A Subcultural Study January 19, 2005
By Amber Linskey (Originally Posted on 10/21/2004)



Is yo-yoing a sub culture?

-a quote scrawled on the international yo yo message board in response to my interest in documenting the community.





It's the night before the 2004 World Yo Yo contest, and my best friend and I are strategically cutting fabric into unlikely shapes, and ironing transfers of logos we've made onto hooded sweatshirts. It's just past midnight and we've got to get our weary heads in bed soon, because the anticipation, and that blasted alarm will rouse us long before the sun comes up. This year we're working the registration booths, and it's a job that neither of us feels prepared for. Luckily the World contest is held in Orlando, only two hours south, and we don't have to make the 25 hour plane trip that many of the kids from Asia are forced through. In the early morning we load our bags into the car, and follow my boyfriend, Jack Ringca and Duncan film crew member Mark McBride through our town, and out onto the highway.

Upon arrival, we help a circle of Asian boys unload a truck that belongs to Greg Cohen, owner of Infinite Illusions skilltoy company. Greg hosts the world event. He packs up and hauls his company, employees included, down to Tallahassee once a year, and unloads into the Rozen Plaza hotels convention center. When the boxes are unloaded, Greg brings us up to "Op's" a room on the second floor, known as the Operation Room, and Anna and I are given the job of matching hundreds of red white and blue collars to multi-ranked medals. These are the winning medals. I can't help but to finger the Artistic Performance 1st Place medal between my fingers, and send some tiny tinge of mental assurance into it. Hoping. Praying, even, that it will go to Jack.

And then Greg sends us down.

We're set up at a collapsible table in the center of the hall. We have boxes full of envelopes that we've sorted. Each envelope has a name, the age of the person, and if they've purchased it tickets for tee shirts, special edition yo yo's and passes to the annual bar b cue at Lucky Meisenheimers house, a.k.a. the Worlds Largest Yo Yo collection. One by one the players roll up.

It's easy at first. You ask their name. You find their envelope. "this is your ticket to the Bar B Q, these are your shirts, two mediums, here's your fantastic two-toned sparkle effect yo-yo, it looks like a Hitman right? It's totally Yo-yo Jam but I'm not sure what they're calling it. All a lingo that I've picked up through my experiences with the players, through competitions and online sources. A Hit man is a small metal ringed yo-yo made by the company Yo-Yo jam. It is also the signature series yo-yo given to Single A player Johnny Devalle, who is on the Yo-Yo Jam team. Johnny was number one in the world in his division at the 2003 contest. Get the hang of it, yet? Don't worry, I'll get you there.

Sure there are mistakes. Some kids claim that they pre paid for a shirt, and the envelope has no ticket. A few times we ran out of shirt sizes. Many kids begged to purchase the special edition yo-yo's and we had to be stern, despite their pleadings: "No, these are for the people who pre registered. That's why they are so special!"

And one by one we got through each and every person. All the problems were mended. Nine hours later and Anna and I were free to walk the place. That was day one of Pre Registration. That was cake.

We were then told we did such a fantastic job could we work Compulsories? Compulsories are a pre-requisite for competition. Each compulsory list consists of a set of tricks that the players perform in front of the judges. The top ten scores of all players get to compete in Freestyles. Freestyles are three minute shows on the stage, to any music you like, judged by a panel of professionals. There were over 800 people coming through for compulsories. The majority of them were Sports-ladder, which is amateur, and doesn't count towards freestyles, but does receive award recognition. Either way there were hundreds of people staring at us with eager eyes, while we drew our voices over the crowd: "Maya Nakamura? Tomiyuki Suzuki?" and the crowd giggled at our inability to pronounce names.

It went on like that for hours. And then: Posting of the top tens, and onto Freestyles. You don't sleep, you eat crappy food, you survive off cases of Red Bull and shots of espresso. In the wee hours of the night everyone has the madness and young mohawked California boys are shooting aerial tricks fifty feet across the room onto a stack of ten chairs that an even younger Brazilian boy is struggling to hold up. You'll find kids sleeping across folding chairs, and other kids playfully poking at their noses, or tying their shoelaces together. The Japanese practice throughout the night on the stage, because their internal clocks are off, and their determination is borderline obscene.

The community is indiscriminate. I registered children under 5, and men as old as 70. It's one of the only places that you go for fun, and have to translate all materials into twelve different languages. Despite all of that, each and every person gets along. There is a spirit of comradery. All those expected feelings of competitiveness, the dog-eat-dog of normal competitions does not exist. First place smiles as big as tenth place, and they hug in the hallway, and share tricks after the cameras dies down.

It's a beautiful thing, and I'm thrilled to exist in it.

I randomly sent out a request for help in my study of the community, and to my amazement several dozen people replied. For days I was bogged down with messages in my email, and repeated attachments to the question on the message board. Everyone was eager to help.

In regards to the special qualities that make the community what it is, the responses were astonishingly the same. Paul Sargent, a 15 year old boy from England says: "Everybody is really nice and its not like the best people are in a godly status like skating, and the whole internet community, people making clip vids and the like." I met Paul first when I registered him, but his name had been familiar to me through the boards, and talk of who was up and coming. He was just one person in a long line of international players that see Yo-Yoing as a way of life.

Kiya Babzani from San Francisco says: "It's great, I've been involved with many different hobby communities over the years, and no other community has been like yo-yoing. I've never seen such a vast number of races and ages getting involved with the same thing. You see people of every color, age, and sex at yo-yo gatherings, which is quite different than what I've experienced at gatherings of almost any other niche hobby."

Spencer Berry, an 18 year old from California talks dreamily about the act of playing, and how it came to be for him: "Sort of just took off, I don't really feel like I got to know yo-yoing until I was getting decent...in the beginning it was like mad chemistry, as thought I met yo-yoing and then we instantly moved in together and the 1st 6months-couple years were a crazy passionate all life using love affair."

He says: "Yo-yoing community is sick. Everyone shows love. We go to competitions and we hang out. I don't even have to pay attention to the stage-bound kids because I don't care about the competition, I care about the people and learning and teaching and growing. My personal being thrives on the yo-yoing because it's such a group of intelligent people who have something to say and something to teach me."

This brings to light the idea of competitions. Yes, there are dozens of competitions each year in the United States alone. There are Regional contests, that lead to the National Contest, and eventually towards Worlds. Everyone loves the idea of a freestyle, and seeing their friends on stage, but as a general rule no one really cares one way or another about the contest. I asked the question again and again, and the answers were repeatedly:


Do you feel like competition has a strong part to play in the community?

-"yes in the sense that a competition is often an excuse for players to get together and have a good time." -Nathan Sutter, 18, Massachusetts.

-"I think it's a large part of it, both for bringing people together, to having a common bridge to other cultures/communities." -Tom Cunningham. 52. Austin, Texas

-"I think competitions are only a catalyst. the yo-yo community is so much bigger than competitions. its just a good reason to travel and have fun." -Drew Collins, 19. Alabama

-"Of course, they allow us to hangout and watch and trade some cool tricks." -Mikhail, 19, Virginia

-"I think the competition in the sense of people getting together is more important than the actual competition with prizes and titles." Amanda, 18, California

-"... some of the greatest players in the community would much rather have bar-b-ques and just meet and greet with other players. Overall, the interaction with people is more important than cutting each other will ever be." -Jack Ringca, 26, Florida




The players all answer with enthusiastic monotony. They have a love for one another that goes beyond the actual toy itself. I was adopted into the community, and at the time I could hardly throw a decent sleeper. I'm still leagues behind any of the players, but they've never seen that as any sort of hindrance between us.

Miguel Correa, an 18 year old from the proclaimed "Texas Crew" has described his loyalty to the community in serious yet delicate words: "The community is the single most important thing in my life. The people in this community are comprised of my best friends period and I would take a bullet for each and every one of them." He refers to the community as humble. Says: "It [yo-yoing] has to be one of the most humble hobbies/sports." And I agree, in all aspects.

I asked the question of Subculture. You see, it's obvious that yo-yoing has it's own mixed breed of Cultures. There are players from all aspects of world, including social and style graces. It seemed to everyone that Yo-Yoing was the one forum where all social types could generally get along. I asked several of the players if they themselves thought of Yo-Yoing as it's own subculture, the answers were surprisingly varied.

Jack Ringca likens the community to the floor (mosh pit) of a Hardcore show. He says: "-the yo-yo community is not unlike the floor(mosh pit) at a positive hardcore show. the yo-yo is like a band that is concerned with what the kids are doing and concerned that they are taking care of each other out on the floor. The floor is like life. We all have our rough and tumble moments but, when one of us falls down, there is always someone there to pick you up, make sure you're ok, dust you off and dance along on their merry way. Sure, we're all in it to be the tough guy on top but, we're more concerned that everyone is making it through and getting what they need to work it out. If I need help with anything in life, the dedicated few are there to provide, no matter how big or how small. Often, you'll even have the players looking for someone to help. It's amazing."

Dick Stohr, a 62 year old from Virginia says that the subculture reminds him of that of: "Juggling, Magic, Entertainers." He is an old hand in the trade, and makes his living doing school shows and demonstrations with the company Spintastics.

From other parts of the world, Ahmad Dhamiri Nur (Dimi) from Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia says: "... it would be skateboarding and such. You know, extreme sports. But yo-yoing is a culture by itself through my eyes.... I have just one or is it two words for it? The People."

Dimi, age 27, says that yo-yoing is important to his personal being because. "We are the community in Malaysia, the other yo-ers and myself. We relatively grew up together, we see people stop playing, we've argue and have our fights but eventually we are going to still hang out and joke around and perform together. So the community is important to me personally...we still have life outside of the whole community."

I've also had the pleasure of hearing from Duncan Team Brazil member Rafael Matsunaga, 27. He speaks of the global outreach that yo-yo's have created, and the bonds they've made between people. "There are a handful of yo-yo groups in Brazil and more players than I could dream of. Some of those teams even have players from other countries. One could say the global yo-yo community is very accepting of players from different countries, but the truth is that we are all a single community, no matter where each one comes from."

That seems to be a defining statement for me. That is the heart of the matter. Teams pop up in small cities and they spread to different states and onto different continents. With the benefit of the internet, players are capable of speaking to one another on a daily basis. The International Yo Yo message board, at www.yo-yoing.com, is a venue for players to share clip videos that they've uploaded. It is how they share new tricks, and footage from far off contests. Through the board players can speak to each other in a chat room, and discuss all manner of things beyond the yo-yos themselves.

At times, sitting in a dimly lit hotel lobby at 4 am, laughing at the idiosyncracies of my newfound friends, I completely forget that we're at a skilltoy convention of any sort. It's just as casual as catering a movie night in my apartment to friends I see everyday. When in truth, some of these people I've only met for the first time, and others I've only the pleasure of seeing once a year. Never in my life have I felt so accepted for simply being myself. Inside these doors all aspects of the outside world, my job, my schooling, my musical tastes, my lifestyle, is completely set aside, and I am loved for the person that I've become.

In 1998 there was a Yo-Yo "Boom". It was the time when most players found the skill themselves, and fell into it's magic. In the years that followed it slowly sifted into the underground culture once again. We foresee in the future yet another boom. It's happening on moment at a time. Mass superstores such as Target, and Wal-Mart are stocking Duncan Yo-Yo's in mass, and setting them on aisle side caps. Popular television networks like Vh1, and the GSN (Game Show Network) are running specials on the competition and lifestyle. In Asia the act of yo-yoing is a daily thing, and kids meet in public club houses to have "throwdowns". It's an epidemic. Some of the players would rather it stay secretive, but as a rule the majority are ready and willing to go full force into the mainstream world. Greater popularity would mean further evolvement of tricks and styles. More people would mean more contests, and therefor the ability to see one another consistently. So, More exposure to the outside world, means more people, means more love, and the entire world is benefitted in the end.

Unfortunately I don't have the resources, or need (yet) to quote amazing amount of people that responded to my queries. I've selected a handful from different areas of the community, in the hopes of portraying the intense love that players have for one another. They help that they alloted me, the sheer numbers is given proof of their willingness to support their fellow player.

There is absolutely nothing like this, in the entire world.

Thank you to all of those who I could not directly quote: You have all, each and every one of you, benefitted me in a way that you could never understand. In a way that reaches far beyond my need for topic in schooling.

You are incredible.


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