Yo-yo man
Deli clerk by day, he has powers you didn't know existed
He carries the yo-yo like a secret in his pocket: a compact machine of aluminum, silicone, and string. A child's toy. The key to the universe.
Maybe you've seen him in the shadows at the Davis Square T station, making the yo-yo dance while he waits for the train.
Maybe you asked him, Hey, can you 'walk the dog'?
And Guy Wright wants to answer:
Come on, can't you see what I'm doing RIGHT NOW? I'm LIGHT-YEARS beyond 'walk the dog'!
But he's a nice person, so he doesn't.
Still, how can he explain the yo-yo? How can he express what it is to him, when everyone thinks they already know?
In the very, very small world of yo-yo aficionados, Wright, 22, of Somerville, is a rising star. His homemade Internet videos have won him renown. Yo-yo companies are wooing him for their demonstration teams.
"He's amazing," said John Higby, a professional yo-yo performer from Amherst. "People really know him and love him."
But in his regular life, Wright is a deli clerk at the Central Square Whole Foods store, anonymous in his hipster glasses and tattoos.
"Is that chicken?" a customer asks.
"That is the Tuscan chicken salad," Wright says with a flourish. "Would you like some?"
He remembers the day he found his calling.
It was a slow California afternoon, August 2005. He and a friend were preparing to get high.
The friend said he had the perfect video to accompany the pot: "It's this guy yo-yoing," he said. "It will blow your mind."
Wright was skeptical. He'd had a yo-yo when he was a kid, and he knew what a yo- yo does: it goes up and down. It can do a few tricks. Kid stuff.
But the friend was insistent: "You have to see this."
They lit up and watched.
"Oh God," Wright said, some time later. "My mind is blown."
He thought: I have to get a yo-yo. The man in the video was Steve Brown, one of a handful of pioneers who helped invent modern yo-yoing in the 1990s.
Like chess and playing cards, the yo-yo's origins are obscure, going back to ancient Greece or possibly the Philippines. In modern times, salesmen sold them door to door in the United States in the 1930s, and on television in the 1960s.
But the modern yo-yo was born in 1990, when a San Francisco dentist invented a yo-yo with a ball bearing at its core.
"Honestly, there was a massive shift in technology," said Brown, of Cleveland. "It's only in the last 10 years that there were commercially available yo-yos that didn't suck."
The ball-bearing yo-yo is weighted differently, and spins much longer than the old kind, Brown said.
"Suddenly all this stuff was possible that we'd never conceived of before."
The new yo-yo inspired a new generation of yo-yo players like Wright, he said. They teach each other tricks on the Internet - this is how Wright learned - and meet up at yo-yo contests. They push the limits of what you can do with a yo-yo.
"In the past it was a hand-eye-coordination type of device," said Bob Malowney, who organizes the yearly US National Yo-yo Contest. "Now, it's as creative as painting or music. The tricks are numbered in the thousands - the saying is 'if you can do it twice, you can name it.' "
But the world at large has barely registered the yo-yo renaissance, Brown said.
"As soon as people see you playing, they want to attach it to a relevant experience in their minds," he said. "They want to see 'walk the dog,' they want to see 'around the world,' they want to see that triangle thing where you swing it through. . . . People stop experiencing something when it reaches the limits of their knowledge."
In his mind's eye, he pictures it. When the train pulls into Central Square, he jogs up the steps, pulls out the yo-yo, and tries it out.
In his hands, the yo-yo feints and dives. He builds traps for it out of string, but it escapes every time.
And just like that, he's invented something new.
"The appeal is physical manipulation," he says.
"You're controlling something, and being in control is what everyone wants," he says.
He makes the yo-yo leap onto the string and perch there, spinning.
He says, "I've had this theory about the meaning of life. You're ultimately trying to prove to yourself that you exist."
The yo-yo snaps back into his palm.
"It's why you do anything."
"I'm always impressed with his yo-yoing," said Dennis Stepp, the seafood team leader.
"I wish I didn't have to hear about it so much," puts in Jasmine Stoner, at the checkout aisle.
Wright can't help it - he'd talk about yo-yos all day if he could. He has one friend who yo-yos: Elliot Jackson, 21, helps him shoot yo-yo videos. But that's it. New York and Orlando may have become yo-yo hubs of sorts, but in the Boston area, Wright and Jackson feel pretty much on their own. "It's kind of frustrating," Jackson said. "You want people to understand, so they can appreciate it. But it's really difficult for anyone to get it."
Brown said he almost hopes it stays that way.
"On the one hand, it's kind of a bummer," he said. "But on the other hand, mankind has always had these small groups of people who are absolutely amazing at these strange, bizarre, taboo, oddball things.
"It pulls you out of your everyday experience," he said. "It makes the world more interesting. I'd rather see the world remain a more interesting place than everybody know about all this stuff and none of it be special to anyone."
Wright hopes the yo-yo arts become more widely known, but he's not worried about his own future. The yo-yo is its own reward.
Sometimes, when business is slow and no one is looking, he takes the yo-yo out and does one trick. Just one.
Perfectly executed.
No one sees. 