Roller Derby skaters come back in style.

THEIR league certainly doesn't carry the cachet of the National Football League or Major League Baseball, but the names of its players are way better.

Wanna Beatin, Tara Armoff and Paris Killton are all on the rosters of the Derby Dolls, L.A. County' s women's roller derby league.

The loop is on a roll. The Dolls' recent games have sold out their new 900-seat arena on the third floor of downtown's Little Tokyo Shopping Center, with VIP tickets commanding $35 and regular seats going for $15. The Dolls are making money on booze sales at the matches, too, which are handled by downtown's Bar 107 and Alex's Bar in Long Beach.

But there's still a long way to go.

The players aren't pros. In fact, they pay $80 in monthly dues for the fight to get elbowed in the gut as they roller skate around a banked track.

"We really want to get to the point where we don't have to pay, where we actually make money," said Rebecca Ninburg, who co-founded the league. "We've never really generated income because our overhead is so high."

The landlord at the new location requires that the league carry a $5 million insurance policy, something Ninburg said the league is struggling to afford.

"Our rent and insurance account for 70 percent of our total budget," she said. "It's insane." For that reason, the league is looking for investors, sponsors and partners to help make a go of it. It's a far cry from the 1970s, when roller derby had a considerable following on the West Coast. The L.A. T-Birds were the darlings of the banked track and their games were broadcast regularly.

Ninburg's rink name is Demolicious, and her co-founder Wendy Templeton is known as Thora Zeen. They have only vague recollections of those days and said that starting the league was actually just a way to have fun. "We had no idea how to skate or anything, we just jumped right in," Ninburg said of her pioneering skaters. "Naivete was our biggest strength."

It's a rough game. The league has two emergency medical technicians and a chiropractor at every game. It's so rough, in fact, that the fans as well as the players are required to sign liability waivers; you never know when a jammer is going to fly into the stands.

"The hits, cuts, bruises and broken bones are real, not staged," Ninburg said. She's living testament to that. Ninburg retired from competition after having a steel plate implanted to correct a broken wrist.

The league developed a small but rabid fan base when it debuted, in part because its guerrilla marketing gave it underground appeal. And what could be hipper than roller derby staged rave-style?

"The only way we could get some money was to put on some games," Ninburg said. ''We never advertised and never put the game times or locales on our Web site because we couldn't. It was all word of mouth and there were always lines around the corner."

The fire marshals noticed the lines, and city officials noticed the lack of permits. The league was shut down for about a year.

Now the league is back, fully permitted in its new home, which features a $23,000 movable track. Last month' s match between the Sirens and the Tough Cookies at the City of Industry Expo Center was broadcast on cable TV's HDNet. Channel executives said no decision has been reached on more telecasts, but there's hope.

"Women's roller derby is a wild experience," said Mark Cuban, president and co-founder of HDNet. "In high-def, our viewers see all the skates, skirts and scars."

BY ANNE RILEY-KATZ

Staff Reporter