PogoPalooza 2021 kicked off with a film festival hosted by Dalton Smith, and in case you missed it, here is a breakdown of all the videos featured!
Videos that were shown but are not yet uploaded to YouTube (they will be added to this page as well as the playlist when made available):
Bryan Pognant’s “Bada Bing”
Wacky Chad’s Pogo Dudes History
All available videos from the Film Festival were also uploaded to a playlist on our Youtube channel, view that here:
In 2010, I pretty much decided overnight to pack all of my stuff and move to Florida. I was 20 years old, had a good amount of cash in my bank, and had been thinking about moving to Florida for a while. The thought of being able to pogo year round in warm weather was incredibly exciting to me, and that was the reason why I made the move.
After I got all settled into an apartment in Bradenton, home of Team Hyper Pogo, I began pogoing every single day. It was like paradise. After living in Chicago my entire life, I only had a few months a year where it was good pogo weather, and i’ve always HATED the cold. Not only that, but now I had people to pogo with, which also drove up my desire to constantly jump and influenced me to step up my game.
I began filming Blue Lips in Fall 2011. Filming started out like pretty much all of my solo videos, I didn’t really have a solid plan for what the video would look like, I was just stacking clips here and there. -> (Read More) ->
The year was 2002, I was only 12 years old. My newly acquainted best friend, Bryan Pognant, and I went to an Irish Fest together with his family. We saw a pogo stick abandoned by a ferris wheel, devised a plan to make it ours and made it happen. I still remember that day clearly, even though it was 18 years ago. Bryan and I were passing it back and forth in the parking lot seeing who could get the most jumps or who could jump with one hand or one foot.
Later that day when we got home, we logged onto the internet via AOL Dial-Up internet and searched Ask Jeeves (lol) for like-minded individuals that may think of a pogo stick as more than just a toy. We stumbled across xpogo.com. At the time the website was in its early infancy stage with only a handful of regular users. We signed up for the forums and were greeted by legends like Dave Armstrong, Nick McClintock and Fred Grzybowski. Back then we were always excited when someone new joined the forums, because it happened so rarely. -> (Read More) ->
Today we share part two of our interview seriews with our AllPogo staff. Check out the interview with AllPogo creator Ryan O’Malley below!
Earl: What year did you start pogoing, and how old were you?
Ryan: I started in the summer before my freshman year of High School, so that would be 2006 I believe, making me right around 15 years old. If my math is correct.
Earl: How did you discover the sport?
Ryan: My pogoing history is an interesting one. My first memories were hanging out with Nick Ryan at his parent’s house, which was right across the road from my grandparent’s house, where I spent a lot of my childhood. Nick had a Pogo-Roo, the pogo stick with the built-in counter. We used it often, and even thought, like many, that we created a new sport. We “invented” a dozen or so tricks, but the only one I remember was the drummer boy, which was no handed bouncing while drumming on the frame. Very creative! I even remember my first real bail. I tried to jump the entire length of one square of Nick’s driveway. -> (Read More) ->
Pogoing in the winter is a real pain. When I was filming “Winter Sucks” (2008) there were clips where I was out filming in -13 F. I never let the cold stop me from getting out there and filming, and here I’ll be giving you some tips that helped me power through tough Chicago winters.
This is by far the biggest and most important factor of sticking to pogoing during the cold season. You need to have the utmost determination to be able to go outside in sub zero temperatures to film or even just practice. My biggest motivation in the early/mid 2000’s was trying to stay relevant in the game. I knew guys in Florida (Team Hyper Pogo) were still jumping and getting better in the year round warmth, so I had no other choice but to jump in the cold, even if it was just to keep up with what everyone else was doing.
Revisiting spots and reminiscing on one of the most iconic pogo videos of the 2000’s.
Looking at it now, it doesn’t look like much. It’s poorly edited, the tricks are way outdated, as are the sticks. But, in 2006, Pogo Cult 3 was one of the most progressive videos to ever be released at that time.
The very first handrail grind, the very first around the body air trick, one of the (if not THE) biggest gaps and bomb drops at that time, and also cant forget the first of many Technical Air tricks and Tech tricks that had never been seen or even heard of before. From beginning to end, almost every clip in Pogo Cult 3 featured something new that had never been done before (and the few that weren’t brand new, were very difficult and sought after tricks at that time).
I took a motorcycle ride with my buddy, who was often the filmer of my old Chicago solo videos, to the 3 most known spots from Pogo Cult 3. -> (Read More) ->
