Jet City in a whirlwind roller derby tour of central California makes a stop at Santa Cruz to bout against Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz, in SCDG's secret lair (it's a west-side warehouse) on Sunday April 17, 2011. They had already played against Sacred City in Sacramento the night before. The bouts are closed to the public, but the bouts between the A Teams are WFTDA certified bouts.
If you're not a Santa Cruz skater, I know what you're thinking, "Nocklebeast! What's SCDG's secret lair like?" Well, it got concrete floors. Contrete walls. Concrete ceilings. It's a west-side warehouse. It's got columns, and it's got padding and mattresses bungy-corded to the columns so when you skate into them it feels like you just skated into a bunch of fluffy kittens instead of a steel beam.
Oh, and the mattress in the background of this photo? Still in it's plastic wrapper.
The venue is mostly lit by fluorescent lighting and some sky lights and some daylight from the open doors. I meant to bring some green gels to try to match the color of the flash to the color of the fluorescent lights, but I forgot, so the background is a bit green in these photos. Oh, and one more thing about the light. It tends to be a bit dimmer where the track is and the action sometimes is strongly backlit. I could have been a little bit smarter in trying to balance the flash and the ambient light levels (as well as the color).
But, back to the sport. It's pure roller derby. There's no production. There's no sound system. There's lots of concrete. They keep score. They skate to win.
But having said that I couldn't help appreciating that the coach of the Bombers, Tre Le Trash, still sported is trademark head-band and "Welcome Back Kotter" curls in a venue closed to the public. Here he is in last year's Western Regionals.
And here he is at last Sunday's bouts:
Long time Santa Cruz fans may find him familiar from his visit with the Pink Pistols a couple of years ago. He's the referee in the over-alls.
In fact, the Pink Pistols are one of Jet City's league teams, so there were a bunch of familiar faces on the Jet City teams.
First up, in a roller derby triple-header is an intense bout between the Jet City Bombers (blue) and the Silicon Valley Dot.Kamikazes (green). Here's some photo highlights:
Everybody's got a camera these days
Hey! Didja catch Roller Derby's Mildred Fierce's narrative evaluations of the bouts? It's here: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/sports/ci_17870513
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