Sam Ser wrote a great article including an interview with Sebastien Foucan. My favorite quotes from the article come from the interviewed Traceur "Denis" - "On the contrary," he says with a grin, popping up,
unscathed, after landing with a roll that diverts the force of impact,
"I'm far more careful than the average person." - Another great quote "In our world right now, there is very little
discretionary time for children, and there is way too much programmed
activity as opposed to the freedom to do what they want. Boys find this
freedom by just going out in their teens and trying to break out from a
very boring set of environments and opportunities," explains Roger
Hart, of the Children's Environments Research Group at the City
University of New York. Sam contacted American Parkour, unfortunately we weren't able to make the connection to participate in the article. Check out the complete article here .
NPR will be airing a piece about the University of Michigan's Parkour Club today, Jan 21. The feature will air once during 'Morning Edition', and once during 'All Things Considered'. This should put them at approximately 7:30AM and between 4:50PM - 5:45PM (EST). Go here for a schedule.
To listen to NPR online, go here .
Jams are what we call it when a bunch of people get together to do Parkour. San Francisco Parkour does a lot to help promote parkour in a very positive way in the San Francisco Bay area, and recently they've started having regularly scheduled jams to get people out moving. Read more for a brief description of the Jam by NoSole and some pictures. Update - Check out the Video!
We unfortunately have no choice but to suspect foul play in the Picture of the Year contest. It's sad that people have decided to support their friends in a way that is outside the spirit of the contest, IE each APK member gets one vote per day. We are undecided how to treat this, but most likely APK staff and the Tribe will simply decide on a winner, that winner will get the K-SWISS prize as well as the APK prize. Read more to see the numbers behind the voting scandal.
This past weekend the guys at Texas Parkour did a performance at a corporate event for Sherwin Williams paints. Read more for some comments from Matthew Lee Willis of Texas Parkour and a link to the video.
Channel 4 UK has just re-released the famous Mike Christie "Jump" Documentaries. Jump London was a huge factor in the spread of Parkour outside of France. APK is the sole US importer of Jump London and Jump Britain. Please be advised that these discs are now Region 2 encoded, we cannot guaranty compatibility with your player. APK Stuff Online Store .
Recently, Amanda Henry (phytolith ) - who is an assistant instructor at Primal Fitness- went to Australia. There she hooked up with some of the guys from PKAUS.com. Read more for a brief description of her trip and a link to the photos.
There is a great article on Parkour on Sports Illustrated.com. Dan Iaboni and others come across very well in the article by Jon Wertheim. The article infers that I don't care about the roots of Parkour and goes on to cut short a quote about David Belle - I'll finish the quote to avoid any confusion. I said that David Belle pushes the envelope of human development, but he's also 35 and lives with his mom, which to me signifies that he is only succesful in certain dimensions. Of course I don't know why David lives with his mom, this quote was part of a larger conversation and certainly no offense was meant.
Kate Rosenblatt wrote a nice article in DC magazine. Kate came and tried a workout at Primal Fitness and checked out some of the classes. The photographer Mark Gong is a very cool guy and had some neat ideas for shots, we're hoping to post some of the ones that didn't make it later, as we like them better than the ones that did make it! There is no online version we could find, so check out a scan here . Thanks to everyone in the Primal Crew who came out for the photo shoot!
Ozzi and Jason from the Urban Current Clan in Hawaii recently auditioned and were selected to appear in a McDonald's commercial. Click here to check out a site that Ozzi's been very hard at work on, Hawaii PK. Read more to find out more about the auditions.
