My friend and fellow lindy hopper Ryan M. was recently traveling in Asheville, NC when he randomly encountered this guy waiting tables who had these tattoos pictured here. According to Ryan, he had no idea that those phrases had any significance to others. He and his friends just used "shim sham" and "frim fram" to…
Category: Dancing / Music
Swinging in the New Year: 2010 New Years Eve Dance Parties (updated)
Looking to get your swing on during New Year's Eve in New York City? Here's a listing of swing (and soul and blues) dance parties happening over the next few days you might be interested in: Tuesday, December 29: Lo Fi Lee Presents the Holiday Swing Ball at Connolly's, 121 West 45th Street, NYC. Featuring…
Advance Ticket Sales Ending Tonight for Salon New Years Eve Eve Party!
Patrick sent out an exciting update on the already exciting Salon New Year's Eve Eve party happening on Wednesday, December 30th: THE SALON is thrilled to announce sponsorships by DEWARS and INFINIUM SPIRITS! This includes free Scotch tastings all night long by Dewars and top-shelf premium spirits from Infinium featured in our specialty cocktails, at…
Swinging at the Piano Store 10 Years Ago! (video)
Here's some really neat footage of folks dancing and hanging out at one of the coolest swing venues ever, the short-lived Piano Store in the Lowereast Side, back in March 2000. The Piano Store was an actual old piano store that some folks converted into a clandestine hangout for lindy hoppers, loungers, jazz musicians and…
Breaking Photoshoot by my Dad! (pics)
For my Christmas present this year, my dad — quite an accomplished amateur photographer — gave me a free photoshoot! I asked him if he would shoot me doing some breaking moves outdoors, which he happily obliged. We had lovely shooting conditions on Tuesday morning. We found this nearly empty skate park in the…
Jive Off those Holiday Pounds with Maksim, Ashly and Kym of “Dancing with the Stars” (video)
For Christmas, my sister got our mom this "Cardio Dance" DVD featuring "Dancing with the Stars" professional dancers Ashly Costa, Kym Johnson, and Maksim Chmerkovsy. My mom is a huge "Dancing with the Stars" fan, so we knew this would be a hit with her. The Jive routine in particular is cheesy swing goodness from…
Yehoodi 3.0 Going Live on December 28!
After lots of planning, coding, head-scratching and bickering, I am extremely excited to announce that the new Yehoodi 3.0 site is about to launch! For the past 11 years, Yehoodi.com has been the virtual hangout for thousands of swing dance and swing jazz enthusiasts from around the world. While our web platform has served us…
Building an inclusive swing dance community
Picture of “SwingingOUT” Group in Toronto, Canada. I’ve heard that there are a couple of lindy hoppers who are working on creating a LGBTQ-friendly swing and blues dance in New York City, which I say is long past due. Other places like San Francisco and Toronto have had long-standing queer-friendly swing dances for years and…
The joys and challenges of teaching 13-year olds how to break
Yesterday I had the pleasure of teaching a hip-hop workshop to a group of Global Kids teens in the Bronx, which was a unique challenge for me for a number of reasons. Here's how it went. Global Kids has been running programs at the middle school IS229 for the past couple of years, exposing these…
Holiday Craft Fair & Todd Yannacone this Thursday at the Frim Fram Jam!
This Thursday, December 17, I'm excited to announce a very special holiday Frim Fram Jam, Yehoodi's regular Thursday night swing dance. First up, badass lindy hopper Todd Yannacone will be teaching an advanced dance lesson from 8-9pm and then DJing with Ryan Swift until 1am! As always, the lesson is from 8-9 pm, and still…