H.W. Nam’s NY Dance Sport has closed. The store housed four-to-six dance simulation arcade games (DDR and Pump) at any given time, as well as selling Hello Kitty and Orange Story merchandise, doo-rags and giant bling-bling medallions. Nam was a forty-something Korean guy who made change and would offer you paper towels after you’d danced enough to get sweaty.
The little storefront was host to a DDR contest last year, a real innovation in terms of cultural events. It was genuinely diverse in age as well as ethnicity. The moment that sticks with me was when this twelve-year-old girl (who bore passing resemblance to the lead actress in Welcome to the Dollhouse) got up on the platform and performed an awkward, arm-waving routine that would have gotten her booed off stage had she been at a school talent show. The room erupted in a warm round of cheers.
This is the thing: the game attracts the awkward, those who never attended their prom, the never-successful jocks, the too-sensitive or too-flamboyant boys, the girls who like video games. The crowd around a DDR machine is invariably full of misfits, but you don’t necessarily realize it until you talk to them, because they move so fluidly. And they’re doing this dance that has nothing to do with the disco music and images the game emits. It’s foot-heavy, evoking gumboot and tap.
God, I just can’t be objective about this game. It’s why the Voice never ran the article I wrote about it: it’s one of these nerd rituals that makes me get all mushy.
The closure means bad things. First, the teens and pre-teens who patronized the place have one fewer inexpensive place to hang out in their neighborhood.
Second, this could be a sign that DDR’s popularity in the States has crested quietly and is waning, which would mean there will be fewer places to play. Also, I just hate to see another small business go under.
Update 4/12/02: Went to Broadway City Arcade, and the crew there hints that New York Dance Sport may have moved to the vicinity of 60th and Queens Boulevard. Further bulletins as I learn more.
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