It’s Fly

The coffee grinder and the worm never really disappeared. They just went out of style, then came back as second-rate dance moves.

“You’ll never see somebody who’s really good at break dancing do a series of coffee grinders, ’cause that’d be lame,” says B-boy Vinnie, of the Lawrence-based crew Buggin’ Out — though he allows that you might see someone use the coffee grinder as a transition into a more impressive move. The worm, like the coffee grinder, should be used sparingly. “You won’t see anyone do the worm across the floor unless they’re a sucker, and you can tell them I said so,” Vinnie says. “There are a lot of suckers right now.”

As break dancing becomes more popular again, B-boys like Vinnie work hard not only to be the best B-boys they can be but also to distinguish themselves from the crap most people saw the first time around, in the ’80s. Unlike the ’80s revival in fashion — which fails to improve upon the unfortunate off-the-shoulder look that someone should have known better than to bring back — the break dancing revival is its own thing. The first incarnation was kind of like an embarrassingly dorky older sibling, and Buggin’ Out’s members sometimes cringe at the family resemblance. “They were inventing it, so I can kind of forgive them,” Vinnie says, pondering as he takes off his hat, which is not exactly on sideways but not exactly on frontways, either.

“I got into break dancing through rave parties,” he says. He’s sitting at a table at Yellow Sub, where he and many of his crew work. “I couldn’t dance, but I figured if I could get into the acrobatics of break dancing, it wouldn’t matter.”

Now he considers break dancing one of the most important things in his life. “It makes you aware of what your body can do, and you get bored with regular movement.”

Every Monday night, starting at 9 and ending whenever everyone’s too pooped to keep moving, Vinnie runs a gymnasium session at a local rec center, where dancers can use mats and try new things without getting hurt. Most Friday nights, his crew dances with Downplay at the Pool Room.

With the coffee grinder and the worm reduced to dated relics of a more commercial brand of break dancing, what moves do new-schoolers get into? Well, it’s hard to say, but only because of the ever-changing nature of break dancing lingo. “For a while, we called everything kopters, no matter what it was,” Vinnie says.

Unpredictable vocabulary notwithstanding, every Buggin’ Out member has his own strengths. “For James, it’s footwork and creativity,” Vinnie explains. “For Josh, it’s handstands and power moves. Brandon’s got really good flexibility.” Vinnie’s own specialty is the low-to-the-ground freeze, for which he drops suddenly onto one arm, propping his body up on his head and the heel of his hand and kicking his legs from one position to another in a series of crisp, balance-shifting moves.

He’s demonstrating one of his routines when his head hits the rock-hard ground, making a loud crack that’s painful to hear. He finishes the routine, then stands up, brushing dirt off his shoulder. He looks displeased.

Does that hurt?

“No,” he says. “It gets my shirt dirty.”