There is something zen (as Ed would say) about sitting about and tuning a No-Jive 3-in-1, one station at time, and then finally hitting that sweet spot where it spins so smooth, and knowing that yeah, that was you that got it like that. I really love doing maintenance on my yo-yos. It makes it feel like a "real" hobby. Guitarists have replacing string, we have deshielding bearings. Ping-pong players (-ers? -ists?) have new rubbers, we have new pads. Doing little things to your throws makes it more "you." You get to see how invested you are in this, and how much you know in order to be able to do these basic things. And, frankly, it's just another facet that gives you something else to do while you try to think of another way to get into the cross-arm GT mount.
These are the troopers. The guys that take a beating, ask for nothing, and keep on rocking it, day after day. Their home is a pocket full of dagger-like keys, and they vacation on pure asphalt. When they get a burr, they don’t ask for anesthesia – they just grit their teeth as you file it on it down and then go up for another aerial over concrete with a smile.It’s a fantastic feeling to get a ding and think nothing of it – then you have become free to yo-yo in the most fun way possible – worry-free, light-hearted fun. As it should be.
Since I started yo-yoing, I’ve always wanted to start a yo-yo club. However, it always seemed to me as though people’s interest in my throwing was as more ofm a novelty than something they’d really like to do themselves. In addition, you have to have a sponsor for a club – a teacher that doesn’t mind giving up their time and their room for meetings. It would be a lot of work, for what I imagined to be no profit. However, this past school year, my yo-yo friend told me that he’d found a sponsor for the club, our forever awesome German teacher. That finally solidified things, and the first meeting of the White Station High School Yo-Yo Club had a full house. Standing up in front of all of those people, showing off, explaining the various types of yo-yoing, discussing modern tricks – it was a rush that I won’t soon forget.
Of course, membership dropped off a bit once people were told that they would need to purchase a decent yo-yo, most of the time it was the 16 dollar YoYoJam that I would buy them (I REALLY wishLuminatorswere around at the time). And membership dropped again after people simply lost interest. Nowadays we get 5-6 people who come each week - a group of freshman I am infinitely greatful for. Teaching them maintance, the types of yo-yos, how to wind it up and all of those basic things has been so much fun. I really think this club has contributed to my desire to perhaps pursue a career in education.
If you don't have a club at your school, I HIGHLY encourage you to start one. Now that you can get solid, cheap yo-yos at Walgreens, it will be much easier to get yo-yos cheaply and, thus, get more members. The more people we can get into the yo-yo community, the better it will be for all of us. And hey, things like this always look good on college applications. Starting a club is not difficult at all, and it will be infinitely rewarding.
My first yo-yo was a Duncan Beginner, found at my grandparents house. I know it was cheap, or else it wouldn't have been in their house. Yo-Yos became popular during the Great Depression because of the simple fact that they were cheap and they were fun. My first "real yo-yo" was a Duncan Mosquito, from Walmart, purchased for the kingly sum of 7 dollars. No one buys an expensive yo-yo on the outset. These are, after all, toys. We buy them on a lark, just to see what all the fuss is about. More often than not we get what we paid for, but at least they are still some simblance of a yo-yo. Two of my most charished throws are dollar-store light up jobs (Batman and Cinderella). Yes, they play terribly, but they were gifts, and anyone that has ever received a yo-yo as a present knows how I feel. What is phenomenal is when somehow dirt cheap doesn't play like dirt.
Enter the Peterfish Luminator, available at Walgreens stores for 4 dollars. 4 dollars, a fifth of the cost of the basic YoYoJams we recommend to beginners. The Luminator is easily the best beginner yo-yo there is. Most importantly because it is cheap and because it is easily available. As much as I like telling people "Okay, go to YoYoNation.com, look for cheap YoYoJams, I recommend the Lyn Fury" I know that a fraction, if any, of the people I actually tell will actually do it. Finding a website and then placing an expensive online order is a hard pill for parents to swallow to buy something they figure a kid is going to give up in a few days.
A few weeks ago, I was doing a little throwing at the Orthodontist's office for a young girl. When I was finished the mother asked where she could get one. I paused, pulled out the Luminator, and told her "Well, you can get this at Walgreens for around 4 dollars." And as I walked off, doing some more tricks to show that the cheap yo-yos can do most anything the expensive ones can, I heard the woman remark to her daughter "well okay, let's go pick you up some of those for babysitting." It was a good feeling.
As far as quality, the Luminator fairs extremely well. It is somehow, and this must account for the pigs currently gazing at me from outside my second-story window, more smooth than many YoYoJams I've had over the years. It is light, which creates both an interesting throwing experience, and a tool to teach beginners a harder throw. It comes with a short string attached, which fixes the problem that right around every person has the first time they throw a yo-yo, which is the strong inclination to simply give the ground a black eye with the thing. But it includes a long string for when they're ready. Still, it is reasonably durable, surviving many kamakazi dives into the ground by an overzealous ladyfriend. It's everything a new yo-yoer could want in a yo-yo.
Somehow, I find myself throwing this guy more and more (along with my No-Jive and whatever metal). I don't know if it's the probably-too-light weight, the pogs that I've actually kept in, or the mentality that comes with the low price, but then Luminator is just plain fun. When I throw it, I get that giddiness that reminds of the first time I really yo-yoed a ball bearing model. It's a weird yo-yo, it's hard to predict, but it's got that goofy-colored-plastic-fine-to-break-who-cares-its-summer feeling that harkens back to the days before middle school. And that makes me happy.
There are some tricks that just do it for you. There are some tricks that encompass yo-yoing for you. There are some tricks that, when you land them, you feel like the biggest badass on the planet. Then there are some tricks that just "feel good". Here are a few of those tricks that I do every day which never leave any less of a mark when they're done.
I remember the first time I saw a grind. It was over at mastermagic.net. Andre's dark magic was crawling over his arm like a little pet friend, and I decided that this was the greatest thing I've ever seen. Yo-yoing was no longer confined to a little network of strings between the fingers, it'd been set free to rock out on whatever surface you wanted. I can't remember the learning the process at all, sadly, but now grinds are a part of my daily bag o' tricks. A finger grind on a dead smooth yo-yo is one of the best feelings there can be. And, hey, it helps that it's one of the most impressive tricks you can do. It's not speedy, it's not techy, it's simple. People can identify, understand, and RECOGNIZE your mad skillz.
Somewhere there's a video of Steve Brown on the news. He's just got off and plane, and was performing for a group of people. One of the tricks he chose, and the one the crew decided to show, was Boingy-Boing. It is impressive, but no more so than any of the other tricks in this post. Instead, I'm draw to this trick because of how cool it feels. When you hit that rhythm and it gets going, you just get this air of acomplishment. The fact that I often see it on lists of "difficult tricks" to get down really helps that feeling of having mastered a "worthy" trick. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's all individual-based and you only make goals for yourself....but you have to admit that you feel better after learning a trick you've been told is hard. Okay, well, I do.
My buddy was the first one to learn Brent Stole. I was never very interested, content with my hooks. Honestly, I just could not get my head around what was happening, and decided it wasn't worth it to learn. Yes, I know how terribly stupid that sounds and is. He comes in to our little free period and declares, "I've got it like 8 out of 10 times!" So, okay, I decided to bite. "Teach me," I told him. I'm always of the believe that you don't truly know something- be it yo-yos or the difference between Humanistic and Cognitive theories of psychological therapy - until you could teach it. So, he basically tells me "Okay, you start with you finger turned like this, you throw the string, and while it's in the air you turn your finger outward and kinda move you other arm like this." It sounds crazy vague and unhelpful, but somehow that's all it took. It clicked, and I did it. It's since become my go-to whip, and it's no less satisfying now than the day I learned it. It's the feeling I get when the yo-yo plops solidly down, not in a knot, but the very specific brent stole mount that gets me.
I only decided stalls because of Ed. First of all, he's the one responsible for turning me (and, I'm going to guess, a ton of other people) onto wooden yo-yos. His videos have a certain style that is undeniably his own. A major part of his distinctive style are stalls. Finally, someone asked him to post a video about how to nail them, and of course, he did.
I didn't have any trouble getting them down, because they're pretty simple, in both looks and execution. But their effect on my play has been phenomal. With wood, you can stall at almost any point. And when you do it right, it hits that string HARD. There is a SOLID feeling when you stall a yo-yo, and you've got to be heartless if that THUNK doesn't do anything for you.
