Uncensored interview with Capurro

Yo-yoing since the age of 10, David Capurro became one of the greatest yoyo performers in the world. He is a great reference between yo-yo players from all generations.

Vulto: So, here we go! When did you start playing yo-yo?

Cappy: In 1989, I saw a kid walking down the street playing with a wooden yoyo. I had just celebrated my birthday and one of my presents was a set of  walkie talkies. Instead of making friends with the kid and playing with the walkie talkies, I decided to attempt to trade him my walkie talkies
for the yoyo he had. He was just as enthusiastic as I was, and I got my very first yoyo… a Tom Kuhn No-Jive 3-In-One, which is the yoyo I learned on for many years (and many axle sleeves). I still have it.

Vulto: How do you compare the yo-yo community of 5 years ago with the actual one?

Cappy: Maybe it’s just me, but the yoyo community I used to know and be a part of is gone, or maybe they just all grew up. The new faces are just as nice as the old ones, but there’s this lack of familiarity that there once was. I don’t know… perhaps I’m just getting old and crotchety. I don’t really go on the boards or the chats much these days, I tend to keep to myself and try to focus on my club and the Bay Area yoyo scene.

Vulto: How do you like to play yo-yo?

Cappy: Well, I always have a 1A yoyo in my pocket at all times, usually my Bare Bones (you rock, Frank!), but despite what bitterness there’s been between Steve and I over the years, I am quite fond of 5A (freehand) and I play it often. I’ve judged it at the US Nationals 2 years so far. I don’t really work on tricks anymore, though I do stumble into some new-to-me things once in a while, I mainly try to do neat combos, and perfect what I already know, while being entertaining.

Vulto: Do you have any other hobbies?

Cappy: Absolutely. I am a professional Linux Sysadmin, which was a hobby of mine for many many years… that’s what you get when you hang out with hackers in a dark techno-ridden west Oakland warehouse lit primarily by party lights and black lights. Ahh, memories! I also love ripping apart broken computers, finding out what’s wrong with them, and bringing them back to life. Let’s see… I absolutely love playing Foosball, and am considering going semi-pro. I’d love to start a Foosball club and start going to competitions. My place of work has a Foosball table and I try to play
an hour every day. I play Chess too, but that’s not as fun as Foosball. I also enjoy driving, cooking new things, going to see live shows, and I
am a part of a weekly show in SF called the Ask Dr. Hal Show.

Vulto: For you, who are the most important names in the yo-yoing history?

Cappy: The people that gave me my start and inspired me. In no particular order, Linda Sengpiel, Helane Zeiger, Bill deBoisblanc, Don Watson, Cliff
Coleman, John Stangle, Chuck Short, Tom Kuhn, Dale Oliver and Dale Myrberg. Those are the names that immediately come to mind.

Vulto: What are the best yo-yos you’ve ever played with?

Cappy: “Best” is such a judgemental word… Instead, I’ll use “Favorite”. My favorite yoyos are the Bare Bones for string tricks, and I really like Sayco yoyos for looping.

Vulto: You have quite a big achievements list and you have performed hundreds of freestyles and shows. Have you ever felt anxious or nervous on stage?

Cappy: Oh sure, I’m as nervous as they come… but I can fake it!

Vulto: So, what’s the best advice you can give to freestyle players?

Cappy: Get a routine together, and practice until it’s second nature. Be loose, have fun, and smile. Just don’t go up on stage and stand in one place and spazz out, you have to make some sort of connection with the audience. Oh, and no jesus techno.

Vulto: As far as I remember, you created TSC, right? What happened to TSC?
Cappy: Not exactly. It was a group effort between Brian Trump, Blake Freeman and myself. For pretty much the entire time TSC was around, I seemed to be the figurehead, as I was the most well known and outspoken. The news was meant to be like the onion, but yoyo related. I sure did piss a ton of
people off, granted sometimes I just went too far. =D What happened was this. In 2002 I was living in Emeryville, CA, and my housemates and I had sdsl there. Expensive though it was, when split 5 ways it was affordable. At that time, TSC was a little machine sitting under my desk. In fact, the entire time TSC was around, it was a little black computer sitting under my desk. Bet you didn’t know that! Anyhow, we eventually moved from that house, and I lost my awesome bandwidth, so I had nowhere to host the site. Stupidly, I also let the domain expire since it kinda felt like the project was dead and nobody seemed to want to participate anymore. I finally put TSC’s hardware into a rackmount server chassis, and found a place to host it, but afternic snatched my domain up, and have been holding it for hundreds of dollars for a while now. In short, I have the machine hosted, the website is
still on the server, but I don’t have the domain, or really anyone else to be a part of TSC, not to mention that I don’t really do much online yoyo stuff these days.

Vulto:What happened to Gary Longoria and Paul Escolar?

Cappy:Gary still yoyos from time to time, and he works at Radio Shack in Alameda. Paul, not sure where he is living right now, but he usually comes to club, though he comes much later and doesn’t do much yoyoing (he is still kicking much ass though). :^)

Vulto: Anything you want to say to yo-yo players worldwide?
Cappy: Nah. I’ve said enough.

Vulto: Thank you very much!
Cappy: Don’t touch my moustache.