So, I want to hear the most bizzare, hilarious, and straight up strange reactions and encounters you’ve had while yoyoing in public.(Can be good or bad)
I’d say my favorite, and somewhat strange encounter I had, was when I was throwing in front of my local toy shop one day. I glanced up, and across the street I saw 4 or 5 older gentlemen watching, looking pretty amazed. I had seen this many times before, but what happens later was priceless. I was startled to hear a loud applause coming from the other side of the street, and there stood the old gentlemen giving me a standing ovation. A few of them came over to try some modern yoyos, and laughed and made jokes for a little while. I found myself to have a huge smile after this happened, and pretty much made my entire week.
So let’s hear your greatest stories! What do you got?
I was once yoyoing in the store when this little kid was watching me, and before he walked away he asked me… Are you a yoyo magician?
I said to him… I sure am!
Poster of the year 2014, and now he’s going for the title in 2015… at this rate, he just might get it.
I laugh every time. ;D
Story time!
So it was my friend’s wedding anniversary and they were having a party. I don’t normally yoyo in public, but anticipating how epic it would look in the dark, I bought my YYF Hubstack Afterglow with me and had it in my pocket.
Anyway, the lights were off and things were getting all rave-y up in there. We then had the inevitable point on a dancefloor where a circle forms and people take it in turns to jump into the middle and bust out their sweetest moves (or worst… as the case sometimes is).
In the words of Totalartist I was all ‘off the top, in the zone’, so I figured, what the hell.
Jumped into the middle and busted out some flashy tricks with the afterglow in time with the music.
Me yoyoing in Costco after dealing with insane, rude crowds as I wait for pizza, happen to be wearing my YYE shirt, kid is watching me as I practice Pop n Fresh.
Oh and I forgot… Waiting for the bus to take me to Knotts from Disneyland, I was messing around with my yoyo. A homeless man came up to me and was going to pay me as I kept him entertained. I couldn’t take it though.
Thought it was like a role reversal though. Here I am in a vacation with a place to stay, and I’m being offered money by one who sleeps at the bus stop at night while people including myself conclude our night at the happiest place on earth.
While I’m on the note of bringing joy to other…
Several years ago, shortly after I got back into throwing, I was asked to do a yoyo demo for the kindergarten class my niece was in as they missed out on the school NED assembly. While my demo was nowhere near a professional production, the students were thrilled. I had after heard the teacher say that what I put on was actually better than the NED performance they had.
Little did I know, I was then being sent to the special ed classes to do a quick demo for them. They were also thrilled! In the end seeing a bunch of thrilled kids made me happy. This all took place at the elementary school I went to as a kid, where I sparked the yoyo boom before it happened
At school, at lunch, in the beginning of the year. I was outside in the courtyard when I saw someone using a Shutter, looked brand new, he was probably the same level of yoyoing as me, or maybe a bit better.
I came up, and I was like “cool, can I try?” (I was pretending to know nothing about yoyos!) The guy was like: “Uh… be careful… WAit… Er”. But I was insistent so I kept at it, and he nervously gave it to me. The courtyard is mostly concrete by the way. So I took it and did a lot of tricks I know, surprising him.
Ok so I was at the mall and the elderly man came up in line behind me. I had my Duncan Strix on my First Word Design Holster. He said to me, “What is that GIZMO you got there?” I proudly replied, “It is a yoyo.” He answered, “Oh WOW, I haven’t seen one of those since the 80’s!” So I just smiled.
That’s awesome! I was offered to do a demo for the younger children at my church, and being only 2 months into Yoyoing I politely declined. Now that I have been yoyoing for over a year, I plan to do some demos at my church and other places
For me:
I did a yoyo show at my local library at a Christmas party. Believe it or not, the librarians turned it into a “Yo-Yo-Ho-Ho Christmas Party” (without me expecting that; I thought I would just do a little freestyle or something) and not only did I do a routine to music, but I demonstrated how they worked, what makes them spin, and, of course, I walked the dog about 20 times.
Afterwards, the librarians told all through the librarian chain nearby about me and now I have a performance scheduled at a different library on the 27th. I should start charging, huh? Just kidding.
My grandmother got me hooked on yoyos when I was just a little guy. She grew up the daughter of homesteaders in Wyoming and had learned how to make all her own toys as a kid. She’d take a tree branch and make a few cross sections, drill a hole through them and run a dowel through the hole making a yoyo. The dowel was always to long so it was sharpened so that the string could be taken off or rolled up and the yoyo could be used as a top. Awesome, just awesome!
My aunt bought me my first store bought yoyo and taught me how to get it to return to my hand. Great day!
Grew up with a yoyo in my pocket, family pictures suggest that I started carrying one around 5 years old. I remember it as more of an imaginative toy than just a yoyo.
Landed my first trapeze on my first imperial. Big day for a little guy. I still remember it well.
I have given away over 500 yoyos, I lost count somewhere between 500 and 525, then I just gave up counting, many of them simply homemade fixed axle wooden yoyos, many plastics, and even a few metals.
Personal stories with a yoyo are many and numerous. I’m basically self taught, when I got a library card I looked at yoyo books, even before I could read them, learned to read, that helped my yo-yoing, saw a few guys like the Smother Brothers on tv, that was inspiring, and then the internet. I’ve never been to a meet, a club that I hadn’t created, always a big fish in a small pond, has both pros and cons.
So here’s a good one…I’ve been going through a tough battle this week as I had hoped to work on my YYE “Why do I YoYo” video, plus a collaboration video I’m doing with some friends on here. I basically have been dealing with a hard drive that suddenly was about to give up the ghost. It’s been a bumpy ride but I was fortunate enough to be able to recover all of my files, first thing I jumped in and recovered were my yoyo videos…over my photos and website assets which are rather important.
So here I am now on a fresh Window install on a new solid state hard drive posting on YYE while I reinstall my video editing software so I can get back on track. Yea, been a rough week and the only things that kept me sane were my new throws.
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