In 2012, after dropping my son off to boarding school in West Virginia and realising that he didn’t really need our help to get situated, my husband and I found ourselves with a few extra days to spare. After searching for events in the area, I found out about a music festival in the Monongehala National Forest and thought #maaswell We needed camping gear, so after a wrong turn into the gun aisle at a scary shop called Cabela’s, headed to Walmart instead, and grabbed a tent, air mattress, quilt, and a couple flashlights.
During our five-ish hour drive, we prayed we would not break down or run out of gas as we drove through several small towns that looked like Black Oppression and passed signs that warned us not to pick up hitchhikers as ‘they may be escaped convicts’. When we reached the mountains late at night, there was a treacherous, steep winding road, bordered by deep plummets. Slowly, Dueane snaked the rental car up the hill in the darkness, inches from our demise, thinking, ‘This better be worth it.”
The first sign this experience was going to be weird and wonderful was right on arrival at 1am. We could hear music echoing off the mountains and there was a greeting team at the gates cheering us in and spinning signs. After finding out we were from Bermuda, one of the sign spinners was shocked because he’d JUST left the island after a gig with a local company! Cheery from that (not-so) random coincidence and running on adrenaline, we stopped feeling exhausted and made our way into the opening night concert. Have you ever seen a laser light show shone on miles-high rock faces while dancing until the wee hours to songs you’ve never heard surrounded by thousands of strangers?
I have.
And thus began ‘Camp Barefoot’ – four days of folk, bluegrass, reggae, visual artists, food trucks, buckets of beer, and lots of drugs.
After sleeping in our car the first night, we spent the next morning setting up camp alongside a girl we met in the parking lot who was tripping on shrooms and seemed like tons of fun. Everybody had TONS of gear. Coolers of food and drinks. BBQs. Chairs and pop-up tents. Games and art supplies. Our shrooms friend advised us that our cheap tent and thin blanket was not gonna be enough to keep us warm at night when the temperatures dropped, and suggested we come in and sleep with her and her friend. We kindly declined. On hindsight, that probably could have added to our experience. And she was right. The nights were freezing – too cold even to go outside to pee. Yes, we had a pee bottle.
But the cold nights gave way to sunny, glorious days spent moving between the multiple stages, browsing all of the vendors and of course, the aforementioned drugs.
It was here, at Camp Barefoot, that my interest in hula hooping began. Prior to this, I’d NEVER seen adult hoopers (how?!). I grilled the family seated beside me who were taping their hoops, the mom explaining that adult versions of the toy we all knew as children were heavier and usually handmade. And I watched in awe as a burlesque hula hooper performed as part of one of the musical acts. From that moment I KNEW I needed a hoop.
Yet, after my time at Camp Barefoot ended, and we came back to Bermuda, I didn’t follow through. Three years went by, and then, at another music festival, I would once again be in awe of a hula hooper on the stage. This time, it was the inimitable goddess, Grace Jones, who hooped with her titties out while singing ‘Slave to the Rhythm’ at Afropunk in Brooklyn. (For more on my experience at AfroPunk, read my three part blog post ‘Black Magic‘. Yes, it was so fucking dope, I wrote three posts about it.)
This was a sign.
I came home, ordered a hoop, and have been hooping and spreading the gospel ever since. I love a heavy waist hoop that I can just settle into as I am admittedly not amazing at off-body tricks, which require a smaller, lighter hoop and muscle memory acquired through consistent training. (Consistency is not exactly what pops to mind when you think about me I’m sure, unless it’s to do with wine.) During the last year of lockdowns and social distancing, I kept promising myself to learn more tricks, but would always end up just wining my waist to all the DJ sets. Still… I stay inspired by the amazing hoopers I follow on Instagram, and who knows? Maybe this time around lockdown, I’ll smooth out my shoulder hooping once and for all.
Check out these hoopers for some Hoop-spiration and Happy Hooping!
After quitting her job to become a full-time hula hooper, Deanne Love has built a creative platform based on movement and pursuing your passion. I’ve been following her since I started hooping, have purchased a few of her hoop courses and use her YouTube videos whenever I’m trying to learn a new trick. She’s a multi-talented badass with a gift for teaching.
Mariam Olayiwola (Amazi Hoops)
Amazi is Head of Performance for ‘Marawa’s Majorettes’, a team formed by Marawa the Amazing (arguably the world’s best hooper!). She hula hoops WHILE roller-skating, rocks out often to soca and Afrobeats, and is just really super-cute.
Tiahna Goldbird (Teaki Hoops)
As important as it was for me to find a number of Black hoopers to follow, I also wanted to find hoopers who weren’t skinny. Ms Tea is a vintage-loving plus-sized mama of two who uses her hooping platform to promote body positivity, feminism, self-care and mental health.
Ish Yakub (Cher-Ish)
There are more hoopers on-island now than when I first started hooping 6 years ago, but Ish is the first one I met. As her website says, she’s an “accountant by day, professional hula hooper by night”. Watching her hoop as we chipped down the road for carnival was dope af. And here I am drunkenly watching in awe as she dances at my 40th birthday party.
