LA Part 1: Arrival and late night session.

After staying in Japan for a week and saying goodbye to Nonoko while we both shed tears (Don't say nothing....You don't know how tough it is to do this for 5.5 years.....) I arrived in LA.

Now from what I remembered, Ilya, told me that he would have his friend come over to the airport to pick me up.

But NOOOOOOOOOO -______-

He tells me to take a shuttle to get there....
sigh.....what a start lol Me Japanese, no english, scared, understand??? lol

I took the shuttle and arrived in front of this crazy looking modern building. Here, I met Liz and Denom.
They are friends of Ilya from Boston and generously welcomed us to stay with them for a week! Not only that, they drove us around LA (which I'll get to later on) but they were soooooo nice :) I'm really glad that I got to meet and hang out with them.

After I settled down and unpacked my stuff, we went out to eat at Honey Pigs.

Pic

While eating, I got to know about Liz and Denom a little. Also Ilya and I kinda talked about what we did for the past week and a half.
Seeing him felt like ages ago since we lived together for a moth before coming to LA (WOW what a bf gf sentence this is.......SUPER GAY lol).

Than Ilya told me that he was talking to Slim Boogie earlier that day. So we decided to contact him because Ilya thought it'll be dope and a dream come true if we can go to the practice spot that he films his dance clip that is posted on youtube.

So he contacts him.
No response.

I've shared contact with Jr Boogaloo and Bionic Man a month before at Electric Soul Satisfaction, so I started to text them.

Jr Boogaloo was very helpful.
He gave us the numbers of this crew mates and told us to contact them as soon as possible to plan our week.

Bionic Man responded quickly. And welcomed us to come to his place when it is convenient for us.
Unfortunately, he lived 40 min away by driving. So we couldn't go that night.

It was around mid night and we still couldn't get a solid answer.
We didn't want to waste our time just waiting so I decided to text Slim Boogie.

A call back from Slim LMAO!!!

I still can't forget the face Ilya made when I said "oh he is calling me" lol

and what was even awesome was that the spot he practices was only a few blocks away!!!


So on the FIRST NIGHT IN LA, I mean literally few hours after landing, we get to practice with Slim Boogie.

We also planned to go to Homeland to see Kid Boogie the next day and go to San Diego for Jr. Boogaloo's 2 hour private lesson the day after tomorrow.

AWESOME

This trip could not turn out to be better than this.

So we walked and met up with Slim and Keumsae!
We both met slim couple times through MGF workshop tour (link) and SDFX 2 in Boston (link).
I've also met Keumsae before when C-lo hosted an event (link) in D.C couple years ago and she came as one of the judges.

A reunion is always great. I was glad to see them again, but this time in LA.

We exchanged for roughly 4 or 5 hours.

Seeing their get down was amazing. The level of foundation and advanced technique they had was unbelievable. We not only saw, but felt the level gap between the East coast popping compared to the West.

Please don't take this in a wrong way. I'm not trying to look down on the East. I feel that because they are taught by poppers with proper historic background the students had better understanding of how to execute the dance better.
Of course Popping is a dance movement that originated from the West. Thus, the resources to its roots can be easily traced back. Unlike us (the East) or the world, who dig the internet for information, they can go straight to the creditable source.

Some dancers I've met in the past told me that they don't really care about the past. Whats done is done and they want to focus on "THEM" because its their "GENERATION". But I think history is important. Knowledge is Power. Sense of community is crucial to the Hip Hop and Street Dance community. This is why I feel strongly about the need of popping education on the East Coast.

Anyway, I'll discuss that some other time. Back to the trip.

We didn't take any dance footage because I was too focused on observing the Slim and Keumsae lol
I think you can tell by how we were right after the session.

After the session, we were DONE lol In the vid I was wide awake, but I literally fell a sleep as soon as I got to the bed.
The Monster drink we had before going to the session was all used up and our body was collapsing.
I fell a sleep as soon as I got to the bed.

Thank You once again Slim and Keumsae. This would not have been the best day to start off without you two.

Part 1 End.