Parkour

Young kids love running. There is no elementary school teacher that hasn’t had to say, at one point or another, “No running in the halls!”. They also love martial arts. If they didn’t love martial arts, shows like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” (the TV show not that horrible excuse for a movie) and any of the “Power Rangers” series (is that even on TV anymore?), wouldn’t have been as popular as they were. When you combine the two into one activity you get the city running sport “Parkour” or “Freerunning”.

This was brought into the mainstream media in things like the opening scene of “Casino Royal”, where Bond chases a guy through a construction site. The guy running away uses parkour to try to escape while Bond just kind of...runs through things. The video game “Mirror’s Edge” is entirely based on the idea of parkour. The story is based on people who run across the rooftops of a futuristic society to deliver the only “free” information and take down a murderer.

Of course there are plenty of people who have uploaded videos, both good and bad, who have uploaded videos to Youtube of them “freerunning”. There are even videos that teams of people who have banded together to practice, train, compete, and also some who are hired to take part in different films or TV shows. 

It’s a really intriguing and fun for me to watch when people do it well. It brings out some of the excitement that I felt when I was a kid. That doesn’t mean I’m going to run out and try doing this though.