Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

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Catch me if you can, you cheeky monkey Parkour practitioner.

Drats, one of the regrets of getting old is I know I’ll never be a traceur.

You know, one of those Parkour guys who leaps and bounds and jumps across the urban landscape like it’s a private jungle gym.

I’d be the one clinging to the roof ledge by my fingertips or smashing my leg on a wall railing or probably just tripping up the stairs to the Vancouver Public Library. Non, the life of a traceur is beyond me now.

Considered by the purists as a recreational activity rather than a sport, Parkour (sometimes abbreviated to PK) or l’art du déplacement, originated in France.

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Can you see me hanging from the side of a building by my fingertips. That would be a sound no, I think.

The aim is to move from point A to point B as efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body. It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment — from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls.

While parkour has been around since the late 90s, in Vancouver parkour became prominent in about 2003. The District of West Vancouver now offers parkour classes.

Alec Wilkinson’s recent New Yorker article No Obstacles: Navigating the world by leaps and bounds is a good primer about parkour.

Here’s a YouTube video that shows Vancouver and some of its urban landscape from a traceur’s viewpoint.

Here’s another couple of YouTube video clips featuring the Vancouver Parkour scene.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 11th, 2007 at 8:54:16 PM and is filed under HMmmm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.