Question: What do you get when you mix skatebording (minus the actual skateboards) with martial arts, gymnastics, suburban boredom and some French joie de vivre?

You get "parkour." Or rather le parkour, as they say in the fine land of croissants, café créme and pomme frites.

The New York Times' Sunday Style section recently devoted a feature article to parkour just as the French phenom establishes a foothold in North America and seems poised to become the next big subcultural urban-athletic trend in the United States.

Also known as "freerunning" in the United Kingdom, where parkour has firmly taken hold and spawned a large underground following, the sport, if one can call it that, involves navigating urban terrain and architectural obstacles.

One does parkour by employing a single (or combinations of ) physical movement such as jumping, climbing and twisting one's body and playing off railings, walls, stairs or platforms.

The simplest moves can be something as common as leaping from a low wall onto the ground and falling into a prat roll. At its riskiest, the most adept parkour practitioners traverse steep, angled rooftops and leap from building to building.

In recent years, Parkour has spread throughout continental Europe and the United Kingdom, with British practitioners --those who do parkour call themselves "traceurs"--providing a plethora of English-language resources, via numerous websites, for inspired American youth eager to immerse themselves in the ways of freerunning.

One of the best websites is Urban Freeflow, which notes that it is "Run by traceurs for traceurs." There you'll find loads of links, photos, tips on parkour techniques and--best of all--short homegrown digital video clips documenting parkour moves by various traceur crews throughout the U.K.

Parkour, which means "circuit" in French, is not new. It was developed 16 years ago in Lisses, France, by a couple of understimulated suburban teenagers named Sebastien Foucan and David Belle. Although they are no longer a team, both founders are still relatively active traceurs. Foucan recently appeared in an entertaining and energetic commercial for the Scion in which he does his parkour thing to Spiderman-like effect. Belle has also parlayed his parkour fame into television work. He appeared in a BBC promo a couple of years ago.

The Times' Anna Bahney writes:

These days, Mr. Foucan, who is now engaged to be married and is living in the Parisian suburb of Évry with a 1-year-old daughter, has taken a more philosophical view of his sport-cum-art, which he refers to as a "discipline." He said he is working to carve out a future for parkour that includes the construction of training parks but no tournaments

For her story, Bahney hung out with a couple of infant freerunning "gangs" in town from the New York City suburbs. The reporter tagged along with them as they explored the parkour potential of Manhhattan's urban jungle-gym, from Grand Central Station down to Wall Street. One of the gangs Bahney followed is called the Gravity Pac, the other the Street Ninjas.

As semi-regular habitués of the Financial District on weekends, Air Massive can attest to the fact that the area surrounding Wall Street seems to have a lot going for it as a freerunners' paradise, at least more so than Midtown Manhattan.

On weekends, the Financial District is virtually a ghost town, so would-be traceurs would have a lot of space to themselves, though they might be competing with skateboarders who have long used the mini-palazzo around the First Precinct Police Building near Water Street as a kind of sanctuary (it's public property--so no hassle from corporate security guards.)

But here's an inside tip for you budding parkouristes, if you will. The Massive has done a little scoping out of ideal parkour playgrounds in Lower Manhattan and surveyed some local parkour wannabes as to their thoughts on the subject. In fact, we've even felt inspired enough to give the freerunning thaaaaang a try.

The consensus is that two places that might be great for for parkour are (1.) the South Street Seaport complex at Pier 17 (check it out here), which is a multi-layered structure with lots of railings and outdoor staircases; and (2) the Winter Garden complex with its huge ampitheater-like stairs, imported palm trees and brass railings at Battery Park City, just across the street from the World Trade Center site.

The big question, however, is Will parkour or freerunning amount to much of anything in the United States? Are we witnessing the beginning of a trend--something of some lingering substance? Or merely a fad? (speaking of which, remember flash mobs?) Or is parkour the birth of a U.S. movement akin to the one in the U.K.?

Whateva the case, we're confident that sadly, sooner or later, someone is going to get hurt freerunning in Lower Manhattan. And when they do, this being New York City, there will be a big, fat, ugly lawsuit. That's one osbtacle nobody wants to have to jump over, not even the world's fittest traceur.

--Le Bob

|

RELATED LINKS

+ Toyota Scion Commercial
+ The Art of Le Parkour [BBCi]
+ New Way for Teenagers to See if They Bounce [NY Times]
+ Urban Freeflow Website
+ South Street Seaport
+ PKUSA: Urban Freeflow's U.S. Parkour Message Board