Rolling with the Rage City Rollergirls


Rage City Roller Girls Season Opener, October 1, 2011. Sockeye Sallys from Anchorage vs. the Fairbanks Rebel Ravens at the Dena’ina Center. Video by Kathleen McCoy.

Americans created roller derby in the last decades of the 1800s as long-distance endurance races. During the Great Depression of the 1920s, dance marathons with cash prizes drew the unemployed in such great numbers that a promoter decided to capitalize on that idea. By the 1930s, he had organized a six-day transcontinental roller derby, and the sport – and spectacle – of the roller derby was born.

A rejuvenated offshoot of this history is alive and well in Alaska, called the Roller City Rollergirls. Join host Kathleen McCoy and skaters Dawnell “WickedSpeedia” Smith and Patricia “New England PatRIOT #1” Bergeron as they talk about the energy behind the sport, what it means to women who skate, why it’s a D.I.Y. sport, and why some characterize it as an element of Third Wave Feminism.

Why do they skate? Is it sport or spectacle? What is the injury rate? Are men involved? What about those crazy names?

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HOST: Kathleen McCoy

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LIVE broadcast: Wednesday, October 12, 2011. 2:00 – 3:00 pm (Alaska time)

REPEAT BROADCAST: Wednesday, October 12, 2011. 7:00 – 8:00 pm (Alaska time)

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