Topic: Parkour in the Central Florida Future

[Argon]

Hi all. I've been running on campus here at UCF in Orlando for about eight or nine months now and this last friday, when I picked up the campus newspaper, I was shocked and amazed to see a front-page, front-and-back-fold story about parkour! The UCF Future has a circulation of around 50,000 students and faculty, so it's pretty exciting.

The article is called "Hoppy Feet" (link at end of post), and features members of the Rhenze crew, who are very highly skilled but unfortunately very disconnected from the parkour community, even to the point that I am rarely able to get into contact with them!

They are a great group of guys, and many of them are very technically skilled. As the article explains, one of thier videos was ranked in the top 5 out of thousands entered in a Yahoo talent competition, and they went to New York to compete live. I will say, however, that thier style focuses much more on large technical jumps and mavuenvers than on longer, creative parkour runs. They term themselves free-runners because many of them have martial arts backgrounds and they like to throw in a little flare now and again.

As for the article, it is more-or-less accurate in its history of parkour, except for its interesing conclusion that it "originated in Vietnam among French soldiers, [and] was founded by Sebastien Foucan and David Belle" (Chronological problems aside, what were David and Sebastian doing in Vietnam?). Anyways, it dosn't make enough errors to make it a bad article. Already, I can see that some people are interested in learning more about it, and I'm very hopeful that we'll be getting more traceurs involved in the art here soon.

http://media.www.centralfloridafuture.com/media/storage/paper174/news/2007/01/26/News/Hoppy.Feet-2678987.shtml?sourcedomain=www.centralfloridafuture.com&MIIHost=media.collegepublisher.com

[bobbshields]

Its a good article. Thanks for posting it.

Though as a martial artist, I hate being called a ninja.  But they're right, it is something that most people relate to for some reason.
~Bobb

[dak]

Its a good article. Thanks for posting it.

Though as a martial artist, I hate being called a ninja.  But they're right, it is something that most people relate to for some reason.
~Bobb

You know whats worse then being called a ninja....being called a skater with no skateboard.....oOOOoo i hate that so much!!!

[bobbshields]

You know whats worse then being called a ninja....being called a skater with no skateboard.....oOOOoo i hate that so much!!!

Yes yes, i didn't even think about skating without a skateboard.  Especially when the 1 and only time i ever skateboarded, I almost killed myself.  (Big long downhill, fell off and landed on the back of my head).  Plus, skating without a skateboard- i'm reasonably sure that such an action would defy the laws of physics.

I guess that means that every awesome activity has an non-awesome association with it, though I do not intend to trash them for calling themselves ninjas.  To each his own.

~Bobb

I know that this is completely off the original topic.  Hoorah.

[dak]

omg bob this dude said the dumbest thing to me. I konged this small wall thing and this guy goes. Whoa, i didn't know you can olli without a skateboard. I was like, u didn't know u could cause you can't. And i just continued training.

[bobbshields]

omg bob this dude said the dumbest thing to me. I konged this small wall thing and this guy goes. Whoa, i didn't know you can olli without a skateboard. I was like, u didn't know u could cause you can't. And i just continued training.

Lol.  I remembering my friends who skateboarded in high school.  I never caught on to the terminology, but I don't remember any skateboarding tricks that resemble parkour.  Other than the obvious, 'I'm up in the air at a high speed' factor.

Something funny- I always thought skateboarding was too dangerous for me.  haha  Now I love hoping down flights of stairs and doing 8 ft. drops off of parking decks into mulch.
~Bobb

Well, I'm off to train. 

[joesmo]

I am glad more people are finding our about this in Florida. I haven't found anyone around me who free-runs. I live in Melboune.

[aggreenvln]

"We want to expose the art in the U.S. since our country is always the last to get everything, it seems,"

Hah... haha... that's uh.. heh... *chuckle*.

Overall, pretty good article .

[chipset]

I never even tried standing on a scateboard