Book Review: Down and Derby

By Justice Feelgood Marshall, Last updated Thu Aug 12 2010 3:21pm

Though there's an endless trail of conflicting opinions, theories, desires and beliefs about What Derby Really Is and What Derby Really Means and Where Derby Is Really Going, there's one thing that every single derby player and fan can agree on: whatever else roller derby is, it's effing fun. The latest authors to take a stab at wrapping the whole messy extended family into a single volume, Jennifer Barbee and Alex Cohen, quite sensibly choose to keep the fun front-and-center through their breezy, informal new tome Down and Derby: The Insider's Guide to Roller Derby. Part history and part instruction book, Down and Derby is absolutely necessary reading for anybody on the outskirts of the modern derby culture who is looking to understand it without the full immersion of actually joining a league (or those who have joined a league and are looking to get up to speed quickly).

Down and Derby probably bears the most resemblance to Catherine Mabe's 2007 book Roller Derby: The History and All-Girl Revival of the Greatest Sport on Wheels, presenting itself much more as a general history of the sport from Seltzer to the modern day than a first-person memoir like Melissa Joulwan's Rollergirl: Totally True Tales from the Track (also 2007). Down and Derby, though, obviously benefits from being able to include three more years of intervening history, and that extra perspective allows the authors to frame their opening chapters as the first draft of an evolving history.

Although the book is written by longtime insiders -- both Barbee and Cohen have been with LA Derby Dolls since 2003 as Kasey Bomber and Axles of Evil -- there's (perhaps wisely) little behind-the-scenes information given or judgments passed on the vision and leadership battles that marked the split of original Austin group BGGW and the evolution of the United Leagues Coalition (later WFTDA). Those looking for insight on those historically important moments may be left wanting, as they're essentially handwaved away in a couple of sentences each to keep the focus on the positive growth of the sport as opposed to studying the contentious inflection points that could have led it in different directions.

That being said, while the book does have the basic history in it, this isn't really a book for historians of the sport so much as it is a primer for those relatively new to it. After the opening 70 pages, the bulk of the book is primarily aimed at the fan who is just on the verge of becoming a skater, with significant time spent on what to prepare for physically, financially, socially and psychologically if one's trying to join derby. For anybody who has been in derby long enough to have played their first public bout, there's about 100 pages in the middle that may seem too basic, but on the other hand those pages are practically required reading for new recruits and fresh meat.

I personally found myself wishing that the history section had been expanded to the meat of the book and the so-you-want-to-be-a-skater section had been squeezed into an lengthy appendix, but likely commercial interest wouldn't have been quite as high in such a book. The authors fully acknowledge that the history is mostly painted in broad strokes, though: "To write about all that has happened so far would take several volumes, with each league likely having their own tome to contribute to the canon … This is simply our attempt to record the origins before they break up in the fuzzy reception of oral history's telephone game." (Nice sentence, that.)

Of definite interest to both newbies and veterans, though, are the short but absorbing interviews interspersed through the book, as Barbee and Cohen get some good anecdotes and intriguing backstories from a number of derby personalities (full disclosure: your humble author is one of the personalities interviewed). Quadzilla talks about his background in the scripted Rollerjam series, Rat City's Kamikaze Kim has a few typically wry jokes about being Asian in a very white sport, and original WFTDA president Hydra provides an instant classic of a response to the stock question "What initially attracted you to derby?" Rat City announcer Randy Pan, Sin City Skates owners and Rollercon mavens Ivanna S. Pankin and Trish the Dish, and tragically injured Windy City skater Tequila Mockingbird are also among the ranks of those to sit down for an interview.

Coming in at 261 pages with a lot of derby action shots included (part of the fun is playing spot-the-buddy while flipping through), Down and Derby is a fairly quick read, just about perfect for the backseat of a long derby roadtrip. Barbee and Cohen have come up with an eminently readable book that's exactly ambitious enough for this point in derby's headlong rush towards an unknowable future.