— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Oddly enough, this video is hella old but no one in the Bay really watched it. Then people in Europe found it, blew it up big, and now SF is finally catching wind. From The Bay Citizen:
It’s the old filmmaker’s joke, “We’re big in Europe!”
Well, that’s certainly the case for YAKfilms’ YouTube video, “Dancing in the Rain,” which shows four men TURF dancing on the corner of MacArthur Boulevard and 90th Avenue in Oakland. The video was going viral through Europe and is now catching on in the United States.
TURF stands for “Taking Up Room on the Floor,” and it’s a form of street dancing that originated in Oakland. In contrast to other street dances, TURF aims to tell a story. And so “Dancing in the Rain” is a memorial to dancer D Real’s (he’s in the white shirt) brother Rich, who was killed in a car accident on that corner.
Comments (3)
man that article is making it sound like youtube broke turfing, maybe in europe but turf has been popular, if anything it’s maybe a little less right now. This might help it pick up steam outside of those who know/knew about it. I mean fuck, like 5-6 years ago there were Turf vs Krump battles/videos. Outside of LA production studios krumping is pretty much dead, Jerking took over that LA street dance shit.
If this woman really wanted to compare Turfing to anything she’d look at Jooking, all of which can be traced back to popping, but whatever just talk about moon walking and call it a fucking day.
And NYMag's Approval Matrix finally caught onto this vid this week…
Ummmm kay,
for starters, I loooove dancing.
Likewise, I love watching other people break it out.
This video is beautiful.
Or moving.
Or just freaking dope.
Not just the style (uhhh, slow motion backwards flips? that can be done?),
which is making me grin real big right now (eff yeah!),
but also the spirit of camaraderie
and the flow and the apparent joy for these friends to be dancing together.
It’s contagious.
And thank you for being real and really effing ‘wow’.
Bravo!