We’ve had the honor of featuring some work this summer from instructor Leslie Howle’s Digital Darkroom interns, who have been learning photojournalism in a Delridge Community Center-based program. They covered a recent Longfellow Creek cleanup with volunteers including Rat City Rollergirls athletes – the kind of cleanup that dozens of volunteers do around West Seattle’s greenbelts just about every Saturday (listed here) — and brought us this report – by the way, the Rollergirls battle the Windy City Rollers TONIGHT in Kent, more info here:

(Rat City Rollergirl Dixie Dragstrip at the Longfellow Creek cleanup)
On Saturday, July 25th, Digital Darkroom intern Keahnu Dorsey and photojournalism instructor Leslie Howle stopped by to talk to the Rat City Rollergirls and watch the 80 or so community volunteers who were putting in hours of hard labor pulling up ivy at the stream restoration event at West Seattle’s Longfellow Creek near Greg Davis Park.

(Read on for more of the story – and more on RCRG members from West Seattle and White Center – including local business owners!)

This is the second year that the Rollergirls have organized this event with the King Conservation District; in partnership with the City of Seattle Parks Department, and the Friends of Longfellow Creek.

The Longfellow Creek cleanup was pretty impressive; we appreciated seeing so many people volunteering to help out. We witnessed men, women, boys, and girls all pitching in to clean up the forest. All the volunteers seemed like they were in a good mood, like they were happy to be there, which was also nice.

The headwaters of Longfellow Creek are in White Center, once called “Rat City”, which is the diverse namesake community that the roller derby team adopted when they started the league at the Southgate Roller Rink. The team also donates muscle for projects like the King County Adopt-A-Road Program, which is an annual cleanup along a two mile stretch of roadway that they adopted in White Center in 2004.

The volunteers removed huge amounts of invasive English ivy from the riparian corridor of the Longfellow Creek, one of the few salmon-bearing streams in the City of Seattle. For more information about volunteering for this and similar clean-up projects you can go to http://www.kingcd.org/pro_vol.htm.

Jessica Bloom, aka team member “Holley Knockhers,” is a CPH & Certified Arborist who helped to organize this event.

She said “Many of our league members live in West Seattle and White Center, and call themselves the “Wessies” which is the opposite of wussies! For example:

From White Center come team members:

* Dirty Little Secret, Hurricane Lilly

From West Seattle come team members (we’ve linked each one’s name to her webpage/site if we could find one):

* Rae’s Hell (co-owner of Zippy’s Giant Hamburgers in West Seattle), Dixie Dragstrip, Ann Munition (owner of Sin In Linen in West Seattle), Moe Ya Down, Morning Gory, Skate Trooper (owner of Bird on a Wire Espresso in West Seattle), Eddie Shredder, Georgia O’Grief, La Petite Mort, Deadly Aim, Katarina Whip, Pris Toff, Jowanna Ass Kickin‘, Strobe Lightning, Jinx

Jessi provided us with additional information about the team. “Rat City Rollergirls is a volunteer-run company run by its 80+ members. Rat City Rollergirls members commit to training and competing locally and nationally at members of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association. The Rat City Rollergirls are always in need of businesses to lend support through sponsorship and by attending our bouts.”

The Rollergirls are in their 5th season of roller derby competitions at both KeyArena and ShoWare Center in Kent. Jessi says, “With two back-to-back bouts in one night, and a lively halftime show, our fans get a lot of bang for their buck!”

For more information about the Rat City Rollergirls, including where and when you can see them in action, go to their website at www.ratcityrollergirls.com.