Decked out in ripped fishnets and day-glo bracelets, the Silicon
Valley Roller Girls are ready to make their debut
– almost. Backstage at the San Jose Civic
San Jose – Decked out in ripped fishnets and day-glo bracelets, the Silicon Valley Roller Girls are ready to make their debut – almost. Backstage at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, the ragtag posse of pierced, pigtailed femmes trades Sharpie tattoos and paints their scuffed helmets with Kryptonite-green nail polish, prepping for their first 10 minutes of fame.
And before they take the rink, there’s one little thing they’d like to make clear.
“Sili-CON, not silicone,” shouts Virg Valdez, aka Virg’N Suicide, correcting an announcer. “It’s all real!”
Silicon Valley’s new derby league is still in its infancy, sprung from two South Bay girls’ craving for the raucous sport closer to home. They’ve never played an official bout, where swift-skating “jammers” try to slide past the rough-and-tumble pack; until recently, they’ve never even had uniforms. But that Sept. 8 night, they rolled into the spotlight for a brief halftime show, between bouts of the Oakland Outlaws and the San Francisco Shevil Dead, two of the Bay Area Derby (B.A.D.) Girls’ star teams. It’s the culmination of eight months of sweat, blood and tears, dozens of fundraisers, and countless blue-green bruises.
“When I got into this, I didn’t know it was so organized,” said Jamie Shirley, the league’s Morgan Hill co-founder, an office worker with a Botticelli face and a brutal moniker: ‘Rotten Hell.’ “I thought it was just a clan of hellions skating around bashing heads in.” She paused. “That appealed to me!”
Shirley and Lauren Hulten – derby name Lindsay Lohanded, after the celebrity rags she craves – sparked the league with a Craigslist ad and a handful of flyers. Soon, a gang of 30 girls was circling the rink at San Jose Skate twice a week, and hatching business plans between bouts: a commitment of eight or nine hours a week, said Hulten. Bake sales, carwashes and pizza promotions help pay their rink rental and uniforms.
“We’re businesswomen. It’s not just us farting around on skates,” said Megan Williams – nee Panda Monium – an Oakland Outlaws jammer who’s helped coach the Silicon Valley league. “We don’t have any sugar daddies.”
For a sport that feels like a punk-rock slumber party on skates, it’s surprisingly official. To earn their stripes as a league, SVRG needs three letters of recommendation from other leagues and an out-of-state bout, Shirley explained. The kitschy names that splash their uniforms are logged in a national registry that comprises almost 10,000 one-of-a-kind handles. (Williams would have been ‘Johnny Crash’ or ‘June Carter Crash,’ if both weren’t already taken, she said.) It’s serious stuff.
Or at least, as serious as derby gets – a sport where the Roller Girls’ big debut entails pillow-fighting, tug of war and Nerf jousting on skates.
A referee wanders backstage, past the troope of girls and their cavalcade of kneepads. She does a double-take.
“Are you guys going to be bouting here?” she asks, nodding her approval at their Matrix-inspired green-and-black uniforms.
Valdez grins. “Someday!”
