporting events in my lifetime, including a Derrick Rose 39 point extravaganza and the coldest day ever recorded at Soldier Field overtime win for the Bears over the Packers, and this honestly… fine, came nowhere close, but still, was definitely a top 5 in my lifetime.  Grandma was then high-fived and back-patted out of the arena to a standing ovation, sporting her new lime-green gear.  I f$%&ing love Portland.

• The second half of the BNB/HR match was equally as awesome as grandma’s W.  It was a back and forth bloodbath, with Joyride and Napolean Blownaparte taking over a-la Jordan and Barkley in the ’93 ‘ship.

• Intensity was bubbling.  The BNB coach reminded me of John Fox in the Steelers/Broncos playoff game with his strategic time-out calling and face-intensity.  There were highlight hits.  There were elusive dives and scores.  There were trips and elbows and saliva and sweat and women doing everything in their power to knock the s&%t out of each other.

• After ping-ponging blows, the High Rollers finally got the revenge they were looking for with a solid finish and close-out by none other than Blownaparte, whose officially set my “Expectations for Roller Derby Performances” to a skyrocketing new high.

• 138 – 126 was the final score, with Napoleon dropping 53 and Joyride putting up over 40.

What an game.  What a match.  I went to this derby thinking I’d catch a couple chicks throw an elbow or two and maybe pull a lock of hair, but I was greeted with an event unmatched by anything I’ve ever really been to.  It was just the right amount of sports and excitement and hilarity and athleticism to make me leave thinking “Damn, these ladies really can hold it down.”

Speaking to SoulFearic Acid after the match, who of course introduced herself as “Acid,” I was completely unsurprised by the fact that this was the fastest growing women’s sport in the nation.  I also found out that Acid’s USA squad ended up winning gold at the 2011 Roller Derby World Cup.

That USA squad just happened to destroy our northernly neighbor Canada, 336 to 33 in the final.  Rout.

The next two local derbies are on February 18th and 25th.  I highly suggest you attend at least one of them.  You won’t be disappointed.

And for all you derby-enthusiasts and experts, excuse me if I filled this column with any errors or misconceptions.  I know you’re all very passionate about your incredible sport, so correct any of my rookie mistakes the next time I see you all grind it out.

After leaving the Coliseum, we grabbed some incredible grubbage at Tasty and Sons.  Trust me, eat there.  Get the bacon wrapped dates now.  Leave your computer and go.  Heaven in mouth.

Post-meal we met some friends over at a house party in SE, and, in true Portlandian fashion, we spent an unhealthy amount of time coming up with space animals, such as the Jupitiger, Milky Whale, and Little Salamandipper.

Can’t make this stuff up.

I so dig this city.  ‘tis my home.  And it keeps introducing me to the unknown cool, in this case, the derby.  Waking up in this fantasyland every morning is truly a fine pleasure, and a weirdly fine pleasure at that.