Is Seattle Ready for More Roller Derby? | Seattle Post Intelligencer

Joshua Trujillo / seattlepi.com

Courtney Stone of the Tilted Thunder Rail Birds skates around the gym at the Bitter Lake Community Center on Wednesday July 15, 2009. (Photo/Seattlepi.com, Joshua Trujillo)

The Rat City Rollergirls whetted Seattle's appetite for roller derby more than four years ago, with fans following them from a rink in West Seattle to a hangar in Magnuson Park to Key Arena earlier this year.

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"It was one hurdle after the other," said Rebecca "Demolicious" Ninburg, 40, one of the co-founders of the Los Angeles Derby Dolls, a league formed in 2003 of about 130 strong who play to a sell-out capacity crowd of 1700 every three weeks. Tilted skaters are going there at the end of July to train with them. "We were constantly financially challenged; we had huge issues with venues; and learning how to manage an organization like this, a grassroots, all-volunteer, and to try to inspire people."

Ninburg, 40, a sculptor in the movie industry, is the league's one and only full-time paid employee, hasn't skated since she broke her arm in their first game.

"We couldn't afford anything with a ceiling, so we ended up on a rooftop in Chinatown," Ninburg said. "The landlords put up a fence so we wouldn't fly off."

She has some advice for Tilted skaters.

Read the rest of the article here.

WHIP IT Images and its Catchy Derby Names | Rama's Screen

You’re going to have to get used to saying director Drew Barrymore now because she wore that hat proudly with her directorial debut film WHIP IT and USA TODAY has released some new official images from the movie about girls on roller skates starring Ellen Page, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis, Jimmy Fallon, and Barrymore herself.

The plot centers on Page as a petite teenage girl who rebels against her beauty-pageant-obsessed mother (Marcia Gay Harden) and boring Texas town by joining the rough-and-tumble world of roller derby under the name Babe Ruthless, which brings us to the coolest thing about this movie, the Derby names.

Barrymore plays a character named Smashley Simpson and Wiig plays her sister named Maggie Mayhem. She was going to be called Malice In Wonderland but I’m glad they didn’t go with that one. Their team, the good guys, is called The Hurl Scouts.

(full story)