Lou Lanning
Introduction
Even though 100 miles of I-5 separates Eugene and Portland, we consider the Portland yo-yo community local to us. A big part of why the Portland yo-yo community is thriving is because of Lou Lanning. He's there running one of the biggest yo-yo meet-ups in the country and always making sure things are progressing and people are coming together. He's doing this for not only the yo-yo community, but the over all-skill toy community. On top of that, he's a wonderful human. We are blessed to have him on the team!
YoYo History
My first yo-yo was a Yomega Power brain. I bought it for myself with chore money in the summer of 2003 right before I started high school in Northern Kentucky. It came with a vhs tape that I learned a few basic tricks from, but once guitars and skateboards came along the yo-yo hit the shelf.
I Moved to Portland in 2012, and rediscovered the hobby in 2017. I was building out a green 1977 Dodge Tradesman custom van and gathering cool green accessories to go along with it for show purposes. I stumbled upon a green Duncan Butterfly at a grocery store, and the memories rushed back. I thought, “Yo-yos have to have come a long way since my old Yomega.” and did a quick eBay search. “Yo-yos are metal now!?” I bought a green Beboo L1 for $15 having no idea how deep of a hole I had just jumped into.
I quickly learned that this yo-yo was unresponsive, and unlike any I had ever played. I learned how to bind, and posted a couple clips on instagram. A friend of mine from the music world, Guerd Alberts, hit me up and told me that he used to be really into yo-yo, so we met up and he showed me some tricks. He told me about onedrop, and I found my first ones, a black Cascade and a blue Rally proto, on craigslist. Neither of us knew anything about the Portland yo-yo scene, or if there was one at all. We hosted a meet up in 2018 that attracted a massive three other people. The five of us, Guerd, Toby Roberts, Jackson Dvorak, Chase Lawrence, and myself collaborated on a yo-yo design that under Toby’s guidance eventually became the PDX-Yo Swamp Monster. It was with this crew that I attended my first PNWR in 2018.
Between 2021 and 2024 my focus shifted to kendama to hone a different set of skills. The scene was alive, and there were monthly local meets that were always fun to go to. In the spring of 2024 I went to PNWR with a group of mostly kendama players. One of them, Andrew Dominguez, got bitten by the yo-yo bug pretty hard. He had been one of the main people hosting kendama jams, and with him out of the game, the dama scene dwindled. We knew the yo-yo scene was in need of more consistent meets. Aliyah Tan had recently hosted one at Peninsula Park that brought out so many people we hadn’t seen in ages. Andrew and I teamed up to start hosting combined skill toy jams for the kendama and yo-yo groups in Portland, and Shrimpgang PDX was born. We have now had a consistent monthly meet for three years.
In 2025 I met Collin Chappell as he was getting started with Featherspin Throws. I assembled a team with Thomas Keane, and Mason DeVriend who I had met through our monthly meets. Together we wrote and filmed some of the most ridiculous long form yo-yo videos you can imagine. At the beginning of 2026 after releasing and hyping five new yo-yos the three of us parted ways with FS. Shawn and David had been huge supporters of the work we had done and the videos we produced. I am blown away to be offered a spot on the onedrop team to continue doing what I love to do. Making movies, making yo-yos, and making friends. Oh yeah and playing with yo-yos!