Friday night=roller derby!

Last night I finally succumbed to the inevitable and journeyed out to New Jersey to witness the now-years-old roller derby revival. After an ill-fated trip the wrong way down the New Jersey Turnpike, our group righted itself and ended up at a surprisingly suburban looking park in Newark. The roller derby looked something like this:

Would it be wrong to say that I was a little disappointed? While I admired the pluck of the ladies and gents who largely fund their own roller derby enterprises, I found the event itself surprisingly slow-paced and somewhat lackluster. I guess I was expecting outsized personalities, more slamming and elbows, and an actual velodrome. Instead it seemed more like this:

but with less inspired outfits. What happened to roller derby?