Over the weekend and I'm shocked that I somehow didn't hear about this earlier a group of 337 Oaklanders broke the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous soul train. This all happened Saturday at DeFremery Park in West Oakland, as KTVU reports, and the event featured some original Soul Train dancers as well as actor Paul Mooney.
The previous certified record of 298 dancers was set in 2012 in Philadelphia, but Oakland's soul train was a full 39 dancers longer than that. (It looks like a 2014 record tried to be set in Goodyear, Arizona, however, with 426 dancers, however the Contra Costa Times reports that the Oakland soul train dance was certified by a Guinness official, and therefore will stand.)
The World Record-breaking effort has been organized over the last few months, dubbed The OakTrain, as part of an effort to create activities for local families in the park, and it was a fundraiser to support a five-week summer camp at the park for local kids.
For those who were not children of the 70s, the introduction to Soul Train may have come as late as 2013 when people started setting old Soul Train footage to the Daft Punk album. Below, in case you somehow missed it, "Lose Yourself to Dance" and "Get Lucky," overlaid on Soul Train.
