Date Night with Steve Wozniak, The Bay City Bombers, and Facebook

Saturday Night Lights

The line of ticket holders stretched for more than two blocks.  The "will call" line was longer.  It was the Season Opener of the Bay City Bombers co-ed roller derby team, in their much-hyped match agaisnt the Brooklyn Red Devils.  It was also a testament to social media in action.  As I walked towards the throng of people milling about outside, it seemed that most of the faces were glowing from the reflection of iphone, blackberry, sideckick, and other smartphone screens.  I was alternately texting and calling my friends, trying to track them down in the throng.   SF Cheer was entertaining the crowd with frighteningly acrobatic aerial routines, considering the fact that they were throwing each other a good ten feet into the air over the solid concrete pavement.  One of their fans was studiously recording the entire routine, commenting as he did so, "This is going to look so cool on YouTube." 

I finally located my posse (I should have known that they would be the ones waving the large blood-red signs that read, "We want carnage!").  I arrived just as one of our group was frantically posting to her Facebook page, trying to find someone at the last minute who could use her extra ticket, now that her date had unexpectedly stood her up.  It was a testament to either the specialized appeal of co-ed roller derby or the full dance cards of her social network that no one amongst her 500+ friends seemed inclined to accept the invitation. 

When we finally got into the stadium, the texting/calling frenzy increased as people scanned the crowd, trying to locate friends who were holding seats for them.  My favorite bit of eavedropping of the evening happened at that moment.  A guy next to me turned to his friends and said, "Damn, he's not answering his phone.  I should probably log into grindr.  He ALWAYS answers that."  (Grindr is a gay-themed social networking/matchmaking application which allows users to locate each other within a few feet, using the iphone's GPS capacity.)

We settled into our seats just as the Bay City Bombers rolled out onto the track - and the auditorium literally lit up with hundreds of camera phone flashes going off simultaneously.  Those same camera flashes intensifed about five minutes later, when Apple Computer co-founder (and huge roller derby fan - who knew?) Steve Wozniak climbed into the center of the track to ring the opening bell.  My friend Carla managed to get a photo of herself with Steve ("The Woz," "iWoz," "the Other Steve," just to name a few of his online monikers), which she immediately posted to her Facebook page using Facebook for iphone.   

The action of the match progressed pretty much as expected - the requisite "real" body blows which sent skaters flying over the guard rails, the puttling-hair-and-screaming cat fights, the jumping-in-the-air-and-landing-on-your-opponent's-head brawls.  What was fascinating about all of these antics, however, was the fact that they always "coincidentally" happened just in front of a ringside fan's handheld video or flip camera.  Such is the marketing power of social media - to spontaneously incite mid-match fury amongst roller derbyists (derbyers?).  Must check wikipedia for the proper nomenclature.  In fact, wikipedia DOES offer a very comprehensive description of the official rules of International Roller Derby.  But I digress.

As the match went on (and on, and on, and on...), my friend Martha started to get bored.  So she fired up the iphone, logged into her bridge application (the card game, not the architectural structure), and started playing a virtual online match with three strangers whose exciting social lives also happened to consist of sitting in front of their computers playing bridge on a Saturday night.  But I digress.

I was getting bored too, so I started scanning the crowd.  And what struck me about the spectators was the incredible divesity and breadth of who was sitting in the stands.  I don't know what I expected to see - but it definitely wasn't what I DID see.  Families of all races, ethnicities, and compostion spending a Saturday night together.  A group of about 12 twenty-something women enjoying Girls' Night Out.  My group of 25 members of our LGBT tennis league, doing some non-tennis related group bonding.  An elderly woman by herself, leaning on her walker and munching on a bag of popcorn.  The primarily Asian and Hispanic middle school band, there to play the national anthemn, all of them neatly attired in their beige cardigans with the school crest emblazoned on the sleeves. 

And almost everyone using some form of social/mobile media.  Blackberries.  iphones. Facebook.  Twitter. YouTube. Hot Potato. Grindr. Steve Wozniak.  Who knew that my night out at the Roller Derby Rink would also be a night out with the first person to create the personal computer - and several hundred people using the latest thing in personal computing.