gtsandiego

What’s happening tv land. First off I want to say thank you for taking time out to visit my hubpage.If you are interested in my articles then you also might want to check out  http://poplockinpalace.blogspot.com/ .I want you all to get a chance to know who I am and my popping history on this section. First off my name is Gary Shorter II and my street dance name is “GT SanDiego.”I was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Fl on February 7th,1986.My family and I moved to Atlanta, Ga back in 1994. As a child the gift of dance was introduced to me early even before I knew how to walk. As an infant I was born with asthma but it didn’t stop my love for dance. One day when I was a couple months old, my Grandma played some Michael Jackson for me on her old record player. Keep in mind that I was still just an infant and didn’t know how to walk yet. Woooo I tell u when I heard MJ’s music for the first time, I went nuts!! I was sitting up rocking away and jamming to every MJ song that I heard. By the time I reached the age of 5 I had already seen a heavy majority of Michael Jackson’s videos and I would imitate his dancing every chance I’d get. Oh and don’t let it be a time where I attended somebody’s party, because I would try to be the life of the party imitating MJ!!

I remember the first talent show I performed in back in elementary school. It was 1996 and I danced to Michael Jackson’s “Bad.” I had a friend that was supposed to perform beside me that day but he choked throughout the whole performance. I didn’t win the talent show but I did win the respect amongst my peers that night. That same respect followed me as my dancing evolved over time. Back then local trendy dances would come and go but I was still dancing like MJ no matter which dance came out. I wanted to be just like him and was eager to prove it at any given day. When I attended middle school, it was a totally brand new environment to take on. I would actually get picked on because of the way I danced around that time. Girls looked at me funny and didn’t want to go out with me because my dancing turned me into an outcast. However that suddenly changed when I made it to the 8th grade in 1999.

As I entered 8th grade I made a couple of friends. They never knew I danced because I kept it a secret from being picked on so much. Until one night where it changed the rest of my life and made me into the dancer that I am today. This particular night I was spending the night at my homie’s house. His little brother, him, and myself were acting a fool the whole night with no adult supervision. So we decided hey let’s listen to some music and turn it up loud. We cut some music on and started getting off and jammed the

whole night. My homie then cuts on this one song by Ice-T. I forgot the name of it but I went crazy when I heard the beat. I started doing some poppin moves that I saw mj doing on stage and my homie was in shock. He was like “dawg I didn’t know u knew how to tick!!”. And I was like know how to what lol?? My homie found out about my talent and was telling everybody at school that following Monday. As my rep around school began to blow up, unfortunately I had to transfer to another school due to moving.

   I got picked on a lot at the new school I attended which was nothing new to me anyway. Mainly it was because of how I dance with it being so similar to MJ and not like everybody else. My first battle was against a dude named Gerald. For some reason everybody wanted me to battle him as soon as they found out I knew how to dance. That was the first and maybe my shortest battle. It didn’t last long because I got laughed at. I heard remarks like, “shawty u can’t tick” and “u look like a 1975 robot!!” All the dissing from that day forward just motivated me to practice. I eventually battled Gerald again and I won!!

  Throughout High School I started doing more talent shows and my poppin was getting better and better. I studied movies such as breakin, breakin 2, and beat street. Over time I learned that what we call “tickin” in atl was really called “poppin”or “pop lockin.” My college days of poppin began the start of my reputation as a dancer in the city. I was battling anybody that wanted to get it or any popper that heard of me locally. It got to the point that I loved the dance so much that I wanted to do my homework and find out about it’s history. In 2005 I found out about the Electric Boogaloos, a poppin group based out of Fresno, Ca. I obtained a lot of info from learning their history behind the game as well as other poppin crews such as Black Resurgence, The Mysterious Poppers, Medea Sirkas, G-Style, and Blue City Strutters just to name a few. I ended up putting a crew together along with some friends that pop as well and we are known as Down South Boogaloo Brothas(DSBB for short).We been dancing together as a crew for 2 years now. Our group is based out of atl of course and we are proud to have the identity that we worked hard for.