The ‘gray lady’ straps on a helmet and some torn fishnets with a big profile of roller derby 2.0:

WOMEN’S roller derby is undoubtedly having a moment in New Jersey; at least seven leagues, with more than a dozen teams, have sprouted statewide since 2005. (Some leagues have only a single team.) But Mickey Taylor, a construction worker from New Milford who answers to Bone Saw when she skates with the Northern Nightmares, isn’t complacent about the long-term prospects for her favorite pastime.

Right now, “it’s bubbling,” said Ms. Taylor, 29, who wore fishnets under sapphire-blue shorts and a leather dog collar around her neck at the Branch Brook Park Roller Skating Center here. On a recent Friday night, her 12-member Nightmares had a bout against the Hub City Hellrazors, both part of the Newark-based Garden State Rollergirls League, formed in 2006. “The problem is, people love the idea of it, but nobody’s coming out to see it,” Ms. Taylor said. “We need some big sponsors.”

According to many team captains, a national resurgence in the sport started after A&E broadcast the 2006 series “Rollergirls,” based on the Texas Lonestars. Ms. Taylor is not alone, however, in worrying that the sport that once spawned a national craze is headed for the same fate it met in the mid-1970s, when it skidded from the popular consciousness as unceremoniously as the Bee Gees.

Pretty good profile and we’re always glad to see roller derby get some ink, but we take exception with the NYT’s assertion that “nobody is coming out to see it”. That varies greatly from market to market–here in Portland, OR the Rose City Rollers draw crowds of several thousand to their bouts and other Derby Leagues draw similarly large crowds.

Anyway, worth reading……

With names that could kill women rev up roller derby @ NY Times