Today was a blast!

Getting to check out Joe Mitchell’s new store “Yo-Yo Joes” was such a fun time. Joe Mitchell has been a part of the yo-yo community for as long as I can remember. His family owned and operated a local toy/hobby shop called “Mitchells Toys Trains & Hobbies” until it closed last year. But Joe was quick to open his own store which specializes in what he loves, TOYS!

Mitchell’s was known amongst the yo-yo community as home of the Mitchell’s Yo-Yo Club where players such as Tyler Severance, Tressley Cahill, Jon Rob, Danny Severance, Justin Weber and more gathered to trade tricks, and talk yo-yo with their friends on a weekly basis. This tradition still lives at Joe’s new shop! Along with their “Wall Of Fame” program. Myself along with Mark Hayward got to join the wall last night after completing the wall of fame trick list!

It’s an honor to see my mug shot on the wall amongst the other players, and to get to meet some of the other wall of famer’s.

Thanks for having us Joe!

We did two back to back Science Center/Museum demos in two different cities. Adventure Science Center in Nashiville, TN and McWane Science Center in Brimingham, AL. It’s way too cool to be a part of this tour.

Nashville first. We met up with all the Team Chaotix club at the Adventure Science Center and we had one blast of a time. Brandon Jackson and Mark Allen can rally the troops like nobody’s business. We had a huge turn out of players and non players alike. The best part is that as we rounded out the demo it seemed that everyone ended the day a player. Since we had an army of club members, it was easy to get everyone involved and get nearly every person who entered the museum a yoyo on their finger and some personal attention and instruction. It was cool to have the support and enthusiasm of the Nashville players and it was fantastic to trade tricks and stories with them during our time in the city. They know how to make it awesome.

McWane Science Center in Birmingham did not disappoint. We had a few solid players show up(big ups to Brian Wright) and the staff was fantastic. I loved seeing the excitement in the room and the dedication that some of the players showed. I saw kids learn tricks so fast that it made my head spin. Felix is one heck of a teacher and he seriously flexed that skill on this one. I can only hope that I eventually get the touch for teaching that he has and demonstrates.

When it comes down to it, it’s nothing but fun being in science museums teaching yoyo tricks and finding new and interesting concepts to apply to yoyo/spin tops/juggling. It’s like being a part of some sort of year 3000 amusement park. The Futurists would be proud.

Momentum carries us through this thing and sometimes, we have no idea that it’s on our side. We got up for our second and final day in Houston super pumped from the previous day’s events. Sometimes, lightning strikes twice.

We got out of the hotel and ran off to pick up Marie again and then off to the gulf to show the mid-westerners the ocean. We did some interesting stuff with playground equipment(more on that later), Hank did a backflip from a swing and Marie took pictures of the Atlantic for the folks back home. It’s just so cool to have extended family around. A little bit of a woman’s presence in the van keeps things a little more civil as well. Besides, she is a really cool girl and we had an enlightening conversation about world events and history on the way to lunch and then to the gig. It’s not every day that we get that out of life.



We went on over to our next demo and it was instantly cool. We had been warned that The ladies at the Learning Express in Cypress TX had spirit in spades. The warnings were well deserved. I cannot begin to tell you the energy level that runs through that store. Enthusiasm, heart and excitement are easy to come by. We were welcomed by a reporter from the Houston Chronicle who interviewed us for an upcoming feature and one amped staff. They were soon joined by an equally rambunctious audience of kids and the demo was on fire. The store quickly sold out of their fanciest Duncan yo-yos and had to restock a few times to keep up. The excitement only set up the mood for bigger things and bigger things came for sure!

Now, not only does the Houston, TX area have one up and coming club, it has two. We discussed with the owners of the Cypress, TX Learning Express and the Cypress Yo-Yo Club was born. The ladies that run that shop have SERIOUS spirit and hopefully they will keep the home fires burning for yo-yos for years to come. So, yo-yo players, stop by this shop any time you can. They are all up for supporting the scene and they could easily become a destination for players from all around. DuncanCrew.org club finder is your friend.

Knowing that you’ve set some hearts ablaze with a love for Duncan and Yo-yos is the best send off a city could ever provide. We can’t thank the Houston area enough. Thank you thank you thank you.

Looks like our last full day in Dallas turned out to be just another awesome day to be on tour. Our first stop for the day was at Puzzle Zoo(Dallas). It’s hard to say how good it feels to roll up to a demo only to find an entire birthday party packed up and waiting just to see you. It’s one of those times when yoyoing is everything kids dream it is. This demo definitely made Hank, Seth and myself rockstar superheroes and then some.

Not only was this demo a great chance to get in contact with more Dallas players and fans, It turned out to be a full on show. We even had members of the older generations of players come out and show us that they still have it. During the portions of the demo where we taught tricks and tips we had even the staff at Puzzle Zoo learning to play and getting inspired. A big shout goes to Mayra and Laura for leading the way there. I am sure they will take it to the next level and will be teaching others in no time.

For lunch we ate in a different place than I thought I would find myself in Texas. Wild About Harry’s on Knox ave is a lot like a burger and dogs place you would find in southern California. Lots of different styles of food and toppings represented and some of the brightest green relish ever seen on the planet Earth. If you get a chance to check it out, it’s worth the stop.

After that, we headed to yet another really cool demo. Froggie 5 & 10 is one cool spot! So many cool toys and candies in one place and such a relaxed atmosphere. Chase and the rest of the crew there know how to make you feel like you belong there instantly. There is a lot to be said for that sort of spirit. It lends itself to really fun demos and a mindset for learning and teaching. We had a few people we met at other demos come out to this one as well. It’s encouraging to see that people just can’t seem to get enough of the tour.

At this demo, we also met a guy who knocked our socks off. Stan Light came in and showed us a huge slice of history. He had FOUR mint in package Duncan Tournaments(crossed flags) from the late 1950’s. His parents had bought remaining stock from a shop that closed in the early 1960’s and he held on to those very cool classic yoyos all these years only to find himself in a position to share them with us. You just never know what you’re going to see out here on the road and this was super cool, super classy surprise. We can’t thank Stan enough for thinking of us enough to come out and be a part of it.

I’ve never been to Nevada except to fly through it, and though the amount of fluorescent lighting is one thing from the air, its straight up overwhelming up close and personal. We finally drove into Reno about 3:30am, exhausted and a little delirious we managed to find our resort hotel where we checked in, and then immediately left for our media call at channel 8, the local station. After a quick nap in their parking lot we jumped on the air four our usual 2 minute spot just after the 6:30 mark, and then ran back to the hotel and hit the pillows until check out time. Another successful marathon run for Duncan Crew!

After a couple hours sleep our day was taken up by quickly perusing some antique and thrift stores on the way to our gig at Games Galore. GG is a pretty cool little mall store, and Steve the guy who runs it was really interested in learning as much as he cold about yo-yos, the Duncan product line, etc etc. the store even had a bit of yo-yo culture around it as a local school yo-yo club showed up in force with about 10-15 players who hung out for the majority of the demo.

And since then? Well we’ve driven to Chico of course, where I right to you now. What’s going on you ask? Silly rabbit, its the National Yo-yo Competition! All you’re favorites will be here… in fact many of you reading this are here now. Those of you who aren’t, we’ll try to throw up some interesting stuff from the contest, ASAP.

Peace
E

Hello everyone!  This is Jen Kouri, and now that I’m a bit recovered from the Duncan Crew’s crazy schedule, I am happy to share with you the fun time Colorado had with Nate, Seth, and Emil visiting!   

 First of all, the van is amazing!  I couldn’t stop staring at it, and made everyone take pictures of me in front of it, so it will be forever engrained in my memory.  It made an awesome backdrop for the demos that the crew did while in Colorado. 

 There were seven demos in total in Colorado, four of which I was able to help out with.  The first demo I attended was at the Fort Carson Army post on Saturday.  Jon Gates met up with us (my yo-yo mentor!), and it was awesome to have a bunch of people to help teach kids!  So many kids and parents were excited to learn how to yo-yo, and it was great to see big smiles on their faces.  We sold out all of the yo-yos that Ft Carson had!

 We then quickly drove over to Manitou Springs where all five of us were to demo at a local yo-yo store, Yoyoloco/Plinkity Plink.  The owner of the store, Mark, was great in really promoting the crew’s demo and we had a wonderful crowd for our show.  There are so many great players who attend the Yoyoloco club, and I am so thankful for everyone who came to support us!  It was also great to see Fee-Fee’s parents and sister, who I haven’t seen in a couple years!     

 Sunday morning was our third demo at Toys ‘R Us in Westminster Colorado.  Two people who have been inspirational to me in the yo-yo Colorado world showed up, Jimmy Peng of Team Yoyojam and Leo Lohman.  Leo is local in Denver and makes amazing wooden yo-yos.  When I first began yo-yoing, Leo had made me a couple sets of beautiful wooden yo-yos, which always remind me when I throw them that Wood is Good!  Several groups of kids also showed up who were already into yo-yoing and wanted to learn more tricks.  One kid was getting ready to have a yo-yo themed birthday, which sounds so awesome!

 At this point in the tour, I was getting sad because the crew had one more demo before they had to immediately leave for a 5 a.m. news taping in Utah.  The Wizard’s Chest was our final demo, and I had a great time!  So many club members made it out, and thanks to everyone for your support!  My favorite part of the demo was the Mongu army (I love my new Mongu hoodie!)  We had a bunch of us walking down the middle of the street running into things.  I hope Emil posts some video.  I also loved Seth’s cool string trick that he performed at the end…which I won’t describe.

 I am going to miss everyone, but have been greatly inspired by everyone!  Emil’s juggling is amazing, and he has awesome showmanship and knows how to perform.  Nate’s freehand is stunning, and I feel honored to have seen his National’s freehand routine.  He’s a wonderful teacher and taught me some great tricks.  Seth’s style is so unique and completely mesmerizing to watch.  I had the best time reminiscing about the yo-yo past with him!

 I feel so honored to have the Duncan crew visit Colorado, and wish them safe travels!  Have fun at Nats!         

jen

Another busy day, but a relief compared to our 36 hour stint. The morning started with adventures involving laundry machines. Most notable about these adventures is what people like Nate and I are willing to wear around the hotel while everything else is in the machines. I wont go into to much detail, but there are definitely Hawaiian swimming trunks and euro -trashy linen shirts involved….

Anyway, our first gig was at a TRU about an hour from where we were staying. We were met by a pretty good crowd (a lot of people have been finding the website from the most random sources!) and had a lot of fun teaching, fixing yoyos, and showing off as per usual!

We had to rush to our second gig, and with traffic barely made it to set up and such. A lot of players had planned to meet us there so we had a crowd throughout and the demo overall was pretty fun. We stayed a bit late to entertain folks as the store closed and then took off for the BYU Yoyo and Juggling Club! Oh how I LOVE a good juggling club. There was plenty of yoyo, some astrojax, and I geaked hardcore with some clubs. I even managed to get 6 clubs going a couple of times and I haven’t run that in years! We’ve been pretty good about meeting up with both yo-yo and juggling clubs through out, but I hope we can do even more as we continue the tour. Its SO much fun.

We headed back North in preparation for the following day and though it took us a while to find the place we finally ate and settled in for the night. Still recovering from the SUPER long day we hit the sack pretty quickly, though 6 hours later I was up for a Radio Interview!

Wooooow what a long day, but a good one. We started bright and early (or perhaps I should say dark and early) to get on the morning news in Pueblo, CO. After our excellent anchors learned some new newfangled yo-yo tricks, we took off in hopes of getting a glimpse of Royal Gorge on the way to our demo location for the day. We unfortunately couldn’t get on the bridge and enter the actual park, but quickly shot some pictures and footage to remember the awesome site that the gorge is. Truly impressive.

We made it to the Airforce base pretty early but it took us a while to get through all the gates and have the van checked etc. When we pulled into the store we were just in time to run in and start the demo. We were set up for two, two hour spots today, and ended up with pretty good groups of people during both. For me personally though today’s demos were HUGE. I’m finally starting to understand 5a a bit, and probably learned at least 5-6 separate 5a tricks including helicopter and propeller. Seth and Nate are phenomenal teachers, and we came up with some VERY cool new tricks today that hopefully you’ll all get to see at some point.

Yesterday we were also in the news first thing in the morning. Big Channel 9 NBC! Pretty sweet, we even had the van as a backdrop so viewers got the whole package. We followed that with a TRU demo and then, most importantly, met up with Jen Kouri! Jen is awesome and will be with us for a couple demos this weekend for which I’m really excited. And the best part? She gave us our stock of 80th Anniversary Freehand Zeros. Yeah that’s right, you want them? We have them. Come and get’em!

Speechless. Truly, just speechless.
Moon Marble, Brookside Toy and Science, Channel 9 News, Ren Fair, Ringling Bros… these things have made the past 48 hours truly COMPLETELY MIND BLOWING. I’m reluctant to even try and explain how much fun we had today because its not possible in words!

Ok, so yesterday we had a stop scheduled at a place called Moon Marble Co. Now besides whatever our gig was this store is the craziest most unique toy store I’ve ever seen. Fully equipped with workshop in the back (for wooden swords and shields no less) and a professional marble maker as an owner, this place is a crazy warehouse of awesome toys, insane marbles and incredibly cool people. Bruce even has a little area in the back with bleacher seating at which several times a day he does a fantastic marble making demonstration for audiences. Very cool process to watch.

So yesterday Nate and I had a lot of fun getting to know these guys, we did a 15 minute show that was very well received in Bruce’s demonstration area, and then hung out and taught tons of people how to throw. We had such a good time we could not wait to come back the following day which-we were already booked for-and left on a great note. This morning we had an early wake up call and were at our location (a half hour from the hotel) at 7:45am. Here we met Jesse Williams–a local dude who joined us for our demos today–the owners of Brookside Toy and Science, and the mobile team for Channel 9 news. Should you be so lucky, all of these people are worth meeting at some point.

The owners and staff at Brookside were incredible. Truly genuine, fun people and the kids and customers who showed up during our brief 2 hour visit were interactive and energetic. The group of kids were great and during our two 2:30 broadcasts with Justin of Channel 9 it was awesome to have everyone interacting with us and part of our presentation. You can watch a sample of what we did HERE, this was not the actual broadcast but a pick-up we shot afterwards for the web (Justin didn’t think they would post it!). I bumble a bit on describing 5a, but overall it went pretty well. After Channel 9 left we spent more time teaching and selling and just getting to know the people.

We left Brookside at 10 and shot off for our second visit to Moon Marble. Not wanting to be late (we only had an hour and it was a pretty long drive) the Duncan van did some intense maneuvering but we made it on time, set up while a marble making demo ended, and then kicked off the best 4 hour demo we’ve done yet. We put on 4, half hour long shows for audiences of 30-60 people and spent the in between time teaching and hanging out with players.

Now, here is something really cool about the tour that I didn’t quiet realize until today. Kansas City is the second place we’ve been that had extremely little pre-established yo-yo scene in which suddenly as many as 8-10 players from the area showed up to one of our demos and all got to meet each other. I think the guys here in KC are even gonna start a club as the result! Its SO cool to have a bunch of players show up and hang with us and as a result introduce them to a bunch of players from their own area. Talk about so yo-yo love right there.

Anyway, after our top notch shows we did a quick lunch at perhaps the greatest BBQ place you can possibly imagine, said our farewells to Jesse, and took off to , yup, a Renaissance Fair! I don’t know how many of you have been to these, but I haven’t been since I was a kid and am happy to say they are just as completely ridiculous and awesome as I remember. Now, we partly went in search of jugglers, none of which we actually found despite the rumors, but did meet up with moon marble people and even got some serious yo-yo attention right as we walked in the gate. I felt like a local having only been there two days which really speaks to the friendliness of the people in this area.

Finally I’ll finish today’s post with a little coincidence that really made the day perfect. After Nate and I returned to the hotel and rested up a bit we went to dinner at the same German taps and restaurant we visited yesterday and while yo-yoing in between waiting for our meal and drinks ended up chatting with a someone who was just getting into yo-yo. The best part? He’s in town with the Ringling Bros Circus… and he’s a juggler… and he liked us so much we’re getting in for free tomorrow and a tour of the alley etc…. I love my life.

Peace out!

Seth here!

I have had the great fortune of being a part of the Duncan Fall Tour for the past few days, and many more to come. Nate and Emil have been great to work with and have made the demos even better.

Tuesday we had a split shift in the morning. Emil and I had a news spot lined up for 6:45am, but had also booked a meet and greet at the Dallas Center-Grimes Middle School at 7am. So Nate had to take the first part of the school gig while Emil and I did the news cast. The TV spot went well, and thankfully NO yo-yo puns where thrown around! After the TV spot we headed over to DCG to hang out with the crew of locals. The middle school has a really cool club of yo-yoers and they are all so freakin’ good! Special thanks to Hunter, Jack and Tristan for heading the club up.

After a busy morning we headed back to Mars Cafe to catch up on work. Nate and I finished up our duties and headed out to visit some local thrift stores. We found some great stuff, pictures of that to come…

At 4 we had a show at Games and More, an independent toystore in Valley West mall. The staff was really helpful and a lot of fun to hang out with. The show had a great crowd thanks to the TV spot and the local players repping it to their friends. At one point a lady came up and started talking to us about how she drove 100 miles to see us! She yo-yoed when she was younger and always wondered if Duncan Pros still traveled the country and demonstrated. As it turns out, we sure do! 

The next day Nate woke up feeling pretty under the weather, but thanks to Dr. Emil’s Juice diet he got back up and running in no time. Wednesday we had 2 demos: a Toys ‘R Us and a Teen Home where my friend Stacey works at. Toys ‘R Us set us up in a great spot and we had a steady stream of traffic for the entire demo. More local players showed up and hung out. After TRU we went to the Teen Home. I didn’t really know what to expect. We had been told that the group might be pretty small, but boy were they wrong! We got to hang out with 20+ of the guys and threw for a few hours. I’ve never done a demo where the crowd picked up SO FAST! At least 1/2 of them where rocking the baby before the time was up!

Phew, with just 2 days under my belt and this much epicness already happening I can’t wait for the rest! We’ve heard Jen has been doing a lot of promotion in Colorado, and Monday we have another news spot on WDAF-TV 4 Fox in Kansas City so keep an eye out for further exciting updates.

That’s all for now, hope to see you guys on the road!