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Roller Derby, Fort Mason
Saturday night the Bay Area Derby Girls (B.A.D. Girls) had a match in Fort Mason between the Oakland Outlaws and San Francisco Shevil Dead. The B.A.D. Girls are a full contact, all female, flat-track roller derby league whose matches offer a lot of retro sporting fun that extends to the crowd and the halftime show.

Roller derby in San Francisco has a storied past, in the 1960s the Bay Area was a hotbed of derby action with Sacramento, San Jose, Oakland, Stockton and San Francisco arenas selling out weekly. The the most fabled team in the history of the sport were the San Francisco Bay Bombers. Their games were televised locally and syndicated to over 120 cities across America. The local team's stars included Joanie Weston (the Blond Bomber) who was the highest-paid female athlete in the 1960s and 1970s and Ann 'Banana-Nose' Calvello (Demon of the Derby) who broke her nose 12 times during her career.

The Bomber's home track was in Kezar Pavilion but they once set an attendance record of 34,418 at the Oakland Coliseum for a game in July of 1971. Away from San Francisco the Bombers regularly sold out Madison Square Garden and the Boston Garden. Their professional roller derby league eventually closed in 1973. A second league, the International Roller Skating League, headquartered in Northern California, operationed from 1977 to 1987. Today the B.A.D. Girls are one of a number of grassroots leagues are reviving the sport for a new generation.

MORE ROLLER DERBY PHOTOS
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FOGBAY UPDATE: In a followup to an earlier post the initiative to change the name of the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility to the 'George W Bush Sewage Plant' yesterday received enough signatures to make it onto the November ballot. While only San Francisco residents can cast votes, anyone who wishes to support the effort's campaign can donate HERE