Yoyoguy and Ken’s world on a string were my go-to websites in middle school 
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KWOS…wow. Haven’t thought about that for a while.
Googled and sure enough, there it is in all of its 2001 web design glory. Somehow makes me happy that it still exists.
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I was going to type out some “back in the day…” gibberish about the old stores and old forum sites. But as usual, @ed1has done a far better job than I could. Let’s just pretend I said something as meaningful as he did.
Also, Pat Cuartero screwed over some really good people. He deserves no respect.
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I still visit it regularly and have saved the pages for posterity.
Yep, I’m a legacy, dinosaur kinda guy.
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Still miss those people. A lot of good ones were there.
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Just looked at that website and loved it!
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Back in the good ol’ days, Sector Y was the shizz.
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Wow, hey there JHB!!
It’s crazy thinking about how long it’s been since I was a member of theyo.com.
Damn those forums meant a lot to me!
haha I could spend all night here typing up awesome memories I experienced thanks to the online community there.
I made some pretty amazing friends! Mike was cool as heck…use to call him on the phone just to chat some times. Him and a couple others in Hawaii even invited me to go move there with them (Mike Tuarbaby (I think that was his name?) and another gentleman I can’t remember off the top of my head) (–edit–I think his name was something like HulaShow–/edit–). My parents were even willing to pay for a plane ticket! Dang how dumb I was to chicken out on that! >.<’
I once broke one of my favorite yo-yo’s and was pretty upset about it and I couldn’t afford to replace it. A few days later the mailman left a package at my doorstep. Inside was not only a new yo, but several others (wish I could remember what they were!) including a couple that had been hand painted!!
I have memory issues. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but he was a regualar on theyo forums, lived in California and his career was helping people file taxes. (–edit–his screen name was Atomic Cow or something similar–/edit–)
It was super cool too, because I somehow convinced my parents to take me to Las Vegas in 2001 I think it was, to attend a big Yomega contest to compete in the novice division (I never did get very good at yo’s). There was SO many people on the forums that were cheering me on and rooting for me. It really made me feel great. I even went to a local shop to get a custom shirt made with my forum screen name on it (Twitch_77) as well as TheYo on it to wear at the contest.
Ended up taking 1st place!
An experience I’d never of had without the awesome support and cheering on I got from everyone. I even got to meet a couple members from the forums at the contest!
I mean, I could go on and on!
So many good memories! So many amazing people! I had so much fun! Made so many awesome friends!
I miss Mike. He was a great, stand up guy. He was always very good to me…would always include extra things in my orders like strings and accessories and such…and it was really nice just chatting with him on the forums and in chat (or on the phone).
…
haha, sorry. Didn’t mean to put ya’ll to sleep with a huge post.
Anyone else around from theyo still JHB? (that you’re aware of)
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Hey, twitch, good to hear from you.
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I was mostly on theYo and Yoyonation. Was it theYo that had that amazing thread that was dozens and dozens of pages of just modded FHZs?
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Wait what? I need to see this
Our brand, or business reputation, and our personal reputations as well were all effected by Pat’s “majorly dikish” behaviors. Even today we still hear wild and untrue stories that originated with Pat and a few other Old-School Big-Time Movers and Shakers. Thanks Ed for helping clear the air.
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Well, I don’t claim to always be able SEE through the air, and I probably have done as much to cloud it as clear it over the years. But here’s to continuing to wave my arms around.
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Thanks Ed, we’re just happy to have survived.
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If you’re refering to the FHZ mods section of TheYo, it’s unfortunately gone as the forum was shut down a couple of years ago… You might find it on the wayback machine, in which case it should be fairly complete as the forum continued for a few years passed the last meaningful topics were posted.
There was some good stuff posted there.
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I don’t miss the time when people had to mod their yo-yos to get decent performance. As I recall they had to drill / dremel their own silicone pad response wells, beefcake (put two slim bearings together to make a wide bearing), and all kinds of other stuff we just take for granted these days?
Next level @MrBist mods are of course awesome, but modding just to get acceptable mainstream performance… that kind of “modding” is… not awesome…
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I guess ya had to be there… 
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That actually sounds like it would’ve been fun, everyone had an extremely unique yoyo that you owned and no one else had, brass-rimmed FHZ’s and and stuff like that.
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Yeah the decorative part is cool. But the rest is just… work…
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It kinda was, but what you have to understand is that for awhile there was nothing out there that outplayed those mods. So you’d do a little work on a dremel or drill-press Takeshi recess, tweak the spacers, clean the bearing, and your Freehand would suddenly be capable of play that had never been possible - certainly not in an affordable plastic yo-yo. And nobody knew better - the modding is a big part of how we collectively figured out “better”. So it’s easy to look back now and be like “man that must have sucked”, but that’d be like saying it must have sucked to learn how to ride a bike because you fell sometimes. It didn’t. It was the BEST!
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