Some Oklahoma University students were recently the subject of an article and video news piece at their school. I think that overall the message is very positive and is a great piece as far as the positive promotion of Parkour and Freerunning in society. The article covers all "the basics"; unfortunately it does so in choppy little clips, one sentence at a time instead of all at once. The video documentary has more flips than the Beale Street Flippers ... and talks about "Parkour" the whole time, which is pretty misleading. This is distressing considering that towards the middle / end of the video they do a pretty nice job of describing the difference between Parkour and Free Running. I think it would be a super piece if only the first two minutes wasn't there, and they started with the difference between Parkour and Freerunning. For a piece that promotes both I think it is a very positive piece, but definitely misleading, as people will surely associate flips=parkour.

Article   Video

Every once in a while I make something in the wrong size, or I make an extra. Now it's time to "clean out the closet" and let these babies fly free on Ebay. There are about 5 T's and Hoodies up there, all starting at LESS THAN COST. If you've been waiting to pick up an APK shirt or hoodie, now could be your time. Sizes and colors limited to what is displayed there. For more colors and sizes please visit the APK STUFF online store. Also listed on ebay is one of the last two APK Classic T-shirts (medium, black), possibly one of the last two ever. One will be going to a contest winner (keep an eye on WOD) and one will go to the ebay high bidder.

Over the summer, I was approached by Law Week Colorado to do an interview for a parkour article. Immediately I was hesitant due to the nature and audience of the publication. However, after talking with the reporter, his good intentions were clear. The result is a short but informational article on parkour featuring an interview by Demon. The article portrays parkour in a very respectful manner to an important audience. However, the use of copyrighted and non-Colorado photos is a little puzzling. Read more for a scan of the article.

At the end of September I was lucky enough to spend a few days out in Denver and Vail Colorado. In Denver I got to train with Demon, Sogseal, and Kanagasai. I also got to meet Lyman Smith and Jon Clark of Eagle Ridge Media. Denver is easily one of the best cities I have been to for Parkour / Freerunning. Read on to hear about my day out there and see the pictures.

Our site was brought down today after being slow for most of the day. We have virtual private hosting, which means we have a section of a server. Someone else on our sever went WAY over their bandwidth :)  The problem now is that the databases have some errors, and can't be fixed until a utility is finished running. This means the forums will be down until later tonight or tomorrow morning. What a great time to go train!!

Whew, for about an hour there it was looking pretty hairy with the forums, corrupt tables, a settings file blown away ... fortunately, forums just like this one, but for forums :) were there to help me out. Just so everyone knows, APK has donated (in the past not now) to the people who make the free software that we so appreciateively run on. We also leave the "Joomla" and "SMF" logos on the bottom of their respective pages to help promote those orgs.

Kaos has criticized my treatment of this article in this thread on our forums. After reading what he's said, I agree with him, and wanted to update this. There are a lot of mishandlings and mistreatments in this article that shouldn't be tolerated as "good", "acceptable", or even "favorable", and I should have been more direct and paid them more attention than I originally did. Please read that thread to find the many errors/ problems which Kaos has pointed out in the article.

 Here is what I had originally said "Ugh!! Say the wrong thing once and it will come back to haunt you 1,003 times. Anyway, aside from ripping a 3 year old quote of mine off the internet, the article seems to be favorable :)"

Leon is a student at Virginia Tech and he's leading an effort to get more people involved with Parkour and Freerunning. He was recently interviewed for a great article in the school's paper, the Collegiate Times. The thing I like most about this article is that it clearly defines Parkour and Freerunning, without denigrating either. Way to go Leon!! "Read more" for an article from Leon about his experience starting a Parkour club at VT, and also a copy of the school's article.