(Photo by Jay Mungia, OCRG website)
We showed up about halfway through the bout between the Wheel Housewives of OC and the Prison City Rollers (from Chino Hills), but we did get to see the tough and adorable Navel Oranges, the junior rollers league, skating during halftime, and we saw the entirety of the Blockwork Orange vs. Central Coast Roller Derby bout. Orange County won them both. Go Orange!
There were a variety of age groups at the bout, everyone from babies to grannies, which was surprising considering my pre-conceived notions of the bad-assness of roller derby. Overall, aside from the somewhat scantily-clad ladies skating around the rink, it was a pretty wholesome event. (Actually, the roller girls were wearing far more clothing than you would see at your average beach volleyball game.) During the bout there were no fists thrown or brawls, but a jammer on the opposing team suffered some sort of knee injury and had to sit out the rest of the bout. Since the track isn't "banked" (tilted inward), there was a risk of flying roller girls smashing into the front row. Some high school kids sitting in front of us got a lap full of the tiny Wild Bella, a jammer for Wheel Housewives, but they seemed excited about being smashed by a roller girl.
It was a fun scene, with vendors selling pin-up accessories, jewelry, t-shirts, buttons, stickers, and baked goods, along with the official OC Rollergirls merch. There was also a vegetarian food truck parked outside that made AMAZING barbeque tofu tacos. Seriously, they were amazing. Drool... You can stalk the truck on Twitter @SeabirdsTruck.
One thing I recommend is to look up roller derby rules online before you go. It's a relatively simple game compared to, say, football, but it can be chaotic and confusing if you don't know what's going on. The hubby and I were pretty confused at first, so he looked up the rules on his phone and we enjoyed the experience even more after we understood what we were seeing.
The next bout is on Saturday, September 11: OC Roller Girls vs. San Diego Roller Derby. Catch it if you can. More info about OC Roller Girls here.
