“I just found a lot of fun in doing it,” he says, “even though I didn’t really progress much, only learning the most basic of tricks and linking them together.” Like Grimoire, he got home, went on YouTube and discovered KTrinh93. “It was really the only thing I could do to keep myself entertained while I was there.” “It actually had some pretty big-name spinners,” Grimoire says, “like Megas, Tchus and DArKt.” (We’ll get to them later.)Īndy, a college student in Southern California, got into pen spinning three years ago because he “got stuck on a delayed flight with no phone battery left,” he laughs. I think I stuck around because I just enjoyed doing it, as well as the modding aspect.”Īfter learning as many tricks as he could on YouTube, Grimoire discovered the niche pen spinning community in March 2016, when he joined up with “a small little team called SOL.” He created his first collaboration video, began training for 2017’s Pen Spinning World Tournament and released his first “serious” CV in 2018. “Pen spinning isn’t an easy, quick hobby,” Grimoire, now 17, says. So much so that the 2019 Pen Spinning World Tournament - first organized in 2007 on the UPSB forum - kicks off next week. Today, thanks to the internet and an unflagging competitive spirit, pen spinning has grown a substantial following. It started in Japan in the 1970s, made its way to the United States in the ’90s and eventually culminated in the Universal Pen Spinning Board - an online forum for pen spinners all around the world - which opened in January 2004. Competitive pen spinning has a rich history. There are well-known pen spinners? And mixtapes? And a pen spinning world tournament?īelieve it. He even chose a name for himself: Grimoire is (literally) his pen name.
The community invented new moves and tricks, created modified pens with added weights for different spins, and - of course - stirred up plenty of drama. He discovered a thriving community around collaborative videos, known as CVs - trick videos involving multiple pen spinners. Grimoire entered the world of competitive pen spinning.
There, Grimoire discovered KTrinh93, a famous pen spinning YouTuber, and picked up basic pen spinning techniques so he’d never drop his utensil again. He needed to do something with his nervous energy. The more he dropped his pen, the more attention he drew, and eventually, pen spinning was banned at his school. Through lecture after lecture in high school, he mindlessly flipped his pen through his fingers, dropping it routinely and disrupting class.
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