"It's a fusion of a rock show with a really wayward, gone-totally-wrong sporting event," says spokeswoman Kristin Lemberg. "And performance art."
Actually, it's much stranger than that. It's an intoxicating brew of costumes and tortillas and punk rock and crazy fans, and it's the creation of Audra Angeli-Morse, a San Francisco booking agent. Obsessed with the acrobatic Mexican wrestling style known as lucha libre, she dreamt up the idea of throwing the wrestlers and her rock acts together. So one night in 1995, she booked a club for a rock show, and then, for two bucks more, invited the crowd next door into an open venue with no ring, only oak floors overlaid with packing blankets, where guys in crazy costumes proceeded to beat the hell out of each other into the wee hours. She collected the extra money in a beer pitcher, and Incredibly Strange Wrestling was in business.
From there it was the usual route to fame -- a follow-up gig in a real wrestling ring, then the West Coast leg of Lollapalooza, and on to the Fillmore, where Incredibly Strange Wrestling has been selling out shows for years. ISW has become so popular that the Fillmore, which seats around 1,700, still has to turn 300 to 400 people away.
Incredibly Strange Wrestling is back on the road this summer as part of the VANS Warped Tour -- a 45-city extravaganza rolling into Adams County this weekend that mixes BMX biking, skaters and rock bands. It's like one-stop shopping for alternaculture.
The ISW wrestlers include some semi-pros from L.A. -- where lucha libre is a big deal -- plus many Bay Area eccentrics. Of course, it's not just about body slams and headlocks: It's also brazen theater that skewers everything in sight and revels in its own silliness. Regular acts include 69 Degrees, a team of Scientologists who like to pelt their opponents with copies of Dianetics; the star act, El Homo Loco, who has to constantly fend off other wrestlers seeking to sexually reorient him; and El Pollo Diablo, who wrestles in a chicken suit with horns.
The crowds are equally colorful: a belligerent mix of wrestling fans, frat kids, punk rockers and those with a taste for the freakish. "People love it," says Limberg. "They just flock to it. It's this great raucous entertainment, and it hits a nerve because it's a great way to make fun of things."
And then there are the tortillas.
Angeli-Morse got the idea one night when she saw a rock band that featured two go-go girls with tortillas on their breasts. At the end of the set the girls flung their pasties, er, tortillas, onto the stage. Heretofore, ISW crowds had been throwing bottles and shoes at the wrestlers -- stuff that hurts. And since it's no use telling a punk crowd not to throw anything at all, the lightweight tortillas were deemed a fair compromise. Now, the hyped-up crowds throw tortillas by the thousands into the ring. (Angeli-Morse estimates 2,000 to 3,000 dozen tortillas are lobbed at the Filmore.)
But is it real, you ask? C'mon, says Angeli-Morse: "You can't fake wrestling. You can't fake hitting someone on the head or falling on the ground." The action in the ring is fast and acrobatic, high-flying and physical. The wrestlers tend to be small and nimble.
Which is to say: ISW is not the WWF. Angeli-Morse has to remind would-be wrestling stars that the ISW federation (tour?) (troupe?) is just a bunch of musicians and artists who happen to love wrestling. The Rock is cool. The ISW kids are just crazy. Got it?
