Talk:American Roller Skating Derby

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Activity after 2007?[edit]

Has ARSD skated any public matches since 2007?

And is Original Roller Derby League, which apparently put on matches in February and March 2008, just another incarnation of this organization? —mjb (talk) 01:05, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

ARSD has played games since 2007 and is owned by Dan Ferrari. Their games in the Bay Area feature the Bombers as "white shirts" and the Detroit Red Devils and other "red shirt" teams. Earlier this year they had a local TV show on San Francisco channel KOFY that has since been canceled. Their last game in San Francisco was September 12th, 2009 at the Cow Palace. Previous games had been held at the Kezar Pavilion and the Alameda County Fairgrounds. Ferrari also promotes ARSD games in Pomona, CA which feature the "white shirt" L.A. Firebirds (previously known as the San Diego Firebirds) playing the same "red shirt" teams that the Bay Bombers play.

Original Roller Derby League is/was a separate promotion, which is/was owned by "Ice Box," who while he "manages" one of the ARSD teams does or did have a separate promotion of his own (which I believe played in Oakland). In actuality, I would more likely question the continued existence of ORDL. As far as I know there were only those two games played by that organization. I'd have to do some digging to get Ice Box's real name. The team names and the skaters were largely the same as ARSD. This doesn't suggest that they are the same organization. A different person rents the venue, pays the skaters, sells the tickets, owns the uniforms, the banked track, etc. Every "pro derby" team and league largely draw from the same pools of skaters in the Bay Area and Southern California and surrounding areas.

Aside from ARSD, the only existing "pro derby" league still in operation is NRDA (National Roller Derby Association). It has two teams, the Las Vegas High Rollers and the Los Angeles Blackhawks. It's first game (and only thus far) was played in Las Vegas on 10/31/2009. The two teams were by and large many of the same skaters from ARSD's Bombers and Red Devils, with some additional skaters (like Cliff Butler). The skaters are the same, the webmaster is even the same, but this is most definitely a different promotion. Dan Ferrari has gone as far as to publicly bash the High Rollers operation on a Yahoo group. I didn't read that as "heat." Bashing the competition is fairly common in that kind of derby.

The American Roller Derby League does not currently exist and hasn't existed since Tim Patten shut it down as shown in "Jam." What gets tricky to ascertain is the reality of what and when things happened, who owned what and when. That sentence was a bit of a muddle but, I know that Tim's ARDL no longer exists. His web site tells a different story. If you were to take his site at face value, the Bombers, the Orlando Thunder, the Detroit Red Devils and the San Diego Firebirds are teams in HIS ARDL. Actually they are in Dan's league. In truth, his web site is an unofficial fan site (per his own words on the Rollergames site). TimBRoy (talk) 10:10, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yeesh. Thanks for all the info, but man, this is a real pain to try to write about without quality references. Gotta just keep plugging away, I guess. —mjb (talk) 21:11, 22 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is something that's probably better mentioned on the list of leagues article, but it's on a similar riff. The latest incarnation of RGI is gone. Not only was there a finding in a the lawsuit between trademark owner Bill Griffiths (Jr/Sr, I forget) against Bob Sedillo (owner/operator of the league), but Sedillo recently passed away. I should probably try to find some references to one or both while they're still available.

Professional roller derby, as it exists in the here-and-now, has more in common with bush league pro wrestling than it does the WWE. News travels by message boards and league-run web sites (which aren't necessarily driven by someone who's exactly within the league). Any legitimate press it gets tends to be only so useful, as it's often a human interest story in a community newspaper. TimBRoy (talk) 03:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]