“Hooping” is the preferred term to describe the latest fitness boom in Las Vegas. But the craze also has hit a nerve with city lawmakers, who recently proposed a ban on the iconic circular toy from the Fremont Street Experience.

Hubbub aside, hooping is getting around.

Fitness studios across the country have added hooping, a low-impact regime that is said to strengthen the core and test endurance and agility. Actress Marisa Tomei recently released the fitness DVD “Hoop Body” for at-home audiences.

And in Las Vegas, local hooping guru Julie Schoolastra has gone from begging people to join her classes to boasting an overflowing attendance sheet.

“The interest in hooping has really started to pick up,” she said. “I used to do pro bono stuff to share the hoop love.”

Schoolastra, who said she is the only certified hoop dance instructor in the state, dropped 60 pounds after picking up the hoop three years ago.

Hooping began centuries ago when ancient Egyptians made hoops out of dried grape vines. Later, the Greeks used them for exercise, and British sailors introduced them to those back home after witnessing Hawaiian dancing.

It received a rebirth in the 1950s, when the Wham-O company popularized its Hula-Hoop.

“It just makes you feel really happy,” Schoolastra said. “I’ve seen people deal with depression, addiction, overcome tragedy by hooping.”

Word of mouth has been Schoolastra’s greatest vehicle of promotion. She said the workout blends cardio — 300-400 calories are shed per session — and mind and body awareness.

Schoolastra offers six-week hoop dance classes for hoopers of all levels and ages. Last year, a woman marked her 75th birthday with a hooping class, Schoolastra said.

She also offers private instruction around the valley including birthday and bachelorette parties.

A new class is set to start today. The fee is $75 for a whole session and $15 for individual classes. Schoolastra offers a bundle — six sessions and a hula hoop — for $110.

Classes are held at Self Quest, 1913 Green Valley Parkway, Suite D, on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Debra Symons owns the Green Valley studio, where she works in naturopathy through clinical yoga. Symons recommends the class to clients but also participates.

Returning to the hoop wasn’t the easy transition she assumed, she said.

“I’m very physically fit and I do all these classes every day, and I couldn’t do it,” she said of her first class. “Julie said, ‘Stick with it.’ I thought I couldn’t do it, and I’m doing it. It’s addicting.”

Symons said she often finds herself picking up the hoop at home and spinning for a few minutes. She said it has made muscle definition in her stomach muscles she couldn’t achieve with hundreds of sit-ups.

“It’s a challenge, if you like a challenge,” she said. “But you also laugh at yourself. It’s so fun.”

Esperanza Somers, owner of Luv2Hoop, a local hoop manufacturer that sells its merchandise online, said the increasing popularity of the activity has been good for business. Somers, an avid hooper, started her company in 2007 when she was dissatisfied with other distributors.

“I felt there is no gender or generation gap when it comes to hooping, and people should be able to choose what they like,” she said.

Article reposted from viewnnews.com

Vegas

The ordinance would have banned the popular toy from the Fremont Street Experience as part of an overall effort to remove obstacles for pedestrians.

City leaders announced late Tuesday that they would meet with the American Civil Liberties Union, which has taken up the cause of the hula hoopers.

Demonstrators outside City Hall said they were aware the issue was pulled from the agenda, but wanted to raise awareness of their plight.

FOX5 wants to know what you think about the protest and the proposed ban on hula hoops at the Fremont Street Experience. Click here to leave a comment and watch the news coverage video!

LAS VEGAS (Aug. — This is a city where tourists are welcome to wander certain streets with open bottles of alcohol, where the phone books contain hundreds of color page ads for “escorts” and where gambling is so ubiquitous that slot machines appear in most 7-Elevens.

Yet the Las Vegas City Council is now zeroing in on halting a new public menace: Hula-Hoops.

OK, not all Hula-Hooping. Specifically, city leaders later this month may ban the use of the usually plastic, hip-gyrating equipment on a five-block pedestrian mall known as the Fremont Street Experience in the city’s downtown core because, they argue, their use obstructs traffic flow and causes public disruptions.

“Apparently there are Hula-Hoop people,” said Councilman Stavros Anthony, part of a two-councilman committee that reviewed the bill this week and voted to recommend its consideration by the full board on Aug. 18. “These aren’t little Hula-Hoops. They’re big Hula-Hoops.”

The provision is actually a minor part of an ordinance, expected to come before the council later this month, that aims to restrict a litany of activities on the plaza, a tourist attraction where light shows occur hourly on the world’s largest LED screen, which doubles as the underside of a metal canopy capping the five-block stretch.

This anti-Hula-Hooping effort, however, is a new wrinkle in a 15-year battle in which the city has attempted — and failed — to control what occurs on the mall, which is lined by several of the city’s oldest casinos. It was built in 1995 as a collaborative effort by this cluster of gaming parlors to compete for tourist interest with the mammoth, fantastical resorts springing up on the Las Vegas Strip about four miles to the south.

The ordinance, beyond containing an outright ban on Hula-Hooping as well as juggling and the use of amplified bullhorns, strives to pen into one of two 1,200-square-foot “free expression zones” those entrepreneurs and entertainers who are not authorized by the Fremont Street Experience LLC, a nonprofit entity set up by the city to operate the attraction.

Yet federal courts have ruled that the mall is a public square and have struck down every prior effort to ban protesting, panhandling, leafleting, entertaining or conducting business on the mall as infringements of First Amendment rights. The plaza was built over a road, Fremont Street, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada has persuaded judge after judge that it cannot be regulated any more than activities in parks or on sidewalks can.

“The argument they use is that free speech is bad for business and we need to protect business,” ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein told AOL News. “The courts have repeatedly said that while business is important, it cannot trump constitutional rights. I don’t know how much clearer they can make it.”

On any given night on the pedestrian mall, which is the width of about five lanes of traffic, thousands of people hopscotch from one casino to another, listen to live bands playing on three soundstages and browse numerous permanent kiosks where vendors hawk tchotchkes. In addition to those sanctioned attractions, there are artists rendering cartoon images of tourists, folks selling bottles of water, musicians strumming instruments for tips and celebrity impersonators posing for pictures.

And yes, occasionally folks will rent gigantic Hula-Hoops and perform with them, as numerous YouTube videos attest. City Attorney Brad Jerbic, who did not return a call for comment, showed the councilmen some of those as well as a clip of a Gene Simmons impersonator using a Taser on a tourist for some unexplained reason.

“We have the Fremont Street Experience that’s trying to be a tourist and commercial enterprise where people are trying to have a nice commercial experience,” Anthony told AOL News. “If we don’t do that, anything can happen on Fremont Street, and it becomes chaos. You have to balance between free expression and order.”

There were no Hula-Hoopers on the mall late Thursday, but there were several street artists and faux celebrities, including Elvis impersonator Ted Payne. He said he’s made about $100 a night from tips at Fremont Street since he lost his job as a casino security guard this spring.

“They’re a whole bunch of jerks,” he said of the City Council, whose proposed ordinance would force him to perform in a free expression zone. “They just want to add on to the unemployment situation, I guess.”

In more than an hour of interviews, AOL News failed to find a single tourist who complained about any of the Fremont Street enterprises. Most, like Drew Thompson of Greenville, S.C., laughed at the notion of a ban on Hula-Hoops and insisted that the activities the city wants to restrict are actually the reason he enjoys visiting the area.

“We love just wandering around, seeing what everybody’s up to. You never know what you’ll find or see,” said Thompson, who was in town for his bachelor party. “I don’t understand what the problem is.”

Nearby business owners, however, sympathized. Michael Cornthwaite, who owns the Downtown Cocktail Room bar and the Beat coffeehouse within walking distance from Fremont Street, was torn.

“I have a strong opinion about people’s personal rights and all the rest, but knowing some of the things that go on and some of the people who will set up shop and selling bottles of water, I do understand the need to keep things under control,” he said.

“But,” he added, “there are 50 [authorized] kiosks in the middle of the mall, and they’re obstructing traffic as well. But it’s a revenue steam for Fremont Street Experience and a tax stream for Las Vegas and the state. … The traffic issue is not caused by someone with a Hula-Hoop.”

Lichtenstein promised litigation if the council passes the ordinance. He said there are already laws that prohibit Hula-Hoopers — or jugglers, another group referenced in the ordinance — from obstructing the traffic flow. Likewise, he said, celebrity impersonators who solicit aggressively can be arrested, and vendors who don’t have business licenses can be fined.

Santa Monica, Calif., has created free expression zones that have been upheld by courts, Jerbic told the councilmen. Lichtenstein countered that in Santa Monica, officials segregated all commercial enterprises to those areas and did not favor one set of entrepreneurs over others.

“This is the same old stuff in not very new packaging,” Lichtenstein said. “Why they are attempting yet again to turn the pedestrian mall into their own little fiefdom outside the Constitution is a puzzlement to me.”

Reprinted from AOL.News