Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jrodriguez]

I had an absolute blast spending part of my birthday yesterday with Larry, Jorge, and Don. What a great group of incredibly nice and generous guys! And today was fantastic as well with Mark joining the crowd. I'll be really bummed not to be there tomorrow, but thanks to you all for making this birthday a memorable one, and for all the help figuring out some tricks. I'll look forward to the chance to hang out with you all again!

[ta0]

Another fantastic spintop day!
I finally met Jim Neff. It is incredible the amount of props he  carries, including lots of tops and kongzhus. For the "best trick contest" he did a very long wire walker over several people. He taught me some kongzhu and beigoma.
Jason was great fun to have around and has mproved a lot since worlds.
Mark was the mc at the public show, so there were tops on stage!

Tomorrow a little more fest and a second visit to Don's shop.

 Lots of video and photos when I get back home.

[silvertop]

Absolutely wonderful weekend with big and little tops spinning everywhere!  At one point I counted 14 top spinners!  Will post a link to a video of Jim Neff's wire walker trick over three volunteers and into the receiving tray with perfection! I've uploaded the video to Vimeo, but need to wait for it to be "converted" because I have the cheap account!

Thanks to Ta0, Larry, Jason, Mark, Jim, Jeff, etc.  Seeing tops on stage for the big public show, including one of mine, was a perfect thing!

Video link coming soon.  Still 15 minutes to wait, and I'm tired!

[silvertop]

The Jim Neff top trick video locked up and had to be re-done, but here it is.

Turns out my video setting was not on "top" quality, so you need to squint a bit, but the trick is way cool!

https://vimeo.com/91995684

[Larry D.]

What a FANTASTIC event!
A dream come true for me, so many special moments!
 
It was such a joy to meet fellow top spinners in person and share our love of the sport in such a perfect venue. 

Here are a few photos and a couple of video highlights….more to follow….

Don created this very precious “limited edition” top at our first visit to his expansive Treasure House :

[Larry D.]

Outside Don’s Facility :

[Larry D.]

The AMAZING arsenal of tops I carried to the Festival, made by JohnM !

Left to right: 
“Fiery” - 7” HDPE,
3” HDPE,
Hybrid
Small Hybrid,
Mini Hybrid
HDPE Gasing

[Larry D.]

Mark Hayward’s “Decapitop” alongside “Fiery” :

[Larry D.]

ta0 tames Fiery OR, Fiery tames ta0? :
http://youtu.be/rUn3a_NQUx4

HDPE Gasing in action:
http://youtu.be/_UsklVsLO1Q

[MarkHayward]

Beautiful run with Fiery Jorge!

Here's another video from the festival:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ndoxoC6cQ

[johnm]

Thanks guys for sharing a bit of the fun with us by posting all the great photos and video.

They have posted six plus hours of corrupted  video with OK sound from Saturday.  If it gets fixed, ta0's 'morning show' performance is there (you can hear him talking), Jim Neff's wire walker is there, some glimpses of the top gang hanging out by the bleachers appears, ta0 chases a koma all the way across the gym, and some of ta0's run with Fiery is at the end just before the gym closes at 5:00pm.  I saw these things as I scrolled through while the feed was still live.  The video is the one posted earlier.

Almost 5 hours of Sunday fun is posted.  The gasing play is right at the begining but the guys were a little shy and just to the left off camera mostly.  You can hear the gasing hit the gound with authority and Larry D. and ta0 do make brief appearances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBOxtAq6cBo

I didn't look carefully for incidences of collissions but with all those jugglers packed pretty close together and many of them learning new tricks or objects and not really watching what else is going on, it seems someone could get injured pretty easily.

[Larry D.]

ta0's 'morning show' performance is there

ta0’s morning show performance was totally impromptu. 
Just after we arrived at the gym that morning Jeff came over to chat with us.  Jeff asked ta0 if he would possibly do a couple of minutes of top spinning in the morning show.  ta0 took center stage without the benefit of warm-up or preparation and did a bang-up job!  It was wonderful of ta0 to agree to do it, and a real treat for me to be there and see him captivate the audience in person. 
 

I didn't look carefully for incidences of collisions

Everyone entering the Juggle-In had to sign a release form.  Jeff Peden announced that somewhere in the neighborhood of 750+ people attended this year’s Juggle-In. (I can’t remember the exact number.) 
Miraculously during those 3 days we did not see any incident of collision.  Although, on occasion, various body parts on some of us Spinners did suffer short-lived minor trauma. (Thank you Figaro!  ).

the guys were a little shy and just to the left off camera mostly

It’s not that anyone was shy, we just took possession of a low-traffic corner away from the gym entrance so that traffic would be at a minimum. 
Actually none of us were aware of the location of the live video camera.

[ta0]

What an fantastic spintop trip! It surpassed my expectations!

With Larry we were 6 hours at Don's place (the ex-The-Toycrafter works) on Friday and 4 more hours on Sunday rummaging through his huge collection of tops and talking about top history. The number of prop's Jim Neff carries around is incredible!  We had a great group of spinners that also included Mark H., Jason (jrodriguez) and Brad Wyman.

I arrived to SA past midnight (there was a radar problem that delayed all flights out of Dallas) and today I am swamped with work. So I will probably not be able to post much until tomorrow.

Thanks Larry for being such a great travel companion and thanks Don for being such a great host.

[Larry D.]

A special thanks to John M for all those wonderful tops you created.  Every one of them - high performers and beautiful.
If you were taking orders I could have sold 100 of each on the 1st day alone, more on the 2nd!
 
Thanks Jason for sharing your infectious enthusiasm and energy.  It was truly a pleasure being there with you at the event!

Thanks Jim Neff for bringing us your unique imaginative approaches in skill toy play.  It was absolutely inspirational!

Thanks Mark for letting me give “Chubby” a go! 
I have to remember NOT to confuse Chubby with a basketball! (But Chubby does bounce well. )
I wish I had set my camera in the correct mode so that I could have caught your action with Fiery and the mini-Hybrid.   

Thanks ta0 for bringing the great weather here with you for the weekend in Rochester!  It was so wonderful traveling, rooming and spinning with you. 
I am so very grateful to you for being there for me in the “test run”.   

Don, what can I say? 
You are exceptional in so many ways!   
Thanks for your hospitality, your wit, the history, the stories, the laughs. What a delight for me, sharing the time we had together. 
Next visit we have to take your dad to a Belly Dancing Club!   

Now that I’m home for a bit it already feels like a dream, a dream I hope we can all repeat many times over in the coming months and years.

I feel privileged to have been with you all and to be part of our community of wonderful top spinning folks!

[ta0]

The main spintop players at RIT:



From left to right: Jason, Jim, ta0, Don, Mark, Larry.  Brad (who is a member of this forum) was too shy to be in the photo. 

Mark and Don with Don's father looking:



Jim and Don: