Chicago footwork battles use randomly chosen neutral judges from outside the competing crews to prevent favoritism

The talk describes the DIY footwork battle format Rashad and Spinn ran in Chicago for the three years before this 2012 talk. Events ran weekly in rented, unlicensed spaces (‘underground, no license type stuff’). To keep competition fair, judges were random neutrals deliberately chosen from outside the competing crews so there would be ‘no favoritism.’ Battles could run 6+ hours. The economics were community-run: a $5 entry fee times a crowd of around 200 formed the prize pool, which went entirely to the winners — the organisers took nothing, framing it as an alternative to street life (‘instead of just banging on the streets’). This self-funded, transparently-judged event infrastructure was the institutional base of footwork.

Examples

Format: $5 entry × ~200 people → winner’s prize pool; random judges from outside the crews; battles lasting ~6 hours; run every Sunday for about three years until the venue lost its space.

Assessment

Describe the footwork battle format: entry fee, crowd size, judging, prize distribution, and duration. What was the organisers’ stated social purpose?