A pioneering Ottawa b-boy is hunting for his vintage velour tracksuit after it was stolen this month from a hip-hop exhibition at a local art gallery.
Stephen Leafloor, also known as “Buddha,” is one of the founding members of the Canadian Floor Masters. The crew helped bring “breaking” — or what’s often known as breakdancing — to Ottawa in the early 1980s. They opened for James Brown, Ice-T and Grandmaster Flash.
Leafloor called the blue and red Fila tracksuit “a vintage relic” from the early days of hip-hop with both emotional and historic value.
The theft makes him feel disrespected.
“It was a beautiful tracksuit,” he said. “It’s that crushed velvet velour… You feel magical.”
The theft was captured on camera at the Ottawa Art Gallery on Daly Street, where Canadian Floor Masters memorabilia was displayed as part of an exhibition on the history of hip-hop in the Ottawa-Gatineau area.
The gallery’s director, Alexandra Badzak, said it happened Nov. 5. She said the entire operation took less than three minutes that afternoon.
“It was very quick,” she said. “They were out the door, unfortunately, before security was able to apprehend.”
Badzak said surveillance footage revealed that the thief climbed up on a glass display case and apparently used a tool to cut the wires holding up the tracksuit. Scuff marks are still visible on the walls.
‘I felt sick,’ curator says
Senior curator Rachelle Dickenson called the theft “appalling.” She said the tracksuit is representative of a period in hip-hop fashion — and losing it affected her deeply.
“I felt sick,” she said. “The first thing I thought of was that I needed to call Buddha.”
Rachelle Dickenson, senior curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery, called the theft of the tracksuit ‘appalling.’ (Dean Delisle/CBC)
Leafloor was out of town when Dickenson broke the news.
He’s been drawn to “swag” from an early age. He still remembers what motivated him to pick up the tracksuit in the late 1980s during a trip to Detroit.
“When I saw it way back then, I was like, yo, LL Cool J rocks this – I want one too,” Leafloor said.
He posted a Facebook message on the theft, which has produced an outpouring of support and indignation. But Leafloor isn’t holding out hope that he’ll recover his tracksuit. He said he can’t put a value on an item with such a deep personal connection.
“I wish it would come back, just because it’s emotionally part of my life,” he said. “It’s part of who I am.”
No plans for stricter controls
Dickenson said the Ottawa Art Gallery has hourly security patrols. But anyone can simply walk in and out the gallery, which is free and open to the public.
She said the gallery will raise up suspended exhibits higher to make sure the public can’t access it, even by climbing up.
But there are no plans to impose stricter controls on public access to the gallery itself, she added.
“We’re not prepared to risk community comfort and that sense of ownership that community should have when they come into the Ottawa Art Gallery,” Dickenson said.
“This is an appalling incident. It’s a very rare incident. But it’s more important to us that folks feel like it’s their space too. Why would we punish everybody for the actions of one person?”
She said she’s currently tracking online shopping websites to see if the tracksuit turns up. If search efforts are unsuccessful, she said insurance is expected to cover its value.
Leafloor is one of the founding members of the Canadian Floor Masters. (Arthur White-Crummey/CBC)
Leafloor has no animosity toward the art gallery, which he commended for working collaboratively with the dozens of people from the hip-hop community.
“I wouldn’t make the decision that I’m pulling all my stuff out, because this is an important exhibit. Go see the exhibit if you want to feel and touch the vibes of the generations of hip-hop,” he said.
He hopes his experience doesn’t discourage others from lending their artifacts.
“This can have a beautiful impact on how we celebrate our history, and I would hate that not to happen out of fear.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
