No, not those skaters from Gotham. This is a mashup of female DC comic characters and roller derby. They're available on Teefury now.
Apart from Harley, they're all missing helmets (unless Batgirl's helmet counts as a derby helmet... I'm not sure what the WFTDA rules are about the face mask bit but I'll let it slide). The art's all done by TomKurzanski.
However, as with all Teefury deals, they only last for one day. As of writing this, you've got just over 21 hours to pick up yours!
It's time to retire those jerseys that say "B00BS".
Today, WFTDA announced that, by the end of next year, jersey numbers will not be able to include alphabetic characters.
Specifically, they state that the rule change will not go into effect until December 2015, so that teams
will have time to adjust to this. I suspect that what they mean by this is that teams have time to get new jerseys for their skaters, or that you can start saving up for your new jersey now.
The Olympics is international, and
Usain Bolt gets letters on his jersey; why can't we?
It's not clear what the motivation for this is, except that there is some speculation that WFTDA's international reputation means that it shouldn't be relying on the Roman alphabet, as some places don't use that. However, that argument only goes so far, as surely the same can be said for different numbering systems as well. Conversely, it might be argued that international scientific systems, or sporting systems, like the Olympics, have to agree on using a particular alphanumeric system as well, so why can't WFTDA?
It seems that this will go over well with refs and officials more so than skaters, where reading numbers is way easier than letters.
So there's recently been a group of people who have ported all these old-school video games (like Frogger, Pac Man, etc.) to make them playable in your browser. The whole collection is available to play for free at The Internet Arcade.
Amongst the offerings, I found a game called Roller Jammer.
So of course I played it, and while it's obviously not a game about WFTDA
derby, you play a skater who has to pass a bunch of other opposing
skaters and you get points for each one you pass. You can also jump and
punch them.
WUT?
Some scrounging online shows that it was made in 1984, which makes it older than the current reincarnation of roller derby, which started in the early 2000s. My mind is blown.
Sometimes there are behaviors in roller derby that aren't, well, acceptable in non-derby contexts. For example, Mr. Mouse HATES when I come back from practice and tell him to smell my wrists because hey non-derby people don't appreciate derby stank.
So Vette City Roller Derby has put out this helpful video to let you know what you shouldn't be doing around civilians.
That said, I think that juking is totally acceptable when other people are slow walkers!
But here is an interview with Shorty done by the Saturday Paper. An interview! Usually it's reporters just speculating about stuff they see on the sidelines, so interviews are uncommon. I would have liked to have seen more about her role on Team Australia, but there you go. Woooo!
Science and technology are awesome. Okay, sure they make things like nukes and whatnot but sometimes there are things that come along which are really useful and we wonder why nobody thought of them before. You know, things like this mouthguard:
For anyone who's had a concussion before, you know those things aren't fun. Your vision is blurry, you can't make proper sentences and falling down is a constant thing. Ok, and of course there's also the fact you've got some kind of brain damage.
Mouthguards in derby are supposed to help prevent that to some extent--when you fall on your head the force of impact can be distributed and absorbed by your jaw and your mouthguard is there to reduce the injury to your body. But the problem is that there's little research on concussions in derby specifically--I mean, we've adopted our safety gear from other sports, and we're still in the early days of knowing how to protect ourselves in a way specific to our sport.
So, the next best thing from actually being able to protect yourself specifically for your sport is to be able to protect yourself generally, AND also get information about how these injuries are occurring. I'm a big fan of information gathering. Enter the FITGuard mouthguard, which has an indicator to tell you the likelihood of your having a concussion in a pretty foolproof way.
The FITGuard has a green LED strip on the front that turns blue when
it detects a medium force impact and red when there’s an above-50
percent chance the athlete has suffered a concussion. The athlete can
then use an app to download a data log showing why the guard is
displaying a given color. The data will also be uploaded to a central
database to help the FIT team improve the device.
Yeah, so that's a handy-dandy way to helping determine the injury. Plus one thing that's good is that you can tell without having to take the skater's helmet off (which might make things worse if they have some other injury, e.g. to their neck).
Plus it's a LED strip so you'd glow in the dark (maybe)!
It kind of reminds me of those stickers they put on things in
Mythbusters to measure G Forces or whatever (for illustration, here's
the Exploding Water Heater episode, the stickers are at 0:35 onwards but stick around for the explosions):
Yeah, I'm glad my head doesn't do that when I get a concussion.
Yeah, so I haven't updated this recently, mostly because of real life stuff. Long story short, I'm moving to Seattle for a whole bunch of new adventures! But if anyone is going to be in San Francisco next week, here's something fun that you can do: strap on some skates and break a world record!
Deets are: Sunday, June 8 at 11am. And it will be in Golden Gate Park on the Great Highway (the road running through GGP), which is super close to the skate place in the park. I think the old guy dancing on skates in this blog entry is going to be there, which is AWESOME because he has some mad skills.
Roller-Thriller in the park. This is what everyone needs.
Some of my friends from Sonoma County are going to be there, and it
looks like all you have to do is do some kind of pace line but actually
touching the person in front, and slaloming, which doesn't look too
hard. Plus it's not every weekend that you get to go break some world records and get to do super awesome skatey fun stuff!
I'm not a huge fan of the whole Disney princess thing, but I came across collection of disney princesses who are supposed to be derbified. I've previously seen DC and Marvel Superhero derby so hey, why not. This work is by Amanda Robinson. I'm digging her art style.
Okay, so it looks like Disney princesses with skates on, and revealing-er outfits. There's no pads, helmets or anything, and it looks like they're wearing those tall artistic skate boots.
That said, they're not your standard run of the mill princesses. They look like they can kick ass, and I have to say that the derby names are pretty incredible and creative. In a lot of cases it's a combination of the character's name and some pop culture-ish reference, in the way that derby names actually are made. So yeah, I think this gets most props for the awesome names.
I've mentioned Breaking Bad a few times before on this blog, but here's a little bit of a throwback from before Walter White was Heisenberg (or Walter White, for that matter):
Apologies for the shonky quality of the video, but you get the idea. I approve of the fact that he is wearing appropriate safety gear and has some pretty good toe stop work.
Apparently there's an episode of Malcolm in the Middle where Hal (played by Bryan Cranston) has to teach Malcolm to skate for his roller hockey team, and then this comes out. Cranston did a lot of his own skate tricks, and even put on this lovely sequined number:
And if you want a BB mashup, there's also this, where Hank gets the wrong DVD:
So, as I outlined in this entry, I'm going to be looking at a couple of interrelated issues about race in roller derby. To start with, we can ask whether derby is predominantly white, and how that came about.
I
think that, very roughly speaking, roller derby is a very "white"
sport. That is, the vast, vast majority of people in the derby community seem to
be white, although of course there are exceptions. Here are some of the team photos for the WFTDA teams that played at the championships (minus Gotham's, which I have already posted in the introductory entry):
...And you get the idea.
They're predominantly white. Even Angel City, which of all the leagues' locations has the highest minority population, is made of up mostly white skaters. Notice, firstly, that all of these teams are either in the US or UK. I started looking down the WFTDA rankings for any teams ranked that were not from a western country, but I couldn't find any (although admittedly the list goes to 175 and there are plenty of non-WFTDA leagues out there, and given the stringency of the WFTDA membership process the lack of non-western WFTDA leagues might just suggest that leagues in non-western countries are not on the WFTDA wagon for some reason or another).
At my own league, there are what, 2.5 minority people (by which I mean, people who don't identify as white). Of course, I don't know if that's a good example though because hey, we're
in southwest Virginia. But I've also skated in San Francisco, Santa Rosa,
Melbourne and Canberra, and even though those places have more diversity
among their populations, most people who do derby are still white.
There's some variation though, so there were more Asians and Latina
skaters in California, but it's still predominantly white.
Now here's the kicker: why is this the case? Why is derby so white?
A lot of discussion has been generated by this question at Elektra Q Tion's blog entry here, and there are several explanations provided. I'll touch on some of these below.
Visibility: One contributing factor which explains the ongoing whiteness of derby is that derby is seen to be white. What race you are is very, very visible in most cases, so you can see who is of a race similar
to you almost right away just by looking at people.
And therin
lies the problem. Suppose I go to practice and I'm fresh meat, and I
don't see anyone like me. Maybe I will feel like I don't fit in,
especially if there aren't that many other FM with whom I can otherwise
connect to. Or I look in FiveOnFive or on DNN and see very few people
that look like me. I don't know how much this really factors into it,
but I've seen similar arguments made to explain the gender disparity in
certain parts of academia. (For example, here's an article about the problems of visibility and academia.) The general idea is something like this: if I don't see people that look like me, I'm not going
to connect as well or be as inclined to stay in derby.
As a result, the whiteness of derby also self-perpetuating in this
way. If I am a minority skater and didn't feel like I was fitting in or relating well to the people around me, I might not stick around in the league. And then that'd make minorities less present, so that other potential minority skaters would also see less minority skaters in the league, and therefore be less inclined to stay, and so on.
(Elektra talks about
this in her blog and in her post, Paris suggests that the minority
skaters on a team have a responsibility to act and go out there and be
visible. I'll talk about this in a few weeks' time when I talk about the role of minority and white skaters.)
As you can see, even the wealthiest black and Hispanic families have much less wealth than white
families, even when you compare blacks and whites within the same income
groups. (Even in the bottom quintiles where you can barely see the wealth distribution, the white groups still do better.)
If we accept that there is a wealth gap between races, that might explain why we see fewer historically-poor races
being represented. Derby gear is expensive! If you have a limited amount of money, then cost of gear and skates and league membership would have a higher likelihood of trading off against other things, like rent, student loans, groceries or whatever. Plus there are additional costs in things like travel costs on the car (gas, repairs, etc.) as well as time taken away from when one could potentially be working to earn more money.
Fresh meat packs run for several hundred dollars usually. (And then there's also the need to upgrade gear after a few seasons.)
Socioeconomics doesn't explain the race gap completely, though. On a small scale, leagues do often help with loaner gear or setting up payment arrangements for members who can't cover their membership dues right away. But if the wealth gap is something systemic, then the small-scale remedies might be of little help in changing the overall face of derby.
There's a similar
argument for why ice hockey is so white; it's because a lot
of historically poorer areas with minority kids didn't have access to
rinks or equipment. (Football is also expensive, but schools will often provide gear.) And then, there's a lot of travel that has to go on since rinks are less common than fields or basketball courts. So parents would have to be free to drive their kids around further to practice, and at times that can impinge on work times.
So, by extrapolation, maybe that goes some way to
explaining the whiteness of derby. One difference with derby is that it's mostly played by adults who can drive themselves, but with the advent of junior derby we might have another wave of whiteness coming in the next few years.
Blatant racism: And then one thing that might explain the whiteness of derby is when stuff like this still happens in other predominantly white sport, like hockey:
If you are a minority person, there's already enough difficulty with everyday racism, so why would you want to be subject to overt racism as well? I don't think that derby is as subject to outright racism as much as professional sports are (just because of the smaller scale on which leagues operate on), but racism isn't just contained in sport, and the potential for this would be pretty much a turn-off.
Next on race and derby: If (as I outlined at the beginning of this article) that pretty much all of the WFTDA leagues are western, then how does this affect the development of derby worldwide? I'll look at the the impact of culture on derby in non-western countries, and see if there's something about derby culture that lines up with western culture.
We had a scrimmage with Rocktown yesterday, and it was on the news!
Check out the story here! I'm in the jam that they show at the beginning, wearing my giant ass face shield, yay. I like how they start with the bit when the wall breaks :D
Over the next few weeks I'm going to explore the relation between race and roller derby. This was prompted by an interview I did with the lovely RayWoWW when, as a follow up question, she asked me, as a nonwhite person, what I thought the role of race in derby was. I ended up writing her a giant text wall of an email back, and I realized as I was doing it that there were all these issues that I couldn't really resolve for the purposes of telling her what I thought about race and derby.
Part of the reason that I'm interested in this is, obviously, because I'm a member of a racial minority. But at the same time, this semester I'm also teaching an awesome class on the Philosophy of Race and Gender, and it is really making me think about this stuff in my spare time. It's weird to just think about concepts like white privilege, for example, independent of any context. But then applying race theory to practice also brings out some interesting results.
Now, I know that there is an amazing blog entry by CRG's Elektra Q Tion on why derby is such a white sport. I think this is a really big contribution to the dialogue on race and derby, and what I'd like to do is build on some of the things that came out of that discussion, in addition to some other thoughts that have been rolling around in my brain.
Here's an example. New York City is a pretty racially diverse place, right? Well, here's a picture of Gotham's All-Star team from 2011:
And here's one from their 2013 team:
Hmm. So there are a few changes, but it still looks predominantly white. Why? I'm not asking that derby teams have to be proportionate to the diversity in the city's population, but what is it that makes nonwhite skaters less inclined to make the team? This might not be a problem, depending on how we think about the issues. I'm not sure what I'm going to be looking for here, but I think there are a LOT questions that need to be asked about what happens when race and derby collide.
So, in the next few weeks, I'll start where Q left off with asking about why derby is so white. But maybe that only works because whiteness is the norm, overwhelmingly, in western culture, where derby is predominantly played. So then another question comes up: what's the relation between derby and nonwestern culture? Does the role of gender and cultural norms have anything to do with it? And if there is a problem with racial underrepresentation in derby, what obligations do skaters (minority or not) have to make derby more diverse?
Firstly, the Sochi Olympics are on right now. I'm not a huge fan of the winter olympics, except (maybe not surprisingly) for the events that take place on skates. Not so much fancy ass figure skating stuff, but ice hockey and speed skating.
So here's my favorite winter olympics moment EVER: Steven Bradbury winning Australia's first ever gold medal at Salt Lake in 2002.
And he won it because he was so far behind everyone else in the finals he didn't get caught in the pileup. And that's also how he made it to the semis. And in the heats he didn't qualify but then someone who did got disqualified and he got bumped up. Yeah. That is seriously one of the greatest stories ever told RIGHT THERE.
But hey, that's in the past. Here's some NEW NEWS, speaking of speed skating:
Francey Pants is training for the Winter Olympics. YES. 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, here she comes. Is there anything that she can't do?!
So backwards skating is not a new thing in derby, but check out this video of Gotham having backwards scrimmage practice:
Also check out the awesome backwards crossovers on the red Jammer when she gets out of the pack!
Obviously this is much easier for the blockers, who can see the jammer coming and can wall up (e.g. look at how red's wall holds together and moves when the black jammer tries to make their way though). This is an excellent exercise in getting comfortable going backwards and blocking that way (look at some of those laterals), which of course would be useful for forwards derby.
We've had some pretty bad weather the last couple of days, so right now outside looks something like this:
Brrrr.
At least the dog seems to be enjoying herself.
It also means yesterday and today I was literally trapped in the house since there was over a foot of snow outside my door and that involved lots of pushing to squeeze out. Bleh. So there was a lot of pushing and lunges and whatnot to get the door open. And then I had to shovel a whole driveway, which turned out to be pretty good exercise for my core/back/puny arms. So even though I can't get to practice, there is still working out to do!
Stupid twerk face not included.
But if I was REALLY unable to even go the 10 feet around my house, I can still do some sort of exercise at home. I've downloaded this neat app for my phone called Sworkit. (Yeah, so whoever came up with the name was trying a portmanteau of "Circuit Training" and "Workout" and came out with some weird thing that sounds like a weird form of twerking or something.) I don't know, the word "twerk" is gross to me; it just looks aesthetically unpleasing. "Swork" is not much better. Oh well.
But anyway, basically Sworkit is a pretty customizable workout thing that you can do without very much space and without much equipment. The only thing I've seen that you might need is something to step onto for step-ups, but otherwise all you need is enough floor to stretch out. And if you want you can mix things up by adding weights that you might have around the house (read: skates) or whatever.
You just type in how long you want to work out for, what you want to do (stretching, cardio, even some random yoga stuff) and then it will set up a workout for you. And if you want you can mix it up, so like 5 mins stretching, 20 mins cardio, 10 mins stretching, or whatever.
Here is a list of all the exercises you can do. On your phone, there's even little pictures so you can see what you are doing, and if you get the upgraded PRO version (for 99c!!) it gives you access to youtube videos so you can see form and whatnot, and a nice British sounding robot lady who will tell you when to do the next exercise.
Heh, there's one called "Skater". :D
Okay, some of that shit is HARD. But I guess also if you're doing this then it also has the added bonus of keeping you warm when it is cold outside or something and thus lowering your heating bills while you stay in shape. Yeah.
I just realized I have a tag called "I like food" and no actual recipes for derby awesomeness in this blog, so here is a quick and easy one to start with. I like this because it takes literally a minute to throw together and is healthy and tasty.
So, you just start with the following things:
For 1 person:
1 banana
Baby spinach
Orange juice
Frozen mixed berries
Protein powder (optional)
Haha, notice that I didn't put quantities of the things besides banana. That's because you can make this according to taste. Don't like spinach? Fine, put in less! Want more berries? However the hell madam pleases! That said, I usually do a big handful of spinach and maybe a cup of OJ. You can't taste the spinach anyway.
The method is pretty easy. Throw stuff in a blender. But if you use protein powder, put that in somewhere AFTER the juice but before the solid ingredients, or else you get weird powdery floaty chunks which aren't totally great.
And then blend it. Do 10 squats while it blends.
Depending on how much stuff you put in, your smoothie will be somewhere between pink and green. You won't be able to taste the spinach but you're getting a crapload of fresh vegies. And the smoothie is surprisingly filling, because the banana, protein powder and frozen berries thicken it considerably without making it all dairy-y and sludgy. I made one for Killy when she was staying with me and she said it was pretty good and she normally doesn't even eat breakfast.
So there you have it! I usually have one of these on bout days, or when I feel like I need to get energized for doing something (like derby practice or grading a bazillion papers). It is so quick and easy to put together that I've also managed to put a smoothie together while I was having a 30 second break in a workout so that it was ready to drink when I was done. :)
Protip: when you're done, wash the blender and glass right away because it looks like bad poop when you leave it and it dries.
You know those interactive books you get when you're a kid and it's all like "feel the bunny's fur" or "lift up this tab and see some random thing" or whatever, so that you'll get distracted from yelling and carrying on like a kid, and do fun activities instead? Well, now there's one for derby.
Obviously it's not in print or anything, but it should be! You can do derbyesque activities like dress the skater:
And get the ref to signal calls properly:
Cutting! Major!
And do an actual 3D bout!
Adorable! :D
(All pictures in this post are from this page.)
Have two lines, where a faster skater is paired up with a slower one. The faster skater gets the inside line.
Each pair of skaters seal together, and on the whistle, the back pair race to the front.
"Why is the fastest skater on the inside?" you might ask. The slower skater has to skate on the outside of the pace line, while the faster skater has to weave between the other sealed pairs in the pace line. So the faster skater has to travel further. Then when they get to the top of the line they reseal, and the next pair goes.
If you don't have a lot of people you can have a single pace line but alternate fast/slow people, so that when they get to the back you will have a pair of fast/slow people to race!
Yay, so after Season's Beatings and over the break I got a bunch of fun new stuff for derby!! Here is what's new:
1. Helmet. It is a thing of beauty. And safety.
Bauer IMS 7.0 Custom Hockey Helmet
It's custom for my tiny head.
Yay!! I now have a hockey helmet which is supposed to be really good for not having concussions. That'd be nice. I had to order a custom helmet because all the head measurement sizes were so big for the hockey helmet and I guess a lot of stores didn't stock XS. But the custom was the same price as a non-custom, with the added bonus that I got to pick the colors of the little air venty things, which is why they are yellow, of course.
Lots of padding for my brain
The helmet also has a little ratchet thing on the back so it's more adjustable than just the chin strap, and the foam compresses enough to keep my brains in. It's removable and replaceable as over time it will compress (and not squish my head so much), but unlike the brainsaver lining in my other helmet, it's not washable. Not that I ever washed my helmet lining in the 2+ years I had that helmet but anyway... :P
i can haz face shield
I also have a face shield for it but I haven't been game to wear it yet, but hopefully this will stop me getting popped in the face like at the CVRG bout last year. We're actually scrimmaging with them this weekend so I guess that is a good reason to get that face shield installed. It just screws in with a regular screwdriver, so that's kind of cool. The downside of the new helmet is all my cool stickers are on my old one, sadface. :( 2. Bushings. I have only ever changed my bushings once (which I detailed here) but I got some new ones at beatings. They're orange and the same squishiness as my old bushings, so I know what to expect once they compress a bit. I did remember to adjust my trucks enough so that I can accomodate for them while they're new.
These remind me of fruit pastilles.
That said, when I replaced the bushings, I was NOT expecting them to be as grody as they were when I took them out. I've had them in for almost two years, and one thing is that there IS a noticeable size difference between them, from the compression on my trucks I guess. But that size difference was made up by an inordinate amount of crud and grime around the bushing, washers and kingpin. EW.
Even if I don't replace the bushings more frequently, I guess it's not a good thing to be skating on a sheet of fuzzy crud (some of which actually looked like dried spiders legs), so maybe more cleaning is required there.
3. Toe stops. I still love my moonwalkers but they're wearing a bit.
Yeah, these wore unevenly too.
They're still functional, but I have to rotate them regularly to make sure they're still useable. That's not a problem, but hey, they were selling toe stops at Beatings, so why not.
So Bionic came out with these giant ass toe stops (aptly named Super Stoppers) which are HUGE like elephant feet. Okay, not really, but they do have a LOT more surface area, which should be good for running on and pushing off of.
I had a bit of trouble getting used to the size (e.g. I would go to run on my skates and there'd be so much toe stop that I would be tripping on it), and there is a flat side to it so it's angled (unlike the moonwalkers, which were more round). So they will take a bit of time to get used to, but otherwise it's all good.
I know that crossovers are a fundamental part of being able to derby, but it has taken me AGES to ty to get the technique down. I came across this video which might be useful for just getting the muscle memory in order first before trying to push around and whatnot:
I like that it's offskates practice. When I was at SCRD we were trying to do these on skates and I couldn't get my feet in the right place without falling on my face. So having this done offskates (and on carpet, for more resistance on the chair) is pretty handy. I'm sure you could later upgrade to onskates, and maybe without carpet.
Notice how low she's getting and how far she can push the chair with one stride!
Visibility: One contributing factor which explains the ongoing whiteness of derby is that derby is seen to be white. What race you are is very, very visible in most cases, so you can see who is of a race similar
to you almost right away just by looking at people.
Haha, notice that I didn't put quantities of the things besides banana. That's because you can make this according to taste. Don't like spinach? Fine, put in less! Want more berries? However the hell madam pleases! That said, I usually do a big handful of spinach and maybe a cup of OJ. You can't taste the spinach anyway.
Bionic came out with these giant ass toe stops (aptly named Super Stoppers) which are HUGE like elephant feet. Okay, not really, but they do have a LOT more surface area, which should be good for running on and pushing off of.
