Recent News and Press Coverage
Check this space for news, updates, and event announcements.
News
Press
The Ups and Downs of Competition
The New York Times, August 18, 2008
“The art of flinging a yo-yo is almost unrecognizable to those who have not seen it done well in the past decade or so. At the recent World Yo-Yo Contest here, it was immediately obvious that yesterday’s forgotten up-and-down string toy is today’s ‘extreme sport you can carry in your pocket’ the yo-yoer Andrew Arvesen said.”
(read more...)
The Yo-Yo Kid
The Seattle Times, April 29, 2007
“Say the yo-yo had never been invented, or hadn’t leapfrogged from the Philippines to America, or Pedro Flores hadn’t crafted a “slip string” to make the wooden doughnut spin in its sleep so you could do tricks. Or say the Jazz Age craze never turned into a Depression-era comfort, never caught on with the postwar baby boomers and didn’t survive the video-game era into an age of customized technical yo-yos fabricated with ceramic ball-bearings and weighted rims.
Then Sterling Quinn would be a really good skateboarder”
(read more...)
Pioneering yo-yo father honored with documentary [pdf]
Austin Sun, October 1, 2006
“Just about anyone who grew up in America in the past 80 years has played with a Duncan yo-yo. But if you ask Georgetown resident JoAnn Radovan, she'll tell you about her father’s company, Royal Tops Manufacturing Company, and what it was like to grow up with cartons of wooden yo-yos stacked in the halls of her family home.” (read more...)
Events
September 2007
Presentation of WORLD ON A STRING film excerpts, Filipino American Library's Community Lecture Series on the "History of Filipinos in Los Angeles" at the Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture.
May 2007
Presentation of WORLD ON A STRING film excerpts, documentary-in-progress, Search to Involve Pilipino Americans (SIPA), co-sponsored by SIPA, the Filipino American Library, and Filipino American National Historical Society-Los Angeles. Funded by the California Council on the Humanities Story Fund.
October, 2006
Presentation on WORLD ON A STRING: Filipinos and the Origins of the Yo-Yo, Wing Luke Asian Museum, Family Saturdays program. Seattle, WA.
October, 2006
Presentation on WORLD ON A STRING, Filipino Inventor-Entrepreneurs of the Yo-Yo, Center for Asian American Studies, University of Texas, Austin, TX.
July 2006
Presentation on WORLD ON A STRING: Filipinos and the Origins of the Yo-Yo, Filipino American National Historical Society Biennial Meeting, Honolulu, HI.