I just stumbled across a post of Ed Haponik’s where he mentioned that before the 90’s, most of the pros played fixed axle even after bearing yoyos became available. This got me interested about what fixie play, which is to say professional yoyoing, looked like before the 90’s craze and the ubiquity of bearings.
Is there any good documentation of the early days of yoyoing out there? What were people up to before Yomega and Superyo started demonstrating in schools? Surely it wasn’t all rock the baby and walk the dog.
I’m aware that I’m talking about a substantial stretch of time– really from Flores in 1928 until the early 90’s. There’s a fair amount out there about the birth of Duncan and such, but I’ve never seen any good history of this period from the perspective of players. Any insight or resources are appreciated!
@unklesteve and Mark McBride (is he on here?) talk about this period a bit, mainly pre 90’s boom in their YoYoPlayer podcast. Steve was very stubborn on sticking with wood for a while if I remember correctly.
as far as before this? Maybe Doc Lucky has some discussion of it, I have not listened to all his stuff yet
Here is some history of early Duncan demonstrators, including interviews with them
it’s pretty crazy that there’s actually a lot of anecdotal description (and no lack of video) detailing yo-yoing in the 50’s and 60’s, but comparatively little from the 80’s and early 90’s. i have old collected copies of stu crump’s and bill alton’s old newsletters (the yo-yo times and the noble disk), and they offer a lot of info on what could otherwise be thought of as the pre-internet yo-yo dark ages.
i kind of love that i got into yo-yoing at a time when text or simple diagram descriptions were still the ideal way to communicate trick ideas lol. it’s so fun to go through sections of the yo-yo times and see 14 year-old dave schulte writing in to share a paragraph description of a new trick he learned.
We were pretty stubborn about insisting we could still do all the current tricks that were being created on wooden axles. That stubbornness didn’t last long as we were 100% wrong but it was an interesting moment. I still maintain that sticking with wood as long as I did helped smooth out my style in a way that is still noticeable today. But that might just be my stubbornness talking ha ha
