Looking back on when I was a little nappy headed boy…
…Uncle G, Aunt K, and my cousins drove up from Charlotte, NC, to pick up my mom, my sister and me on our way to Canada for a multi-city summer road-trip tour. We hit the Falls…roll through Ottawa…hung out in Montreal…and finally made it to our northern-most city, Quebec (if you’ve never been there, I urge you to go…beautiful place to visit).
Anyway. It’s the height of the breakdance era…circa 1983. My cardboard ‘backspin’ skills are fresh-to-def. My ‘pop-and-lock’ game is dope. I am the only one I know that can bust a ‘headspin’…and the only one brave enough to do a ‘suicide’. Plus, I already battled and took everyone in my neighborhood.
On a good day, you might catch me with cardboard from an old refrigerator box, in front of Baskin and Robbins in Del Mercado Plaza, with a boom-box, in a breakdance cipher, with a hat flipped upside down…battling.
Oh yes…I was that dude!
So imagine my surprise, when I walk out my hotel in Quebec on to boardwalk overlooking a river and see some Canadians, with a boom-box, in a breakdance cipher, with some fake-me-out wanna-be breakdance gear on.
“Ooooo…I’m about to school these fools!”, I think to myself.
So I walk over. The closer I get, the more pronounced my B-Boy pimp gets. I post up outside the cipher…in my B-Boy stance. However, my B-Boy stance is kind of stymied because I have on a preppy polo shirt and some tight, high, circa 1983 shorts. But I have on my Puma’s. So I’m still fresher than all these fools.
I sit back and watch…scope out my competition. But these guys are straight up wack! Couldn’t none of them break or pop! They could barely get one full rotation of a backspin.
‘Ain’t no competition out here. Cuz I’m from the State…boyyyeee…from where breakdancing began. Yall can’t mess with me!’, I resolve to myself.
As I fall back and prepare to leave, Aunt K loudly says, “HE can breakdance! The whole crowd turns. All eyes on me. Uncle G readies his huge shoulder-mounted camcorder.
“You know how to breakdance?” one guy says in a French accent.
“Yeah.”
“Where are you from.” he follows up.
“Maryland.”
“Oooo…you’re from the States…” he says excitedly. Everybody steps back and gives me the cipher. The ‘Oooos’, coupled with the sudden movement of the crowd…a nappy headed black boy standing in the middle of a circle…and a shoulder-mounted camcorder pointed in my direction – cause passersby to slow and focus their attention on me. “…come…come show us some moves.” the guys request.
Not one to shy from the pressure, I hit ‘em with the…BAM…BIP…BAM…the Wave… take it down…bring it up – then finish ‘em with the UHHH…AHHH….UHHH…and POSE (in the classic B-Boy stance…my arms crossed tightly in front of my chest)!
The crowd applauses. But the guys bum rush me, pat me on my back, “Ahhh! You are very good…” they say in their French accent. “How do you do that? Can you show us?” So for the next few minutes, I’m giving dance lessons on the timeless art of ‘popping’. Me…a nappy headed black boy…in Canada…on the boardwalk…overlooking a river…of my hotel…Le Château Frontenac.
SHARE your breakdance stories…if you got ‘em.
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