yo-yo #99: anti-yo fluchs

if you could reach deep into your brain, among all of the thousands of words you've collected during your life as a verbal, literate (i'm assuming here) human being, which one word would you most WISH described your playing.

you don't have to answer that. it's the same for almost everybody. and due to its universal application to both awesome yo-yoers and awesome yo-yo's, it is probably in the top 10 most frequently-bandied words used on any given yo-yo forum. the word, of course, is smooth.

some people want to play fast like mickey. some people want to play slow and stylish like jon rob. but everybody wants to be smooth. and everybody wants a smooth yo-yo, which is made complicated by the fact that almost nobody agrees on what that really means. i've said before that i want my playing to reflect the universe in which it happens. well, matter (and maybe existence, itself) is pretty much composed of vibration. even an inert yo-yo sitting on a table is crackling with vitality; the atoms, electrons, quarks, muons and gluons which compose it chasing each other around in a frenetic, chaotic, and somehow symmetric dance. the tiny world inside a yo-yo may really be just as random, weird and UN-smooth as our own macroscopic lives, but it's all relative i guess (yuk yuk).

just a few years ago, the community saw even expensive luxury metals released which would earn that ultimate death-knell moniker in forum reviews: wobble. this yo-yo, the anti-yo fluchs, was cursed with such a label (at least by some), which went on to haunt its creators, sonny patrick and kiya babzani for years. the fluchs was released on christmas, 2004, right around the time i fell back in love with yo-yoing for my 4th (and present) obsessive wave. by the time i was aware of it though, it was sold out, and i didn't actually get to play one for almost a year, when i traded tricks in a durham parking lot with a local player with the user name "creek". even he said the fluchs wobbled, a sentiment echoed throughout the dave's skill toys review page and at extremespin.com. regardless, i was still a month away from receiving my bare bones and g&e2, and this was by far the coolest yo-yo i'd ever played.

on the anti-yo website, there was a brilliant anecdote describing a western cowboy's conversation with a barkeep about the fluchs's "charles & ray eames influence" and it's unique slip-matte finish. anti-yo was about the coolest yo-yo company that ever was, and the fluchs has maintained a well-deserved cult following, due equally to its story, its aesthetic, and its play.

i got this particular all-pink one a few years later from nick correa, the modder known as feralparrot, who incidentally invented the "schmoove" mod which was applied to doc pop's version of another anti-yo in yes, absolutely's "the end". (if that sentence makes sense to you, congrats - you're a yo-yoer.) i have it set up with some old red baz pads and a clean half-spec bearing. as you can see, the fluchs featured a super-thick dif-style axle with the bearing coasting right over it. anti-yo applied some white plumbers' tape (basically, sticky caulk) to dampen vibrations since the threaded taps are just a hair too thick for the axle. i've played a few shaky fluchs, but most of them were just great, and this one plays downright awesome. it's quite smooth indeed, but what does that even mean, right?

obviously, most players discern the smoothness of a yo-yo by the amount of disruption they feel. since around 2008 though, when yo-yo bearings and (more importantly) bearing seat design became nearly standardized, we've seen a precipitous drop-off in the number of un-smooth yo-yo's out there. it's almost to the point where new metal yo-yo's hardly need a review; they all mostly play the same. of course there are little variables which still matter (profile, wall, gap, weight distribution), but the quality of play and consistency is in a whole new ballpark compared with when this was released a decade ago.

these days, it's expected for your yo-yo to be the smoothest thing out there, and if you nail it against the cobbled sidewalk, eliciting some untunable vibration... it might be time to shelve that sucker in the case-row reserved as your "yo-yo cemetery".


i kid. as evidenced by the fact that this is the 99th yo-yo i've mused over, i've played a lot of shaky, wobbly throws. i've come to the conclusion that, unless you are completely inept or incapable of focusing on anything BUT your yo-yo's vibration... it really doesn't matter that much. most PEOPLE are a lot more shaky than the toys they complain about. if you're a good pianist, for example, you can still play a crummy old upright piano. certainly, you won't sound as "good" as you do on your beloved steinway, but what does that mean? maybe it's out of tune... so play it like thelonious monk, seeking out the notes BETWEEN the keys. maybe the bass doesn't carry at all... so play songs which allow you to HAMMER with the left hand. someone who understands how to play, and just as importantly WHAT to play, can direct their tools toward the use for which they are most suited.

we've all got our preferences, but if you require a "dead-smooth" yo-yo to make your play seem alive... you're doing it wrong.

what will always matter more than how a yo-yo plays is how YOU play it. your yo-yo can stagger and shake like it's undergoing electro-shock therapy, but a good player can make it LOOK as smooth as nickel-plated butter. and playing smooth is easy. you don't even have to agree on what it means. just WATCH the players who you think are smooth and do what they do. talk to them and dig into their understanding, which inevitably informs their playing.

i always get hyped up after watching sid seed (rodrigo pires), one of the most impossibly smooth throwers alive. he just seems like he was organically grown in some free-range alien farm to be the ultimate yo-yoer. one time i asked him about one of my tricks, and his response was "in a trick like that, don't stop the yo-yo when you want to change its direction". that, to me, sums up sid's playing perfectly. he makes it seem like the yo-yo just WANTS to go where its going. just on its way, holding its little bindle (that folky satchel-on-a-stick thing), a rolling stone blowing in the wind of sid's fancy. similarly, doc pop's "alpha style" was pretty much the beta version for what would become modern "smooth 1a". and the philosophical underpinning of that style was simply to minimize stops and starts; to keep the yo-yo moving.

after you've tried desperately to emulate the players you find smooth, what should you do? clearly, you should watch the players you would not call smooth and re-evaluate your diagnosis.

two good examples are john bot and drew tetz, admittedly two more of my favorite players (and dudes). in my opinion, neither of them are particularly smooth in the way most people use the term (at least most of the time). both of them CAN play very smoothly and have certain tricks that highlight that, but they also bounce around a lot. they'll make quick, angular, erratic movements or snatch the yo-yo out of the air. some of their tricks can have a downright sketchy (even spazzy) feel to them, but there's more than one way to be smooth. one thing that always kills me about those two players is how fluidly they move between ideas. look at john's picture trick story-sequences or drew's movements from stall to stall in "crisis". and i'm not talking about the physical movements, but the mental ones. to do those tricks, your brain has to ooze dynamically from mount to mount and hold to hold in a way that is the quintessence of smooth. any interruption and you will overturn that dumptruck, miss that kickflip or drop one of the 8 string segments you're using to build starfox, and the whole idea will collapse. we assume that being smooth means looking smooth, but it means BEING smooth, and those guys are smooth as hell.

you can be smooth outside and smooth inside. you can be smooth in the way you throw a sleeper. in the way you iterate through mechanical repeaters. in the way you catch the yo-yo. you can be smooth in the way you build a trick... or a routine... or an event... or a relationship... or a lifetime.

to me, being smooth is about continuing on with intention, and APPEARING to be smooth is about communicating that feeling to an audience. our tricks are composed of ideas, and presenting those ideas (to others or just ourselves) so that they flow seamlessly and make sense is the basis for aesthetic yo-yoing in general. sometimes maybe those ideas are meant to be janky and abrupt. other times they will be light and fluid. smoothness is about CARING that the trick will go well and investing in it, but not so much that your mind gets attached and entangled, sacrificing the next integral motion. it's about practicing such that your physical being has learned and forgotten the specifics on where and when to act, and your mental being is always willing to embrace change.

when you get down to it, smoothness is mostly just yo-yoing in the way you want to yo-yo; which is seated in being comfortable with the good and the bad of who you are, what you are throwing, and why you are playing.

yo-yo #98 - alex's personalized el ranchero

"emancipate yourself from mental slavery
none but ourselves can free our own minds" - bob marley

"folks don't even own themselves
payin' mental rent to corporate presidents" - public enemy

 

it's 7:53 on a sunday. i have lived my life in such a way that at 7:53 on a sunday, i am awake, full of coffee and eggo waffles and typing on a computer. the chief culprits in this situation (my kids) are in the next room, zoning out to any one of the half-dozen identical disney channel shows capable of transforming otherwise vibrant 5-15 year-olds into paralyzed drooling zombies.

it has me thinking about where we direct our attentions in this bizarre modern life we lead.

you wake up one day and you are 36, and you remember like it was yesterday, shuffling downstairs at 7:53 to watch the tail end of "Gummi Bears" before "Muppet Babies" came on at 8:00 (i'll grant you that would have been on a saturday). and then, presumably, you wake up a 65 year-old and wonder why you ever sat around blogging at 36. and then, i guess you wake up at 84, and you're dead, so you don't wake up at all. our lives are composed of the fruits and waste of our choices, but they are also seasoned with the motivations for those choices - by the strange ways in which we justify our behavior.

we assume that our behavior belongs to us, but in general, i find that to be the rare exception.

a couple of years ago, i wrote myself this little rule:
"15. don't yo-yo with the goal of being admired. don't worry over whether you're 'somebody in the yo-yo community'. be 'somebody in real life' and then be the same person in the yo-yo community."

it sounds so simple, but it's a pretty tall order. i've often said that yo-yoing is significant as an inward exploration, but that it's also a kind of dance; a performance. how can you dance without considering how people react to you?

the danger is in beginning to change the way you behave so that others will accept you. that's pretty broad and maybe silly, since changing our behavior so as to be accepted is a deeply-ingrained, evolved human trait going back to our first attempts at society. and though our rules have changed somewhat, society (whether we try to define ourselves BY it or AGAINST it) still bosses us around, sending us to one side of our mental/spiritual cage or the other. maybe by recognizing that we're in a cage, we are freed a bit. the matrix has you, neo.


these days, i think we've taken it a bit further, and "the middle way" seems to have shrunk down to a treacherous ridge overlooking precipitous drops on either side. do i connect or disconnect? do i identify or ignore? do i affiliate or reject? even within the strange microcosm that is yo-yoing, we coagulate into factions which go to every imaginable length to draw borders between themselves. who can resist this tendency when in the last few decades, humanity has armed itself with impossibly powerful weapons against feeling excluded or alone. enter: facebook, instagram, the disney channel, starbucks... clyw?

i catch my daughter taking selfies sometimes (read: constantly). i completely understand that this is just something that kids do now. 20 years ago, no kid would want to waste multiple exposures of their precious and limited kodak film on their own visage when they could just look in a dang mirror. when a photo is as inexpensive as a few kilobytes, however, take a hundred. take a THOUSAND. put em online and see how many "likes" you can score. i ask her who she's trying to impress, and she's adamant that it's "no one in particular", and i've seen enough of instagram to realize she is not alone in this strange fixation.


i want to laugh derisively at this strange self-obsession, but then i stop and think of #trickcircle. over the past few months, how many hundreds of yo-yo videos have we put out there? i know, personally, i've done a couple per week, lately. and yet how many of my peers' contributions do i actually WATCH? only a few, determined by what i know of the person or if i've heard it's something "special". how many tricks have i seen that have made me say "ok i need to try that NOW"? maybe a half-dozen. i think for the most part, we are obsessively/compulsively sharing, even though as few people pay attention to our tricks as they do to my daughter's selfies. and sure, sharing a trick is a bit different than sharing our face, but is it really? our tricks reflect our ideas and in our community, our ideas reflect our identities... and, by dark proxy, determine our worth.

the other day, said daughter was dying a purple streak in her hair, and i documented the moment with an iphone snapshot. almost immediately, my 5 year-old son commented "you HAVE to post that on instagram"... 5 years old. it was a wake-up kind of moment. is my kid really being taught that the only value in a moment is its "sharability"? is he already parsing the frames of his own existence to subconsciously search for marketable moments? it was as though we had momentarily stumbled upon a rich vein in a mine, and his first impulse was to sell the gold rather than just appreciate its glow. it kinda shook me, not just because my 5 year-old had that impulse, but because before he said it, i was thinking the same exact thing. we sell our moments and we sell our tricks. we get paid in likes, and it makes us feel significant.

it makes me want to throw my phone away in revulsion, but that's a knee-jerk reaction, and i know that there must be a way to find balance on that narrow ledge. when we look at the parts of our life that are sharable or salable, we are effectively ceasing to live in these moments and instead paying with them as a kind of existential currency. but to whom?

pretty much all of our choices in this world represent a kind of payment these days. 300 years ago,  you paid a tithe to the church, and today you pay it to starbucks. the latte's are probably tastier, i'll grant you, and there's much less chanting in latin (grande, venti, trenta...). we pay with our time and we pay with our money, and what we get out of the exchange is our own sense of identity. we buy a pair of retro vans so we can be "that guy who wears retro vans - maybe he cares about skateboarding's roots". we buy the nice selvedge jeans to be "the guy who cares about denim craftsmanship". we buy the sweet new Puffin 2 yo-yo to be "the guy with the super-exclusive bip-bop colorway yo-yo" (and to be cool like palli, let's face it). in reality, no one cares about these discrete choices as much as we do. WE become the world perceiving ourselves. we are paying ourselves to like ourselves through a revolving door of middle-men.

we identify and associate, and as noted, that tendency is as old as humanity itself. the only difference is that the tribes have turned into brands, and the brands have become glossier and more consolidated. the question it raises, to me, is "who am i underneath all of my choices; my collection of affiliations?"

i gave this yo-yo to alex last year. it's an "el ranchero", one of the last models SPYY put out before steve gave up the ghost. originally, it was a cool dark-bronze proto, devoid of any markings. since steve had once made a couple of special pink ronins for my daughter, i asked if i could send this one back to him to be lasered specially for my son. it's pretty funny, because i was super amped on giving it to him, but when he opened it, he was like "oh cool. a yo-yo with my name... next." he's not really jaded, but in our house, yo-yo's are everywhere, and so they aren't really special to him. someday later on, maybe he'll realize "oh man... this was a SPECIAL yo-yo" or maybe he won't. i kind of want to protect the part of him that is oblivious to what distinguishes an everyday toy from the icons of art and craft over which we "serious" players get our collective panties in a bunch. i want to protect the part of him that doesn't care what brand of t-shirt or jacket he wears, how his hair looks, or how he is perceived by a world which he will come to believe cares more deeply about him than could ever be realistic.

incidentally, my kids are still watching the disney channel (i'm a fast typist). during this time, the disney channel owns them. they are letting it happen and i am letting it happen, too. the best i can do is try to teach them that they are going to be owned sometimes (or at the very least, rented), and that everyone has to deal with that as they can. within that, hopefully i can make it clear to them that their choices have consequences; that often the most trivial, unnoticed, and reflexive are the ones that have the greatest impact in determining who they will become... that the cage isn't so terrible a thing if you're aware of yourself within it.

yo-yo #97: silver minute

happy new year! woohoo! it's hard to believe that 365 days ago i was still just shaking the rust off after spending my year with the 'eh'. actually i'm still kind of doing that. fortunately, the rust kind of suits me.

i haven't done much with the blog since then, i know. i've definitely picked up some cool yo-yo's and have imbued others with interesting experiences, so i should have no excuse moving forward. sometimes it's tough to look at a blank page though.

so among the interesting things that happened to me in 2013 were the disintegration of spyy, and my subsequent invitation to join the werrd alliance. i gotta say, after steve emailed the team to say 'i really can't keep doing this', i did not at all see myself joining another yo-yo team. when stu asked, however, it really felt like a good fit. i've been keen on their yo-yo's since trying the first tfl's in 07, and stu is always trying to nudge werrd toward being more of a lifestyle brand than just a yo-yo company.

i can get into that, because yo-yoing is kind of a lifestyle thing. what we've built is as much a way of life as it is a distraction. yo-yoing can speak volumes to the meaning behind being alone. it is fundamentally an introspective and self-sustaining endeavor, and it always will be. if chess is considered "the battlefield of the mind", then yo-yoing is like yoga. even if we play in a fairly sedentary way, our brains are twisting and stretching through the minefields of string geometry we devise. and yet, yo-yo is also a performance, inextricably tied to the aesthetic of dance. just try to play "introspectively" at a theme park or shopping mall. if you're any good at all, you'll draw an accidental crowd which will wonder why you don't have your hat out.

as crazy as it feels to say it, yo-yoing is something that can give your life meaning. when in line at the dmv or slogging through paperwork, i'll catch myself doing familiar tricks in my head, and the upbeat, carefree feeling endemic to the act gives me a lift. it's a rad enough deal that when i get dressed, i pick shirts that will contrast with my yo-yo and string. and it's something that many of us value enough to travel for, sometimes for days (or weeks). it's a part of our lives in which we all seek to improve in some way, and which we hope in turn, will somehow improve US.

on that topic, i was perusing the newest issue of surfing magazine the other day, and i came upon a pretty cool little article which i felt was relevant to this new year's offering. i've often drawn comparisons between yo-yoing and surfing (also skating, martial arts, music, madagascar hissing cockroaches, and pretty much whatever else), and this set of surfing resolutions resonated with me. here they are reimagined as yo-yoing resolutions (don't worry - there aren't 66 of them and none of them has to do with giving up bearings). i figure it's still january - not too late. anyway, here are some resolutions i'm feeling out.

1. loosen up: you know the guy who yells "f--k!" if he gets a snag? the guy who doesn't talk to anyone at contests and gives his fellow competitors the stinkeye? the guy who, even after making his way out of the craziest, smoothest combo has a frown on his face like he just got kicked in the balls? don't be that guy. (side resolution: stop assuming that all yo-yoers ARE GUYS.)
2. dial in your equipment: if after a month, you're still getting used to that new yo-yo's profile, cut your losses and sell it. if you've got a dinged up beater that you never play, sand that sucker down and give it to the kid down the street. this year, you're going to shed that dead weight, not in the name of fashion or fads, but because you really don't need more than a few great throws that fit your style perfectly. you need what you need to play like yourself. the rest weighs you down.
3. throw at least 4 times a week: if you don't have kids, make it 5. true story: the last calendar day on which i did NOT throw was may 21, 2005. i find i just don't have a good reason not to. too busy? for a few flowy combos or a couple shoot-the-moons? c'mon. remember you're a better version of yourself after you've thrown, and it should take no more convincing than that to get that slipknot on your finger. make time.
4. go big: like conde, right? nobody ever made real progress without testing their assumptions; without pushing the limits of what they thought was possible. you can do more with this little retro-winding double-knobbed toy than anyone has EVER done. on some level, you have to believe that. doubt is essential because it keeps your mind questioning, but it's also an anchor you should perpetually try to shake off. try tricks that people would assume are a waste of time and energy; tricks that defy something you assume is beyond what the world (or your skill) will allow. visualize what you'd like to do with a yo-yo... and then do it.
5. break away from the crowd: this can be taken literally as well as figuratively. some of my favorite memories are of swimming alone at the rosen (r.i.p.) early in the morning while most throwers are passed out (or at the tail end of a bender). the circus taught us that crowds attract crowds, and it's awesome to yo-yo with your buddies, some of whom you might not get to see but a few times a year. but you've got to get that space, too, lest you fall into the trap of tying your own play onto somebody else. stylistically, you need room to breathe. take some time away from the internet, away from videos and #trickcircle and see where you go.
6. throw everywhere: this one i made up. in the surfing article, #6 was "surf a wave that should not be surfed", but that doesn't apply easily to yo-yoing. although it kind of does. any surfer with even a shred of sanity will tell you they're afraid to surf big pipeline, but what are yoyoer's afraid of? non-yoyoers. i'm always surprised to hear how many players hate to throw in public, mostly because they don't like the idea of interacting with people who might give them a hard time. yo-yoing, however, is an outward expression as it is an inward exploration. if you can't walk that middle path, you're missing out. also, this is meant to suggest playing where there are NO people - throw on the tops of mountains, on tiny islands, in empty hallways, and on forest trails. for me, yo-yoing is a way of processing a moment; a momentary fist-bump with reality. don't hesitate to do it anywhere.

this is one of the first yo-yo's i got from werrd. it's a silver minute which in the course of my everyday play has been banged off of essentially all of the non-actinide elemenmts (not boron, but whatever). it bears some scars, but still plays totally true. i tossed one of the ctx bearings in there, and it's become my go-to modern yo-yo. when it's not on my finger, it's dangling the descender strap i got from bryan figtree. it's my every-day weapon against my own laziness, creative ennui, and tentative assumptions.

happy new year, everybody! i hope however you choose to do it, that playing yo-yoing enriches your life as immeasurably as it has mine.