Philip Kim knows what you’re thinking: Breakdancing? At the Olympics? That’s not even a sport. He agrees with you, mostly. He just prefers you call it by its proper name: “Breakdancing” is something only outsiders say.
Those who know call it breaking . But Kim, who is better known as Phil Wizard, is pragmatic enough to know that “breakdancing” is better for SEO. He usually doesn’t bother to correct people.
So, let’s be proper: Kim is the top-ranked B-boy in the world and a favorite to bring home the gold for his home country of Canada. This has made him a hot commodity for every press outlet in the country, and he admits the pressure is getting to him. And the interviews all seem to follow a pattern: How’d you get your name? What’s your best move? Is breaking a sport? Then they ask him to do a couple tricks for the camera.
Kim knows I’ve flown to Toronto to make him do it all again for probably the fifth time this week, but he doesn’t seem to mind. If it’s good for the culture, he’s down. There’s not a lot of room for the culture on the official Olympics website, which glibly says that breaking started at “lively block parties.
” Not wrong per se, but it obscures a cold irony: that one of breaking’s founding figures might have had a shot at the Olympics in his time, had he not been so poor. Richard Colón, now known as the B-boy Crazy Legs, trained as a boxer in his neighborhood and as a teenager wanted to compete in a Junior Olympics event.