{"id":433,"date":"2016-03-18T22:12:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T22:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/?p=433"},"modified":"2016-03-18T23:21:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T23:21:21","slug":"kevins-hula-hooping-awakening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/2016\/03\/18\/kevins-hula-hooping-awakening\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin&#8217;s Hula Hooping Awakening"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_269\" style=\"width: 760px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-269\" class=\"wp-image-269 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2016\/03\/Hoopurbia_slide_3.jpg\" alt=\"Instructor Malcolm Stuart leads a flash mob rehearsal in Echo Park.\" width=\"750\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2016\/03\/Hoopurbia_slide_3.jpg 750w, https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2016\/03\/Hoopurbia_slide_3-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2016\/03\/Hoopurbia_slide_3-508x339.jpg 508w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-269\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This is not me hooping.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Listen to &#8220;Kevin Walker: &#8220;Learning lots&#8230; About audio editing.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/nextgenradio?src=hash\">#nextgenradio<\/a>&#8221; by Next Generation Radio <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/8uWfKBetnn\">https:\/\/t.co\/8uWfKBetnn<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Doug Mitchell (@nextgenradio) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nextgenradio\/status\/710911357697196033\">March 18, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I\u2019ve managed to go my entire adult life without hula hooping. That changed Monday when I went to the Echo Park Recreation Center to find out more about something I had run across in LA Weekly\u2019s event calendar called \u201cHoopurbia.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hoopurbia is an arts festival dedicated to all things hula hoop. The week long event is the creation of Rebecca Halls, a professional hoop dancer from Canada. She started Hoopurbia in 2012 when she lived in Germany and decided to bring it with her when she relocated to Los Angeles this year. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">L.A., by the way, is the world center for hooping. (Take that, Portland!)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I walked into the recreation center not knowing what to expect, which seems silly in hindsight. What I found was a basketball court full of people, you guessed it, hula hooping. They weren\u2019t just doing the standard hip hula like I used to do as a kid, these people were dancing. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One guy was jumping around whipping hoops around his arms and neck, another lady was laying on the ground spinning a trio of neon hoops around her outstretched leg. It was the single greatest display of physical coordination I had ever seen in one place outside of Wrestlemania.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-497 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2016\/03\/gifboom-2.gif\" alt=\"Kevin gif\" width=\"320\" height=\"320\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I introduced myself to Rebecca who introduced me to Marawa, the woman who would become the focus of my piece for Next Gen Radio. As you hear (or will hear), she\u2019s Australian and has been in the hoop game for more than a decade. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She splits her time between London, where she manages her own dance troupe and Los Angeles, where her boyfriend lives. She\u2019s traveled the world, she\u2019s set world records and she\u2019s been on TV &#8212; which means she\u2019s technically a celebrity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She also doesn\u2019t stand for non-hoopers like yours truly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It wasn\u2019t five minutes before she had ensnared me with a large purple hoop. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cJust stand there and spin it, let it fall to the ground,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thank god, I thought, if it\u2019s one thing I know how to do, it\u2019s stand. I gave the hoop a push and stood there. Sure enough it fell to the ground. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOkay, do it again, but push it harder this time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;Okay,\u201d I said. I can handle this. Once again the hoop fell to the ground. This time though, I kinda wish it hadn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cNow try to rock your body, back and forth.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I gave the hoop another spin and spastically tried to match my body\u2019s movement to the big plastic ring orbiting me. I failed. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Good thing is this for radio, I thought. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But, I\u2019ve got to admit, I wanted to give it one more try. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I learned later that most of the people at Hoopurbia make their hoops out of flexible water pipe like the kind you buy at Home Depot. I think I might be going down to Home Depot this weekend. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to &#8220;Kevin Walker: &#8220;Learning lots&#8230; About audio editing.&#8221; #nextgenradio&#8221; by Next Generation Radio https:\/\/t.co\/8uWfKBetnn \u2014 Doug Mitchell (@nextgenradio) March 18, 2016 I\u2019ve managed to go my entire adult life without hula hooping. That changed Monday when I went to the Echo Park Recreation Center to find out more about something I had run across [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":358,"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,63],"tags":[81],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/358"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usc2016.nextgenradio.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}