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Her name on the roller-derby track is Bonnie D. Stroir (just like it sounds), and her goal is to be a role model for women, somewhere in the giant gulf between “Hillary Clinton in a pantsuit” and Britney Spears.
We’ll stand by while you read that sentence a couple times. OK, welcome back. Yes, roller derby, which you might have thought was left in the ’70s with Donna Summer and Carole King.
D. Stroir — her real name is Bonnie Beck — is serious about the sport of roller derby-ing, and she’s turned a San Diego’s amateur women’s league team into a national titleholder.
In this weekend’s Q&A, we talked to Beck about the sport’s local fans, her discovery of her leadership skills and whether any punching happens like it does on the big screen.
- We’re continuing to track whether San Diego City Council members have kept their promises regarding spending cuts in their own offices.
- As you may have noticed, lately we’ve been publishing obituaries about everyday people. They’ve been written by reporter Adrian Florido, who’s impressed readers with his ability to find the perfect revealing anecdote. How does he find people to profile? As he explains in a brief behind-the-scenes piece, he reads the paid obituaries in the U-T and looks for unusual stories. About, say, a woman named “Peter,” a man who’d worked at Pep Boys for decades and decades, or the guy who lathed houses in chicken wire.
- Our Photo of the Day spotlights one of our photographer Sam Hodgson’s least favorite things: subjects who like to ham it up. I asked him how he took the photo. It wasn’t through a windshield, as I’d assumed. He was standing on a land bridge over a storm channel near the border; the men in the truck are farm workers. Today’s photo soundtrack is a bluesy one, by Bessie Smith, about what happens when the rain comes.
Elsewhere:
- The troubled La Jolla-based Imperial Capital Bank was taken over by the feds and sold to another bank.
- Last year, the county medical examiner told us he was excited about his office’s expansion into a new building. Now, the move is finally happening. But there’s a catch, as CityBeat reports: mortuaries will only have four hours daily (on weekdays only) to collect bodies instead of 11 hours everyday. That seems likely to delay some funerals for the deceased who must be processed by the office.
- A boxing website called The Sweet Science tells the colorful story of a mid-century San Diego boxer named Charley Burley, who weighed about 150 pounds but could fight with the best of them. One of his matches was with local icon Archie Moore.
The Coffee Collection (stories to read over a cup of joe):
Teachers Where They Don’t Belong: Teachers are assigned to schools where they don’t want to be. Schools take in teachers they don’t want. How does this happen in San Diego? Our three-part series, the product of seven months of investigative reporting, analyzes the problem and offers insight into possible solutions.
All Together Now: The debate over $200 million in city budget cuts has been fairly subdued, unlike last year’s melee when a lot less was at stake. Where did all this going along and getting along come from?
Quote of the Week: “Goosed and going” — an expression used by our reporter Kelly Bennett on television while talking about the housing market. We don’t know what it means either, but I’m going to take a cue from Hollywood and blame Canada!