My glute rep precedes me.

0:00 Suzy I'm Susie Hot Rod, and I know too much about the culture and chaos of roller derby.

0:05 Pamala Welcome to You Know Too Much, the show that teaches you everything you never knew you needed to know about the people, passions and obsessions shaping our world.

0:13 Eva I'm even McCloskey..

0:14 Pamala And I'm Pamela Busick Kim.

0:16 Eva And today we're talking roller derby with someone who truly knows way too much about it.

0:21 Pamala From the culture and chaos to the strategy, community and heart behind the sport. We're joined by the legendary Susie Hot Rod.

0:28 Eva And trust us, by the end of this episode, you're going to know way too much too. Hey, Susie.

0:34 Suzy Hello. Happy to share my knowledge with you all. Now you don't even have to wear a mouthguard. It'll be great.

0:40 Eva Perfect. It's ideal. You know, the last time Susie and I were together was. Was definitely on the track. But let's start off by how you initially found roller derby.

0:54 Suzy And the year 2004. And this was in, no smartphone time. Like, I think I had a Nokia, like, tap triple the hit the letter like three times to get to the letter. I was, playing in a band and my band was breaking up, and then I was just playing pick up band stuff, and I met a wonderful woman who was one of the first recruited Gotham Girls roller derby players for Gotham Girls Roller Derby Chassis Crash and CC bullets.

1:29 Suzy They worked together and they told me about it and I said, that's not for me. I can't roller skate. And I don't think so, but, I don't know why, but it was the right time. My little band had broken up, and I had a wealth of time on my hands because I had just finished art school and a life without homework was really good to me.

1:49 Suzy So yeah, it just happened serendipitously, and I surely had many moments where I said, well, this is just a dumb hobby. I don't know why I'm doing this and surely did not expect that flash for it. I would have done it for 20 years.

2:03 Eva You're definitely one of, I think, the most recognizable skaters, in in the whole world of roller derby and like unearth and that that comes from iconic.

2:16 Pamala Yeah. Okay. That's so amazing.

2:18 Eva Iconic. And nobody else has been in the body issue of of ESPN magazine. Nobody else has done like, you know, a million things that that you've done for for Derby. Yeah.

2:30 Suzy I mean, I had been on an airplane like once in my life before roller derby, and then I joined roller derby when I was 23. And then in the course of my career, I have been to like New Zealand, Australia, Colombia, for some reason we wound up in Finland three times. You know, we did pretty good for ourselves.

2:49 Pamala That's incredible. That's amazing. What is it that you think? What hooked you into roller derby? Like, what was that spark? Because initially you were like, no, no, no. But then what was it that just kind of kept grabbing you?

3:01 Suzy Community, I think, is really what kept me. And that's how roller derby began the resurgence in the early aughts. It was a group of bar workers that were like, wouldn't it be funny if we put on roller skates? We played a little roller derby games together, and then they did it. But the fact that they put that much work into learning how to do it, they were like, oh, well, now that we've done all this work, maybe we should stick with this thing and keep it going.

3:23 Suzy So I met people in roller derby that were so different that I never would have been friends with if I wasn't playing roller derby with them. It was people that were not athletes that did it, and that's what made it even crazier, because you got people from all these different walks of life heavily. Creatives, and doing this crazy thing that made no sense to be like, okay, everybody's an adult, let's put on roller skates, as are knocking each other over, and somehow it just kind of worked.

3:50 Suzy You know? There's definitely nothing like it.

3:52 Eva Yeah, nothing like it in the world.

3:54 Pamala I had a I didn't know until decades later, but I had a friend I'd grown up with who's actually a district attorney who was in the LA, league for a really long time.

4:03 Suzy Yeah. We're everywhere.

4:05 Pamala Yeah. Like, what was when you first joined different from when you were before you retired?

4:12 Suzy Roller derby is completely different than when I started 20 years ago. And as such, it should be, you know, like, organization is always impressive to me that it still manages to be done mostly by volunteers. Surely. Like everything else, roller derby was greatly affected by the pandemic. And so to see it grow and change in the course of 20 years is incredible.

4:35 Pamala I've seen roller derby, I've watched Eva play. I think the first match I ever went to, she like broke three fingers. You know, all the things.

4:42 Suzy That's a that's a famous story. Eva's that a lot of, you know, a lot of ride folklore tales of terror.

4:52 Pamala But tell me, like, as a player, like, is it super aggressive? Did it turn more aggressive where they're where they're like rivalries, like, I need to I need to know the t.

5:04 Suzy We've always played highly competitive. Whether we were great at the sport are not great at the sport. You wanted to win. By the time you put in all the effort to put, you did both the training to play the game and all the production to make the game happen. So surely in the heat of the moment in the game, it was very easy for everyone to compartmentalize all of their friendships and become really aggressive and competitive.

5:27 Suzy That that was always normal. And one of the things to be celebrated about it, because we were mentally mature enough that when it was over, we could get over it and then get back to the fact we all had to, like, clean up after the game was over, because some people don't even know that it's not fake because they never saw it.

5:43 Suzy Like, you know, they're like, oh, don't you play on a crazy bank track? And are you on roller blades? And it's like, we're on quad skates.

5:50 Eva There's a skater pit.

5:52 Suzy Yeah, like we're a legitimate sport. Just like soccer or hockey. Yes. It's physical. Yes. There's a reason why we have on a helmet and a mouth guard.

6:01 Pamala Is our offense defense. Are there moves? Is there a move you're known for? Like what's.

6:06 Suzy Gosh? What? I'm very known for hitting people with my butt because they get injured when I hit them, I give them a dead leg. I'm able to hit people like, right in the meat of their quad muscles with my butt. And it's painful.

6:21 Pamala It's like a hip check book. Or is it.

6:23 Suzy Like, yeah, like you, when you're going with speed, you come in at a diagonal and if your butt is strong and your legs are strong, you use the momentum to smash right into their quads. And that's really painful.

6:35 Eva Incredibly, incredibly painful.

6:38 Suzy Yeah. You get though I don't say it was. You get a dead leg for my arm mass. Oh yeah.

6:44 Eva Oh, that was a jammer. And those are the the skaters who go the fastest and race around the track. So it's even, more of a surprise to feel the power from someone who's meant to be scoring the points, you know?

6:59 Suzy Yeah. And I think the other thing that's, conceptually strange about the sport of roller derby is that you play offense and defense simultaneously, which is not normal for most sports. So like you have each team has a jammer. That's the person that has a star in their helmet. They make points by physically passing someone in their team.

7:16 Suzy So at all times you're helping your person get through and you're stopping their person from getting through. So that means depending on who's next to you, you have to make critical decisions. Are you helping your person or are you hurting them? Are you finding your teammate and extra hurting their team by doubling up on them? Or is one of you running off to play offense?

7:34 Suzy Was, under B is very strategic. And I would say there's a stereotype of women. We overthink and play chess on this game immensely. We yeah, we've come up with every possible scenario and and then you'll have a practice where like, did we just talk for 30 minutes about every possible scenario and then you get to the game and you're like, did that happen?

7:57 Suzy I don't know, like.

7:59 Pamala Where there are some other teams that were known for something. And then what was Gotham sort of known for?

8:05 Suzy Well, I would say annually teams styles will change, because one thing with roller derby is I make a joke that it's like dog years. But in one year, like seven years worth of changes are going to happen. So like when I was at the top of the national global roller derby, when I played like the all star travel team, like Gotham was a team that like, we always joked, like we were just highly defensive and like the point scorer, the jammer kind of had to fend for themselves.

8:29 Suzy But I mean, back in the day, it was like, yeah, you'd be like, oh, that's the team that's scrappy and hits hard. Like that's the team that that has more, you know, watch out for that player. Like for.

8:43 Eva Sure. Watch out for her. She's she's got a butt that'll take you out.

8:49 Suzy But way back in the day there was a move that became like so famous and roller derby, you know, but it only happened like one day. And then that was in the past. Or like the very famous time where, like, Beyonce play like launched the skater, like in the air and they called it the sleigh ride. It's like crazy, right?

9:07 Suzy Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It was a very famous moment in roller derby history, but a tiny little crumb in the entire, you know, package, but like, famous moments like. Yeah, yeah, that was a big.

9:18 Eva That was a lot. After seeing that one time.

9:21 Suzy We.

9:21 Eva Spent like weeks and.

9:22 Suzy Weeks dependent defending against.

9:25 Eva Bats.

9:26 Suzy Never to be used again. Yeah. And the other thing about roller derby is I compare it to like, if I learned a new language one year ahead of you and you'd never spoken it, ever. I was like, somehow an expert on it, right? Because I had learned it one year before you, but it didn't exist last year.

9:45 Pamala Bison wizard.

9:47 Suzy Yeah. Which is weird, you know, like, it's, social media really wasn't a thing. Like physical paper flying was still a thing. Like, if I'm, like, a well-known name in roller derby, I wouldn't be now, because I'm too lazy to make, like, short form content and TikTok and all that other stuff. Like, I had it easy. Like I maybe had to put a sentence on Facebook once, like, and I didn't even have a phone that could take a photo like, it was just easier.

10:15 Eva Smaller pool. Yeah.

10:16 Suzy -Yeah. And also, there's only one roller derby in a city because it's so difficult to have a roller derby. It's not like a band where there's 50 bands and everybody wants you to come to your show like nobody's start up a roller derby, because that is not easy. Like I gave everything in my life to doing that. Like my job suffered, my relationship suffered, I gave everything, and I don't have a regret about it because we accomplished phenomenal things.

10:43 Suzy But when you know, you step away and you're on the other side, you're like, how what? What? No, you know why.

10:50 Eva And how did I ever give this much to.

10:53 Suzy Yeah, it's it's really crazy to think about, but at least we were effin good at it, you know. Yeah. At least.

11:00 Pamala Legends. Absolute legends. Are there any current players on your radar?

11:06 Suzy Well, I like, the Gotham Roller Derby. Their leader is Yeti or not, here I come. And she's such a big ambassador for the sport. Like, not only playing at the top of her game on the track, but she does a lot for the global community and roller derby. She's a big star, like she's she's a total big star and she's earned it by being a hard worker, which is, you know, roller derby never had stars that weren't hard workers.

11:33 Suzy I skated with Bonnie Thunders, who was like the the. So everyone always says, like the LeBron James of roller derby, like Bonnie Thunders is the best skater that ever played. She is still playing at the highest level of competition over 20 years now. She is very, very athletically professional and driven and, you know.

11:57 Eva Committed, so very committed.

11:59 Pamala That's incredible. So are there still just as many teams, is it still just as active?

12:06 Suzy So I think that roller derby had its peak during like they call it the whippet effect, which is right after the whippet movie came out, the Drew Barrymore had made. And like I use this example a lot, but like I used to live near a club and that club would rent their club on Sunday mornings to a church because whose isn't a nightclub on Sunday morning, and this church would come in with a U-Haul and like, bring out their giant crucifix and all their religious stuff and have church on Sunday morning.

12:33 Suzy And I was like, this is how we need to do things like, let's. So we're sharing spaces and whatever. So, but I mean, if you don't know roller derby, if you look it up, I guarantee you some city close by is going to have it all over the world.

12:45 Pamala Well, I think this goes back to what you were saying originally of how you got hooked. Just like kind of the community element is what kind of brought you in. And I think we are sort of going into that period where people are lonely. And I do think people are going to start to and they do want more IRL things.

13:01 Pamala And so I'm hoping that maybe this is one of those outlets that people sort of find and kind of build back up.

13:07 Suzy Yeah. And the other thing about roller derby is you get to be a physical and aggressive, and once you partake in a full contact sport, you realize how cathartic it is for your mental health to be able to shove. Because we don't, all we do is push down all day, right? And like I think a lot of times, I also think that there's a stereotype of like, those women are so strong and roller derby, but I actually think that we're not necessarily strong people on the outside.

13:33 Suzy Maybe we need this community to feel safe and strong together, in a place where we can be totally free to be aggressive without feeling like it's inappropriate. Or maybe we find an aggression that's not really in our personality when we're going to work. Like I could say, I think some of my teammates probably like they're they're not like aggressive climb the ladder types.

13:56 Suzy They're mild mannered, quiet workers, you know, like, but then when we get this scenario where we get to like be physical and, and let it out and like the being able to play a sport and be sweaty is really special. Because after I stopped doing it, I wasn't getting that fulfillment from going to a gym class.

14:14 Pamala Oh good.

14:15 Eva No, never. That there's nothing that can compare to the physicality of roller derby.

14:22 Suzy Yeah. And just like talking to my teammates, like you don't go to a gym class to be like, how is your day? How is your partner? What's new at work? Like you don't talk to the people at the gym. You get in, you get out and you don't. You just want to like, burn your calories and be done.

14:37 Suzy But roller derby, for some reason, you didn't mind being there. And like in between doing a set of push ups, you'd be like, how is your family?

14:47 Eva Right? Right. Yes. And then that leads you to 20 years later going to the weddings and births and life celebrations of some of those people who you absolutely impact. But through that community, yeah, it's pretty special.

15:03 Suzy But you have to give the time to get it. Yeah. But you know, it is worth it. But you know.

15:09 Eva And it's like, is.

15:11 Pamala Is there anything else you want to tell us about roller derby land and your in your world and what you're like. What are we. Is there anything else we need to know?

15:20 Suzy I always get excited to tell people that even have a mild interest to just try it, because, there's a lot of different ways that you can get involved. You could take a once a week basic class. You could donate your time to the league by just helping them make fliers. If you don't want to play roller derby, you can be helping in some volunteer aspect.

15:45 Suzy But I do think if you are looking for community, and being connected to something like that lasts forever. So if anyone's even a little bit curious, I say give it a go. It's just funny because, you know, you think it's just like effin crazy to be like, I'm going to be like the like, feel like I'm in my 6 and I'm going to learn to roller skate.

16:04 Suzy But the people that have that hair, we got you. You're going to like it.

16:08 Pamala Well, Thank you. Susie. Hot rod, that's all for today's episode of You Know Too Much. A huge thank you to Susie Hot Rod for sharing so much about the wild world of roller derby. And honestly, now I may know too much.

16:24 Eva So if you enjoyed our conversation with Susie, please subscribe. Leave us a review, five stars only. And, share it with someone who'd love it. You can explore more episodes and behind the scenes content at You Know Too Much Media.

16:38 Pamala Follow us on Instagram and YouTube to keep the obsession going. Thank you so much, Susie.

16:43 Suzy And also, if you're not into playing sports, you might want to consider fostering animals, because I really enjoy fostering cats.

16:51 Pamala I was going to say, is this one be mad at you for adoption?

16:55 Suzy Yeah, this this, this cat is available at Pop stars in New York City. They have cats and dogs. But, yeah.

17:04 Pamala Actually, I love that.

17:06 Suzy It's a lot easier to put out a bowl of food once or twice a day than it is to get involved in an entire roller derby career. So that's why now that I'm roller derby retired, feeding a cat is pretty easy.

17:16 Pamala I have both.

17:17 Eva Perfect transition and yeah.

17:19 Pamala Another little to just both. Awesome. Thank you, thank you Susie.

17:24 Suzy Hey. Thank you.

17:29 Pamala All right. You okay? Bye bye.