i'm sorry if i mislabel anybody. perhaps "shiesty" is a little strong, 'cause i'm just going off things i've heard and personal experience. (remember that ban witchhunt? that was awesome. i'm probably blacklisted now, too.)

buy from wherever you want. i hope this little bit of drama doesn't bother anyone who's interested in yo-yoing; i promise the community is largely cooler than this.

i've just never seen a contest sponsored by them. just sayin'.

hey guys. i'm drew.

the yo-yo community is actually pretty cool. there's recently been a trend of small run metal yo-yos put out by amatuer designers within the scene, and it's really nice to see how people support them. the problem, though, is that most of them cost somewhere between seventy and a hundred dollars. doesn't seem that bad for the grown-ups with more expensive hobbies, but kind of rough for kids! (here's a yo-yo blog that keeps up with new releases if you want to see what the new ones have looked like: http://yoyo2.com/ )

so, yeah. the cool thing about the metal zero is that the kids who want to try a metal can pick one up without breaking the bank, and those looking to relive their childhood (and later convert it to a classy brushed steel paperweight) can do the same. and it actually plays as well as the big boys, too!

if you'd like to look a little more into learning tricks, though, i think i'd probably look more into the plastic freehand zero, 'cause it's half the cost and hurts less. http://yoyonation.com/ would be my recommendation for the store. the guy who runs it is really into supporting the scene, and theyo is frankly pretty sheisty. (uncrate is severely nifty, but, you know, kind of outside the scene. so yeah.)

oh, and i'm sponsored by duncan. so you might want to take what i said with a grain of salt... but i tried to be as fair as possible.

some other cool yo-yo links:
a good collection of beginner tricks: http://www.begin2spin.com/index.php
a video i made a year or two ago: http://youtube.com/watch?v=MEP-vpMRHoc
the top three freestyles from the most recent world yo-yo contest: http://www.yoyoevents.org/2007worldchampionship/index.php (check out yuuki spencer's 1A and rei iwakura's artistic performance! they're both great performers.)

this comment ended up being longer than most blogs, but, you know, thought i'd weigh in.