yophosis (yo • pho • sis) n., 1. The evolution of that which is "yo." 2. Chris Neff's internet screen name since 1997. 3. Swahili word for "awesome!" 4. a joke that only yo-yoing architects would get.
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Chris Neff. That's me; architect, semi-retired yo-yo professional, Dean of yo-yo workshops and proud husband and dad. I started yo-yoing right after high school in 1992 when I bought a Duncan Imperial and the Duncan trick book. By the time I went to college I could do most of the tricks in the book, and my roommate Brad was impressed enough to get a few yo-yos for himself. Soon a deadly match of one-upsmanship began and kept us busy all through college... except when we were learning to be architects and stuff like that. In 1997 there was a huge yo-yo boom in Japan and soon after in the U.S., and I accidentally became a yo-yo professional instead of an architect. You see, I walked into this kite store called Wind Wizards and they had entire walls filled with yo-yos I had never seen before, and I was spending so much time there they offered me a job teaching a yo-yo workshop. Soon we had strong showings at 4 different locations in Kansas City, and at the peak of the craze we had 80 kids showing up at Independence Mall once a week to receive top-notch yo-yo instruction from my Pro Spinners (graduates of the workshop) and myself. There were several kite stores across the nation doing this as part of a marketing campaign led by THP kite store in Hawaii and Japan-based toy company Bandai. My kids and I toured many cities, including Honolulu and Tokyo. Toward the end of the madness in 1999, Duncan Toy Company hired me and stuffed me in an RV to tour from New Jersey to Los Angeles doing school assemblies and store demonstrations all along the way. Later I co-starred in the long overdue replacement of Duncan's yo-yo and spin top instructional videos (though I was not an accomplised top spinner at the time). The boom had died by then and I landed an architecture job in my home town where I found the perfect girl to nest with. I didn't yo-yo much for the next 8 years or so and when I went to check in on the scene in 2009 my mind was blown! The level of play was just amazing, I may never catch up. Spin top tricks, however, had not changed as much, and so I obsessed a little. I became the World Spin Top Champion in 2011 and 2016. Yeah!
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