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It’s Sunday evening outside an abandoned Austin airplane hangar dubbed the Thunderdome. In the parking log keg party, 800 beer-drinking derby fans are sweating like fiends under the punishing Texan sun. Half men, half women, and half drunk, most of this sell-out crowd looks like punk rockabilly stars: wallet chains, mashed cowboy hats, and a sea of black tattoo ink. Their excitement is contagious. As I walk past the lineup, their tattoos float by like a bizarrely twitching comic strip.

We’re all here to witness a Wild West showdown between the best teams in Austin’s all-female roller-derby league known as the Lonestar Rollergirls. Tonight’s championship bout pits the Holy Rollers (naughty Catholic girls in ripped bras and plaid miniskirts) against the Rhinestone Cowgirls (shit-kicking Texas fillies in tight little jean cutoffs).

The teams have been enemies since last year’s championship, when the Rollers beat the Cowgirls by only two points. This season the Rollers have only lost once: The Holy Rollers were defrocked by the Cowgirls four weeks ago, after they curb-kicked the Hell Cats (touted as "’50s-style vixens who love their hotrods and switchblades"), defused the Cherry Bombs ("ruthless Rock 'n' Roll misfits run amuck"), and doused holy water on the Putas Del Fuegos (a Latina gang with "a taste for blood and tequila").

As storm clouds rumble overhead, Mary Kay Delavan, a forty-seven-year-old attorney, tells me she came to Austin because there’s no roller derby in San Antonio. A derby "virgin," she’s looking forward to "a little elbow action, a little smack to the teeth. That’ll be fun."

Inside the arena, the Lonestar Rollergirls are preparing to knock America’s millionaire tennis-cuties the hell off our sports pages. At the Thunderdome entrance, a gorgeous redhead stares trance-like at her fans. Short and scary, Miss Conduct is a notoriously tough Holy Roller who represents the Rollergirls’ neo-punk, anti-Republican aesthetic better than anyone. She’s sporting bloody eye shadow, shock-red hair, studded leather cuffs, and a skull and crossbones stitched into her green plaid miniskirt. Her rollerskates are chopped-up combat boots that she says "look like something a tough chick would wear in a comic-book."

By day, she’s Sarah Rodgers, twenty-five, a building contractor specializing in demolition. Tonight, Miss Conduct aims to demolish the undefeated Rhinestone Cowgirls, an especially leggy team who towers over her and her teammates like skyscrapers. Asked what makes an ideal derby opponent, Miss Conduct replies, "a dead one. No, really."

Old-time roller derby -- from the 1930s through the mid-‘70s -- featured both men’s and women’s leagues. The owners and TV network executives got rich, of course, while players eked out a living. But by 1975, when the sci-fi Rollerball film predicted a grimly violent future for the sport, roller derby had sputtered out. Due to league mismanagement and a recession caused by the oil crisis, teams couldn’t afford gas for their buses. Fans stopped coming, derby leagues folded and the sport was more or less forgotten for a quarter-century.

Then, in 2001, young Austin women formed a five-team league called the TXRD Lonestar Rollergirls. Their mission: to promote "friendship and competition between determined, beautiful, unique and, most of all, tough women." Their Web site, Txrd.com, claims their "high-octane rock and roll-fuelled all-girl derby league" is 100 percent "skater-owned and operated." As player-owners, they’re like Mario Lemieux – a Mario who invites fans to spank him during the warm-up skate, that is.

But unlike the NHL’s attempts to protect its stars from injury by enforcing the rules of the game, the Lonestar Rollergirls have made violence one of the key pitches in their sales package. Their web site, for example, has proudly hyped their sport as "blood and thunder on the banked track."

I ask Miss Conduct’s teammate Smarty Pants (the Rollergirls’ publicist Nadia Kean, twenty-four) if it’s a contradiction that the Lonestar Rollergirls are a pro-women organization that beats the shit out of each other during bouts. "No. We very lovingly beat the shit out of each other," she says.

Inspired by the Rollergirls, all-girl derby leagues have spread across America. Smarty Pants estimates a thousand women are "banding together" in "thirty cities across the United States" in what she calls a "revolution."

Or maybe it’s a civil war. Ironically, in 2003 the Rollergirls split over a nasty internal power struggle. Four of the original five teams left to start the cross-town rival Texas Rollergirls.

Meanwhile, Dallas women have started Assassination City Roller Derby. Midwestern women own the Kansas City Roller Warriors. New York women run Gotham Girls Roller Derby. Australian women are interested, too, and the referee, Masterblader, says he gets e-mails from Europeans who are keen to start a league.

"Nobody has spoken up from Canada yet," says Masterblader, a.k.a. Fritz Blaw, a Rollerblade instructor who helps train new Rollergirls. "[You Canadians] are just shy. You probably want it but you don’t want anyone to know that you want it."

When the doors finally open, drenched fans pour into the muggy Thunderdome, which smells like beer, sweat, and hot dogs. Then Ann Calvello, a leathery seventy-six-year-old former derby star, arrives by limo. She has a pirate patch over one eye (she lost the eye to cancer three years ago), and a Clint Eastwood glare blazing out of her good one. The crowd cheers for Ann but she yells back, "Boo my ass instead!" For fifty-two hard-rolling years, Ann grew accustomed to being hated as the "Meanest Mama on Skates."

The Lonestar Rollergirls’ ‘She-E-O’, April Ritzenthaler, escorts Ann to the gold Thunder Throne inside the arena. Two male announcers (play-by play and colour) inform us that Ann will preside over the carnage and present the Calvello Cup to the victors.

The announcers introduce the referees, who are also, surprisingly, male. Since men are literally calling the plays, I ask April if modern derby is truly a feminist sport. She smiles and says, "We’ve always welcomed men into membership. Someone has to take out the trash."

The announcer introduces the Cowgirls’ captain, General Lee Feisty, who’s wearing devil horns. Her teammates wear tiaras and red vests exposing thick, muscled arms. Looking cocky and unbeatable, they circle the track, tossing roses to booing fans. Their skin-tight cutoffs are so short, their legs look like oil towers. Jail Bait, the Rollers’ tiny blonde blocker, gulps and says, "They got a bit of girth on us." Her captain, Hades Lady, looks nervous, too: "I think they outweigh us by 300 pounds."

The Holy Rollers are introduced and Miss Conduct brandishes a cowgirl’s head on a stake. She waves a finger at cheering fans, then falls to her knees and is blessed by a nun. Her Holy Rollers are touted as "the baddest bullies in the Sacred Heart schoolyard." But next to the corn-fed Cowgirls, the Rollers look like they’ll get their tiny plaid asses kicked halfway to next Sunday.

The game’s about to start. A whistle blows and the pack takes off in a flurry of fishnets. Four women from each team skate around the oval track. A second whistle blows and two more skaters give chase.

"Here come the jammers," shouts the announcer. "The jam is on, and we are underway with the 2005 Calvello Cup Championship!"

Smarty Pants whips round the curve like a Hot Wheels car on a loop-de-loop. A Cowgirl shoves her and – WHAM! – Smarty Pants crashes into a TV cameraman, knocking him ass over teacups.

Five girls crash to the track in a burlesque NASCAR wipeout. The Cowgirls’ jammer strides hard, jumps over the fallen women, then boots it for daylight. 8-0 Cowgirls.

From what I remember of derby from its televised days, this new version feels different, like a weird hybrid of speed-skating, mud wrestling, strip tease, and Mardi Gras. Unlike the blow-dried Farrah Fawcett-esque stars of yesteryear who were sweet-faced pawns of The Man, today’s Lonestar Rollergirls look like neon-punk waitresses who’ve mutinied and now own the bar.

The best part: They’ve filled their club with so much distracting action, I don’t know where to look. Near the bandstand, the Cowgirls’ official rodeo clown, Spanky, laughs as two women smack his butt with Ping Pong paddles. On the track, a Cowgirl grabs a Holy Roller in an illegal headlock, then slams her over the guardrail. This inspires two young fans, their angelic faces covered in menacing glitter, to run down to the rail to get a better look. On the wall behind them, someone has spraypainted ‘Putas por vida!’ above a nasty skate-punk mural. And over by the front entrance, a vendor is selling T-shirts that read "If it weren’t for this damn penis, I’d be a Lonestar Rollergirl."

Watching Austin roller derby feels like, say, getting divorced then dropping acid and stumbling into your small-town high-school reunion to try to hit on girls you’ve known since kindergarten. You remember some of the moves but none of the rules [see Rules sidebar]. Colours are so bright you can taste them, the sweet country band is singing just for you, and if there’s any flirting to be done, that’s the Rollergirls’ decision, not yours.

Up in the stands, a fan, Katy Johnson, twenty-one, explains why the sport is enjoying a cultural resurgence. Roller derby is, she tells me, "hot chicks beating the shit out of each other. That is all that matters."

Katy’s drinking Lonestars with her friend, Kacy, who has a second beer warming up in the dugout between her breasts. Katy says their favourite Rollergirl is Miss Conduct "because she makes the meanest faces. We’re trying to be mean in the stands. We’re screaming the loudest."

To prove it, they holler, "Holyyyyyy Rollerssssssss!" An old guy snaps, "Could you fucking be a little bit quieter?" Katy retorts, "Could you fucking chew your gum a little slower? I paid my money and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want."

When the halftime whistle blows and the girls exit the track, three guys jam TV cameras in the women’s faces. A&E is filming a reality series about the Rollergirls and their cameras followed them everywhere this season: their (shared) dressing room, waitressing day jobs, trips to the emergency rooms.

Werner Campbell and Bob Ray look annoyed by the A&E circus. Ever since the league began, they’ve been shooting Hell on Wheels, an indie documentary about the Austin derby scene. Now that A&E’s swooping in with a big-money blitz, Werner and Bob are racing to finish their doc before the reality show premieres in January.

Bob says the Rollergirls "started from nothing and created a phenomenon." But it wasn’t easy. "In the beginning, everyone in town was talking about how [the Rollergirls] couldn’t do it and we were wasting our time filming them," says Bob. The skeptics said roller derby was yesterday’s game, a geezer sport that was best kept extinct.

Then again, Austin is a liberal oasis in a rapidly Republican state. The city slogan is ‘Keep Austin Weird’ and, unlike the rest of George W’s Texas, Austin loves to celebrate its kooks. Fringe musicians, politicians, and other street performers are not just tolerated here; they’re considered a crucial part of Austin’s cultural DNA. And thanks to the recent popularity of blood sports like kickboxing and Ultimate Fighter, Austin has finally embraced all-girl roller derby like a long-lost prodigal daughter. It took three seasons, but now the Lonestar Rollergirls are packing the Thunderdome and being treated like the sweethearts of the rodeo. That caught the eye of A&E’s executives, who are poised to turn the Rollergirls into America’s next top role models for girls.

Late in the third period, the Cowgirls lead 25-22 and the intensity escalates. Two blockers start scrapping: the Rollers’ petite Punky Bruiser, and Witch Baby, the Cowgirls’ lanky Amazon. A ref blows his whistle and spins the Penalty Wheel. The pointer clacks past punishments such as Jousting, Spank Alley, and Team Spank, then stops at Pillow Fight. Each combatant is handed a pillow. They rip off their helmets and start swinging. Witch Baby knocks Punky down, straddles her, and swings a rotting wristguard at Punky’s noggin.

Unlike the actual game competition, when the elbows-to-the-head and bruising-kicks-to-the-hamstring are all real, this 'time-out scrap' feels mostly theatrical. However, one fan, Chris, a local sixth-grade schoolteacher, assures me that, overall, the carnage here tonight is "truly impressive. The other league’s violence seems fake, but here there’s some ass-whupping going on."

Not quite intense enough for you? Consider the Purple Heart: Each year the Rollergirls hand out the award for the most heinous injury of the season. In 2003, the award went to Cha Cha, a single mother from the Putas, who fell and literally snapped her leg in half. Her shin bone punctured her skin, spewing blood onto the track. "The footage is brutal," says Bob. Her leg flopped around, he says, "like a fish out of water. I nearly passed out while filming it."

In the fourth period, the tension in the Thunderdome rachets ever-higher. The Rollers lead 36-35 with a minute left. As the second hand drops like an executioner’s blade, the Cowgirls are in trouble.

It’s down to the last jam. The Cowgirls’ retiring Gunsmoka faces off against the Rollers’ speedy Sister Mary Jane. As Gunsmoka slides through the pack, her teammates slow Jane with gritty blocking. Gunsmoka speeds into the lead, laps the pack, grabs three points, and calls off the jam. The Cowgirls win, the first undefeated team in Rollergirls history.

Balloons rain down on the Cowgirls, who fall into a laughing dogpile. A bazooka sprays white confetti onto their sweaty backs. TV cameramen capture their curves.

The Rollers look crushed. Enraged, Miss Conduct says the Cowgirls "got away with filthy moves so obvious the fans were calling bullshit!"

Beside the track, a cow-metal band cranks up their guitars and Miss Conduct plunges into the mosh pit. Later, Spanky tells me, "Miss Conduct landed seven or eight face punches on some guy for hitting her like she was me."

At the after party in a downtown tiki bar, a woman gives Miss Conduct a body rub in the corner. Two larger Rollergirls, Ginjure Scraps and HollyPeno, hug like lovers as their teammates cheer them on.

"They’ve just become derby wives," explains Axle Rosie, a Holy Roller. "[If] you find someone you connect with in derby, you become derby wives. I’m a ‘derby mistress.’ I’m currently being solicited by Cheapskate and Smarty Pants, who are technically derby wives, but I’ve kind of infiltrated their little relationship. So I’ve got a derby three-way going on," jokes Axle.

So are they gay? Straight ‘n’ playful? Drunk? Is this part of their show? Or are they parodying ass-patting football players? With these third-wave feminists, you never can tell.

I ask Smarty Pants if she thinks men’s derby will make a comeback, too. She says no way. "Men show so much aggression, so where would the interest be in watching men get together to see how aggressive they can be? Or how strong or overpowering they can be?"

Last night, when Ann Calvello arrived in Austin, I joined the Rollergirls as they watched a documentary about Ann’s fifty-two-year derby career. During the Q&A after the film, Ann told the theatre audience that she skated with a broken collarbone, a broken tailbone, and broke her nose twelve times. She described one scrappy bout in which "I got a woman's finger under my eye and it popped out." I winced but the Rollergirls laughed and cheered. "I got nothing against you guys, I love you," added Ann for the benefit of the dozen men in the room. "But what these girls are doing, you guys couldn't hack it."

Ann’s final advice to the Rollergirls: "Stick together and you'll make it big. In the 1930s, it was ten cents to watch roller derby. But I say someone's going to come along with deep pockets. Because it's the time, with all this corporate money."

Tonight, over in a dark corner, the Holy Rollers’ nun (Cheapskate from the Hell Cats) is hiding from the A&E cameras. It’s one thing to read in Spin that your kooky hobby is "the greatest catfight on Earth." It’s quite another to star in a reality show zapped into zillions of North American homes. I ask Cheapskate if she’s worried that celebrity and money will warp her sport, and her friendships.

"I’m totally concerned about that," says Cheapskate, who is Dyan Rice, a teacher. "There’s that 30 percent uncertainty about what’s going to happen. We don’t know who’s going to say, ‘Oh, here’s ten million dollars to do a porn.’ "

Eyeing the TV cameras warily, Cheapskate grimaces at the thought of being a celebrity. "I don’t have time to be talked to all the time." Flashing a grin, she adds, "I actually don’t think America is totally ready to have us be superstars."

In North America today, the epitome of women’s sports is professional tennis. We love to ogle tennis babes in miniskirts as they hop to hit a volley. Now imagine if these babes risked black eyes, busted lips, and shattered legs for their game. When our homecoming queen snaps her neck on a guardrail, will we look away or beg for a close-up? Is the future of women’s sports wrapped in blood-caked fishnet stockings? And will an increasingly conservative America embrace these boozing, cruising collectivists? We’ll soon find out.

Ken Hegan’s last story for Toro, in September, was on the Lebowski Fest in Los Angeles.

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HEROES AND VILLAINS:

Roller derby was invented in 1935 by Chicago promoter Leo Seltzer. It began as a marathon race on skates to entertain and distract Americans during the Great Depression. But when the first elbow was thrown in 1937, modern roller derby was born.

By the 1950s, skaters became instant celebrities when their games were televised. Before the sport sputtered out in the mid-’70s, roller derby produced dozens of heroes and villains including:

Ann “Banana Nose” Calvello (competed from 1948-2000): The “Queen of Mean” was a derby All-Star for decades. Famous for her purple-and-polka-dotted hairdos, Ann was punk before punk existed.

Judy Arnold (1960-’75): This fearless bombshell was Raquel Welch’s stand-in for the ’72 derby film Kansas City Bomber.

Charlie O’Connell (1953-’78): Rookie of the Year in 1953, “Mr. Roller Derby” was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player eight times in a pro career that spanned over two decades.

“Psycho” Ronnie Rains (c.1960s, ’70s): This bearded weirdo was a powerful all-around skater.

Gwen “Skinny Minnie” Miller (c. 1974-’84): Known for being thin enough to speedily squeeze through the pack.

Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn (c. 1945-’54, ’65-66) At 4'11", this stocky Brooklyn Red Devil was a fearsome, hard-drinking brawler whose rivalry with fellow skater Gerry Murray contributed to the early popularity of the sport.

LINKS:

To learn about the rules of roller derby, visit the Lonestar Rollergirls' league site

For QuickTime movies featuring previews of real derby action, check out these Web sites:

Hell On Wheels (documentary about Austin roller derby)

Demon Of The Derby: The Ann Calvello Story

A&E's Rollergirls, premiered January 2, 2006