Discourse

Panorama

2020 became the year of canceled plans. I figure there’s a fairly strong chance that, if you’re reading this, that includes some kind of yoyo event. That’s a tough thing for a community like this. Live yoyo events kind of hold this thing together, you know? Just meeting up with a homie and playing yoyo is itself a substantial experience. So, when you take that out of the equation, it seems like the cohesion of this community kind of runs the risk of disintegrating.

When I think back on the state of yoyo in 2020, there was one thing that, in a big way, came into play to hold it all together, and more than the year of canceled plans, 2020 became the year of the repeater. It’s a rare thing for a single person to be responsible for moving a worldwide community, but Tsukasa managed to do it. His intensely creative and technical repeaters kinda blew us all away. He seemed to (and still seems to) somehow have an endless bag of them too. And before anybody realized, we were all chopping up our favorite combos looking for repeaters that might have been hidden under our noses all along. Then, the #thingsthatrepeat hashtag came along, and that set the tone for the rest of the year.

Looking back on that, I realize what a nice distraction from the suckiness of 2020 that was. Everybody kind of rallied around repeaters, and as a player and a spectator, it was a really excellent time to keep track of yoyoing on Instagram.

The Panorama, to me, is the representation of that – something that we can all rally around as yoyo players. Releases like this one are rare now, and it’s exciting to experience. If you’re aiming for one of the Panoramas we’re selling on the website, I hope you’re successful. If you aren’t successful in getting one from us, I hope you’ll track one down elsewhere. Either way, I think it’s a yoyo conducive to a lot of enjoyment, and we are honored to have a small part to play in this release.

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02/21

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Goodnight

It’s like the sky is on fire. Just before the sun comes up or right before it goes down is when it’s the strongest. Trying to catch it was always a challenge, but trust me, it’s worth it in the end. I’ve always considered myself lucky to have the mountains. It gives me a chance to get a little closer.

Sometimes it’s hard to find your way in the world. I’m grateful for those who’ve helped me find it.

Two contests with lifelong friends. Those things can’t be forgotten because they were examples of what made a yoyo so important.

Inspired by One Drop, the company that really motivated me to do something more than just what is easy.

CA
09/20

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Mega Shock – Instance 0001

It was a Friday afternoon. Your mom picked you up from school and took you straight to the arcade. Maybe it was a reward for doing the best you could at paying attention in second grade that week or something. Street Fighter II was the only thing you could think about back then. When you weren’t playing, you were thinking about playing, or drawing pictures of you and your friends playing, or thinking about where to scrounge up quarters so that your older brothers could walk you up the street to 711 so that you could actually play. But that day, you didn’t have to dream. Your mom gave you a Lincoln and the opportunity to spend the whole afternoon at the arcade playing as much Street Fighter as $5 would allow. Except… You were only 7 years old, and it seemed like a lot of bigger kids and teenagers had either cut school and were already playing, or otherwise had the same idea you had, and the line to play Street Fighter was very long. Bummed out, you searched around for something else to play and found this machine that was all red. Like red as fuck. And this Street Fighter II-esque game called World Heroes was on the screen. And there were these two badass ninja-looking dudes. And they called out in this weird mechanical voice when they did their special moves. If you think about it now, you can still hear those voices, just as they are in the game.

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08/92

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Raw

Static Co. is just a yoyo brand. Maybe you think it’s not our business to comment on social issues. I must disagree with that sentiment, however. This is everybody’s business. If you are alive to breathe air today, this is your business. Specifically, I feel it’s very important for us to say something to make it clear where we stand on this. Black lives matter. We stand against the brutality and perpetual injustices committed by the police, and fully support those in the streets at this very moment protesting against these things.

This week, a lot of us have felt some raw emotions. A man’s life was senselessly taken. Make no mistake about this – George Floyd was murdered by the police. The police. The institution which is supposed to protect the people. A police officer put his knee on George Floyd’s neck for close to nine minutes as he begged for his life. Please pause here to think about the brutality of that instance if you need to. Consider the fear that George Floyd must have felt.

I experienced a fair amount of unpleasant encounters with the police while skateboarding when I was young. I remember often feeling like the amount of harassment levied by the police was disproportionate to the “crime.” In retrospect, I realize I had the luxury of being white, and I took for granted the fact that I was always able to walk away from those encounters unharmed. It’s true, I am wary of the police as a result of those experiences, but none of that is the point of this - the point is, if you live in this country and you don’t happen to be white, every encounter with the police is dangerous, and could be deadly. A day in which a traffic stop occurs for a white person is an inconvenience. The same day for a black person could be their last. And that’s bullshit. George Floyd’s murder was egregious, and it has rightfully gained attention, but this is happening more frequently than most realize. It has to stop immediately. Enough is enough.

Static Co. supports protesting against police brutality. The frequent killing of black men and women by the police must end now.

My sincere condolences go out to those who loved George Floyd, and to the loved ones of all who have lost their lives at the hands of the police.

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05/20

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2019 Retrospective

Static Co. was completely silent for all of 2018. We didn’t release or design anything that year. We were figuring some things out internally, if that makes any sense. I guess those things had to be hammered down before we could proceed. Then, we kinda did iron those things out, and sudo prototypes came in on the very last day of 2018. That was exactly one year ago today. At that time, Static Co. was basically defunct. It would have been natural and very easy to just let the brand fade away and decompose, but 2019 actually turned out to be the busiest year we’ve had in our close to four years. We still did laughably little in comparison with some brands, but I’m immensely satisfied with what we did accomplish. Now, I just want to reflect on some of these experiences.

In April, literally two days before my family and I were going back to Japan to visit my wife’s family, I decided to do a pre-release of the sudo, which I had received from One Drop earlier that morning. Siliconing 60 yoyos in a single day… In retrospect, I don’t recommend this. The reception was heartening. People were stoked. I was stoked. My wife was not super stoked, but she understood. We dedicated the red sudo to the memory of Matt Schmidt and donated a portion of the proceeds from the sale of red sudos to NAMI Minnesota in his honor. Later on, I received a really nice note from Matt’s mom, thanking me for the donation. I’m really bad about keeping folks updated about these things, I know. If you would like to read this letter, and you grabbed a red sudo, please contact me. The thanks I received from Matt’s mom belongs to you. If you’re one of those who copped a red, please allow me to give you my heartfelt thanks for supporting that endeavor.

There was enough of a response to the sudo that a second run was warranted. I know I told at least a few people that there would only be one run of sudos. The interest was there though, and the tipping point came when reading about Jason McEntire’s struggle with brain cancer, and ultimate passing. The thought of his little daughter never being able to see her father again still kills me inside… So, I contacted his wife and asked her to choose a sudo colorway, and that we would dedicate that colorway to Jason’s memory. She picked black and gray acid wash, because those were Jason’s favorite yoyo colors. She also picked yellow speckle, since yellow is their daughter’s favorite color. The result was the Saturn sudo. I named the colorway, and there is actually a meaning behind the name. Saturn has an insane number of moons. Like more than 50, if I recall. The orbital period of some of those moons is quite short - less than a single day on Earth, while the orbital periods of some are longer than an entire year on Earth. The thing that all of these moons share, however, is that they will all pass through the darkness of the shadow of Saturn at some point, some for longer than others. Life is kinda the same, in that way. Again, if you scooped up a Saturn sudo, you have my sincere gratitude, and I know that the McEntire family appreciates your support more than you will probably ever know.

After that, we teamed up with Sonny to release the Optimally Geared YWET (still riding high on that as I write this) and also released a couple other sudo colorways. We also unlocked the fabled copper plated Parlay, which had previously been said to exist/not exist for some time. We still have one sudo colorway on deck, and it’s the continuation of the EVAC Parlay, released by Static Co. in 2017. Maybe you’ll see ‘em pop up before too long.

So, 2020? Already got a couple special things coming down the pipeline. Remember how I mentioned that the sudo is a reminder that everything is in constant flux? Keep that in mind. Some folks were bummed out when I said that the sudo may be over, so I may do one last run. I’ll keep you posted on that.

Looking back over this year, I feel an incredible amount of gratitude to the people who have helped make 2019 what it was. It’s easy to find a really nice playing yoyo for very, very little dough now. You can scoop up something nice for less than $20 with no problem. To the people out there who see value in what we do, and are in this with us, I offer a sincere thank you. Here’s to 2020.

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01/2020

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sudo

Now that it has existed in the tangible world in some form for a whole year, I’m ready to talk about it. sudo. What is it? What does that name mean? I’ll tell you… It doesn’t mean anything. In this case, it’s not a Linux command, it’s not a Japanese surname, and it’s not strictly an acronym.

Before we get to the sudo though, let’s talk a little bit about the Parlay. Did you know that a copper plated version of the Parlay exists? Now, I guess you probably do. At the time this was originally written though, copper plated Parlays were sitting in a box at One Drop, waiting to be melted down. I managed to rescue one from this fate and immediately identified it as the best playing version of the Parlay. I was bummed that this yoyo would (ostensibly) never be released. At that point, the design which would eventually become the sudo was in the queue to be machined at One Drop, and I knew that whatever yoyo came out of that design would have the spirit of the copper Parlay baked into it. When prototyping the sudo, I picked a weight that was close to the copper plated Parlay, and I must say – the regular anodized sudo feels pretttttty close to the copper Parlay.

sudo looks a lot like the Parlay. It’s ok if you think of it as a modified/refined version of the Parlay. sudo, however, is made of 7075 aluminum, which may not be easily observable. This gives the sudo heft in places the Parlay simply doesn’t have it. sudo also has flow groove response, which takes flowable silicone wonderfully. This was the primary motive behind this decision for response. The Parlay can be punishing if you have a less than optimal throw. In that way, Parlay feels like a plastic yoyo from the mid-2000s. The plastic feel was the primary allure of that yoyo when it came off the machine, and why I knew couldn’t revise it. For better or worse, it has a very unique feel. sudo has a slightly more straightforward feel, if that makes any sense.

Some of the design cues that defined the Parlay are not present in the design of the sudo at all. Generally speaking, these cues were influences from past yoyos that I admire. They were either scaled back or taken out of the design entirely. Again, if you examine the cross section of the sudo side by side with that of the Parlay (which I realize isn’t necessarily accessible for a lot of players), you’ll see that any sharp radius that existed on the Parlay has been refined and is now much less pronounced.

The Parlay represents one of the best experiences I’ve had in yoyoing and, if you’ll allow me to be candid, my life. I love what it represents, and the experience of creating it was like a dream. It was like cooling out with good friends and, oh, creating a yoyo at the same time. Shawn, Will, Paul, and I were in the house for the design, and it was an all-around unforgettable experience.

As a yoyo, I love the way it plays. Like I mentioned, and you’ve probably noticed, it channels its inner plastic well. It’s fun in a way that, in my opinion, a lot of yoyos out right now are not. All that said, it’s not the design I had in mind when I pitched it to Shawn and David.

The sudo is what I set out to create, if I can state it plainly. You may have read or heard me say that the sudo is a love letter to the Bapezilla 2. The way I look at it, sudo is the halfway point between the Parlay and the Bapezilla 2, and I’m pretty stoked on that. sudo shuffles off some of the bulk of the Bapezilla 2 but adds some much-appreciated weight to the design of the Parlay. It borrows the rounded rim from the Bapezilla 2 while maintaining the functionality of the schmoove ring from the Parlay.

Strictly speaking, this yo, like its predecessor, was also a collaboration. The design process on this one was much more personal than the Parlay though. It was designed in Shawn’s kitchen (actually – this is not a metaphor for the OD shop) over the span of a few days amid conversations about life. The pace was much, much, much slower than the Parlay design process. The design fell into place easily, and honestly, the cues kinda presented themselves.

sudo isn’t necessarily for everybody, and that’s ok. It doesn’t have a name that lights a fire under your ass and gets you in the mindset of getting as many clicks in one to three minutes as possible (though, I don’t know, maybe it will do that for you?). More likely, sudo serves as a reminder that everything is constantly in flux. sudo represents focus in the face of constant change, and at the time that these thoughts are being published, it’s Static Co.’s destination organic.

It’s a little odd to release this discourse now – at this point, the sudo is nearing the end of its life. I don’t know how many, if any, more runs of the sudo are on deck. Bringing this yo into existence has been both a challenge and an incredible joy. If you’ve already got a sudo and you’re into it, you have my sincere gratitude for joining Static Co. on this adventure. If you’re a Parlay fan and this is the first you’re hearing of the sudo (entirely possible, I realize), maybe you’ll like this one too.

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12/2019

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So, here we are. About to drop some original YWETs on the masses. This is kind of a surreal moment. It’s no secret that Anti-Yo is one of Static Co.’s primary influences, so to have this opportunity is a little impossible to process. How did this happen, you may be asking yourself? Well, I sent Sonny a sudo, since sudo is basically a love letter to the Bapezilla 2, and it seemed fitting that Sonny should get one. We shot the breeze about this and that for a while. A few weeks later, there were some raw YWETs on my doorstep. These YWETs had been sitting. For a long time. I’ll let you research the history of the YWET elsewhere, but these had obviously been locked away, potentially with no intention of ever being unlocked away. Most of the halves still had the junk from the machine shop on them and had been scuffed up from rubbing against other halves for over a decade. Still, my excitement was maximum level. Plus, the timing was uncanny – the second run of sudos was just coming off the machine. One Drop graciously offered to tumble the YWET halves (which cleaned them up nicely) and adding a small amount of YWETs to my arrangements with Gruntbull and the metal plating shop was a snap.

About a month after that, the YWETs came back to my doorstep, this time in slightly better condition. The copper plated ones looked bad but polishing them made them beautiful (for most, anyway). The black nickel ones turned out great. I ordered the plating a little too thick on these, and had to sand the bearing posts down in order for a bearing to fit on most of them. You may or may not notice this, should you end up with one.

The anodized ones came out looking incredible. In Anti-Yo fashion, I determined that these should of course be offered in a strictly half-swap color combo. The decision was obvious – Mega Shock. Like most things we do, this colorway was inspired by Neo Geo. You may remember a Parlay colorway of the same name (though it was an acid wash on the Parlay – the colors are the same here). On the YWET, this colorway is half haggard gold, and half rainy sky blue. It suits the YWET well, if you’ll allow me to say so.

It took a long time to find the parts that offered the best experience on these yos. In case you don’t know, these require spacers in order to really function. The thing with spacers is that the thickness of them adds up quickly. Before you know it, you have a yoyo from 2009 with a gap from 2029 (read: wide enough to raise a damn family in), which isn’t fun. We ultimately settled on a set of .015” spacers, which brings the gap to right around 4mm, which is pretty consistent with other Anti-Yos from around that period of time. We found that a set of .02” spacers also offered a pretty solid experience, so each of these comes with a spare set of those as well. We found that a YYR DS bearing made this yoyo feel pretty excellent and determined that the above equipment constituted the optimal gear to bring the YWET to life. Thus – Optimally Geared YWET.

Next, I want to talk a little bit about the packaging. Are you familiar with the MC called El P? He’s one half of infamous rap crew Run the Jewels now, but in the 90s, he was part of a crew called Company Flow. While packaging up demos to send out to record labels when they were trying to get on back then, El P coined the phrase ‘independent as fuck.’ He describes sitting at the kitchen table, cutting out pieces of typed out text, hand writing this and that, and the whole process being very DIY. Such is the case with the packaging here. I’m not going to go into detail about the application used to design the labels for this, but rest assured that it was never intended to be used this way. I wanted each label to correspond to the color of the yoyo in some way. This simply wouldn’t have been possible to have done professionally (for any reasonable amount of money), since the quantities are pretty small. So, I got some decent parchment and cut them out myself. If you notice an imperfection in the label, well… Please understand that they were cut using my four-year-old daughter’s scissors.

While we’re here, I would like to thank Sonny for this opportunity, and for blessing the design choices made throughout. Thanks also go out to One Drop for tumbling these and shipping them off for finishing. Lastly, thanks go to Cade for providing quality photographs of these.

I’ve done my best to keep these as affordable as I could. If you’re looking for a missing piece of Anti-Yo history, this is it. This has been an insanely fun and fulfilling project, and I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

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11/2019