CHS Pics | ‘ROUND AND ROUND THEY GO’ — Tilted Thunder Roller Derby battles on 15th Ave E

There was a taped-out oval on the floor of the Quality Flea Center on 15th Ave E this weekend and it didn’t get there by accident.

Taylor Sloan, who runs the bar at The Hopvine across the street, spent part of her week free-handing a flat track onto the flea market’s concrete floor, no measuring tape required.

“I’ve taped out a million tracks at this point,” Sloan said. “I use upholstery foam and gaffer tape for the pole covers, because it’s supposed to be like a fun, DIY, punk rock sort of thing.”

Sloan has been skating with Tilted Thunder Roller Derby for 17 years. Normally, that means suiting up on the league’s regular turf: a 6,000-square-foot wooden track the team builds from scratch at the fairgrounds in Monroe, home to a growing in popularity event –polished, bleacher-seated, and fiercely competitive. But this weekend at the Quality Flea Center was something else entirely with a stripped-down expo bout, played bank track rules on the flat surface with skaters squaring off against each other for the fun of it.

Sloan also tends bar at the Flea Center whenever it hosts markets and the derby-slash-rock-show idea had been kicking around in her head for a while.

“I wanted to do a crazy, fun, old-school style derby slash rock show, and that’s what this is,” she said. “It’s just an expo bout, just a demo game.”

The music lineup came together the way a lot of good DIY bills do, through a cold DM. Sloan found the band Good Grief on social media and asked them to come play a roller derby show. “They said hell yes,” she said. Daniel Cadaver, a band that’s also played the area, rounds out the bill.

Money-wise, it all came down to ticket sales. “We’ll split with the bands once the cost of the event is covered,” Sloan explained. Unlike Tilted Thunder’s Monroe productions, which come with the overhead of a full fairground buildout, the Quality Flea Center version keeps costs down to the essentials: alcohol insurance, security, and the venue itself. “This is a show,” Sloan said. “I love being very competitive [at the big track], but it’s also fun to take time out of your life to just do something crazy and fun, something that reminds you of another time.”

For anyone on Capitol Hill who’s never seen a bout, Sloan’s pitch is simple: Go find your local league, because there almost certainly is one. Roller derby’s modern era, she said, was built from the ground up by women in the early 2000s, and leagues like Tilted Thunder have been sustaining it ever since on their own time and their own dime. ”

We continue to put all of our time, money, effort, blood, sweat, tears, partners, work, everything, into this sport because it’s just so fun,” Sloan said.

What keeps her coming back, she said, is what makes derby different from a lot of other sports. There’s a role for every body type, and nobody gets left out.

“Every single person, at every single body type, has a purpose and a strength and is celebrated,” Sloan said. “There is no one that is left out or shamed.”

For now, most of the Tilted Thunder action takes places in Monroe but keep your eyes peeled for another visit to the Hill. Learn more at tiltedthunder.org.

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