PK and Fly
Parkour is one serious sport. Mixing urban athleticism with an appreciation of architecture, it’s about connecting with the concrete and, with any luck, landing on your feet. Now, as corporations come calling, traceurs, as they’re called, must decide which way to run.
BY Jaclyn Law
Photography by Alex “Wolfbeta” Tsiboulski
Ferret sprints toward a railing overlooking a staircase in the concrete playground behind the College Park condominium/shopping complex in downtown Toronto. He vaults over the railing onto a landing about eight feet below, dropping into a squat as lightly as a cat. Then he leaps up, leans over the next railing, grasps its thin black bars to his chest, and, in one fluid, breathtaking move he leans forward and flips over onto the concrete another eight feet below. Without pausing for breath, he tears away as if pursued by rabid pit bulls.
A skinny guy with a shaved head, Ferret is a 22-year-old network administrator whose real name is Ben Wastle, and a diehard practitioner of parkour. Also called free-running or PK, this show of urban athletics is taking over the streets and alleys of cities around the world. To devotees, also known as traceurs or free-runners, cities are giant obstacle courses. Railings, ramps, fences and rooftops are all fair game. The goal is to connect several moves in a fluid, unbroken string while running as if your life depends on it.
Parkour is a seriously intense workout. It’s also a hands-on, down ’n’ dirty way to see the urban landscape in a way that most people never will. Ask any traceur and he (most are male) will tell you parkour has changed his relationship with the city he lives in. Dan “Danno” Iaboni, 23, one of Ferret’s parkour buddies, has developed an appreciation for the city’s hard edges. “Parkour has opened most people’s eyes to the vast array of creative architecture and buildings we have in Toronto. It’s also given us insight into the way urban planners think. We can actually call this our home because we’ve explored the whole thing.” More than anything, parkour is an expression of freedom—the ability to move freely in an environment that constantly sets up barriers. Danno grins like a kid on Christmas morning. “I can go anywhere.”
And while parkour may be dangerous, it isn’t reckless or random—every situation is carefully assessed, each move executed with precision and an awareness of the laws of physics. It isn’t about being flashy. It’s about curiosity and seeing possibilities—looking at a lamppost or bus shelter as an extension of the sidewalk. To hear these guys explain it, anyone can do parkour. “You can be out of shape and non-athletic, but that’s OK because the basics of parkour are so simple,” says Danno. “Running, jumping, rolling, balancing. You just limit yourself at the beginning to smaller obstacles. As long as you keep moving, that’s all that matters.”
Ferret, who claims to be afraid of only “women and heights,” has been parkouring for more than two years, but only recently found Danno and other like-minded friends through pkTO, Toronto’s parkour network. With about 200 members, pkTO is the largest group in Canada. (Montreal’s pk514 has 120 members, and there are fledgling groups in Ottawa and Vancouver.) But Toronto’s ugly, wet winter has kept Ferret and his friends in hibernation for months. Aside from a few sessions at a rented gymnasium, training opportunities have been rare, so when I say I’d like to watch the crew in action, they literally jump at the chance.
I meet Ferret, Danno and six other guys from pkTO, aged 17 to 23, near the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. I try to keep up as they defy gravity—and common sense—by scampering over recycling bins, doing Matrix-style wall runs, scaling sculptures and vaulting railings with Olympic finesse. They’ll repeat some moves many times to perfect their technique, making each action as sharp and clean as possible as they bend and shape themselves to the street furniture. As I watch, I can’t help but think of the words of Bruce Lee: “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”
Like martial arts, parkour has been called a discipline—a means to self-discovery and self-improvement. Aesthetics is as important as agility. It’s not enough to pull off a move—traceurs try to do it with grace, originality and style. “It’s all about confidence, conquering fears and achieving flow,” says Alex “Wolfbeta” Tsiboulski, 18. (The internet played a major role in the spread of parkour and, in a nod to the net, traceurs use their online handles even on the street.)
Parkour also inspires the kind of devotion that martial arts does. Those who like parkour like it a lot. Many traceurs consider parkour a lifestyle, a way of thinking. When not climbing walls and crossing gaps, they have lively discussions on parkour message boards, swap amateur parkour videos and network with groups in other cities. Three weeks after we met, Danno, regarded as one of pkTO’s leaders, went to New York for a parkour summit.
With groups in Germany, Australia, Croatia, Portugal and Japan, parkour has become a global phenomenon. But it started as the hobby of a couple of kids in France. When David Belle and Sebastian Foucan, widely credited as parkour’s pioneers, were teens tearing around the suburbs of Paris in the ’80s, they couldn’t have guessed how popular their pastime would become. They named it “parkour” after parcours du combatant, the obstacle courses of the French military (Belle’s father was a soldier). Interest in parkour exploded in 2003 with the release of the British documentary Jump London, which starred Foucan. Now in his early 30s, he likens parkour to children’s games and laments the fact that, as we get older, we forget how to play.
Along with the sport’s burgeoning popularity, of course, come corporations looking to cash in on its appeal to youth. Many traceurs consider it inevitable. “I don’t agree with the commercialization of parkour, but it’s already too late,” says Jonathan “Drunkm0nk” Rooney, 25, leader of Montreal’s pk514. Some believe that if they don’t take advantage of the sport’s marketing potential, somebody else will. Others don’t mind sponsorship, because it gives parkour the recognition they feel it deserves. One of Danno’s goals is to find a sponsor for pkTO.
Adidas was one of the first brands to get in the game—it sponsors Urban FreeFlow, a parkour web portal. In January, the company launched a parkour shoe in Europe, the Adidas Hyperride (in Canada, it’s called the Megaride). The mesh shoe features “the world’s first full-length structured midsole,” and is meant to be “half landing strip and half launching pad” to help traceurs “move faster, cut quicker [and] land smoother.”
Danno, an especially dedicated traceur who trains daily and makes mincemeat of three or four pairs of runners a year, doesn’t think much of the $150 shoe. He’s skeptical of the mesh top (“it would just rip apart in time”) and the material used for the sole (“it’s the very gummy kind of grip that wears out really fast”). His verdict: “I’m not going to spend that much on shoes I’m just going to destroy.” He also points out that a specialized parkour design might prolong the life of the shoe, but won’t improve the skills of its wearer.
Nevertheless, the Hyperride is a harbinger of the likely onslaught of parkour merchandise—all of it unnecessary, given the nature of the sport (besides shoes, all you need are comfortable clothes and a sense of adventure). But, like skateboarding, parkour has a sellable image and has already been used to promote Toyota, Siemens mobile phones and Merrell shoes in Europe. Comparisons between the two sports are unavoidable. The media often describe parkour as “skateboarding without a skateboard,” an analogy that disgusts traceurs. Many of them distance themselves from the flashy flips, grabs and “sick tricks” that are integral to skateboarding, feeling that they don’t belong in a sport whose ultimate goal is to achieve flow (Danno calls these moves “wasted motion”). Secondly, traceurs worry that if parkour is packaged and sold the way skateboarding has been—think Airwalk hoodies, the X Games and Tony Hawk video games—its spirit will be corrupted. (In fact, there already is a parkour video game, Free Running, for Playstation Portable. Players can dress up their characters in Adidas gear, including the Hyperride shoe.)
Skateboarding culture is also notorious for graffiti and vandalism, which, so far, don’t have a place in parkour—the sport may be about reclaiming the city streets, but it’s done without leaving a mark. Many traceurs are former skateboarders who found that culture unnecessarily negative. “One new guy asked, ‘Are the people as mean as they are in skateboarding?’” Wolfbeta says.
And this may be where the biggest difference lies. Parkour has a deeply entrenched sense of community that sets it apart from other sports. “There’s no competition at all, nobody makes fun of you because you can’t do something,” says Ferret. Danno adds, “Everyone wants to see everyone else achieve and get better.” (He also says that Canadian traceurs are known worldwide as being the friendliest.) There is a genuine all-for-one ethos among traceurs—they welcome beginners, push each other to new heights (physical and otherwise) and crash at each others’ homes. They also stop each other from taking stupid chances.
Injuries do happen, of course. A guy in Montreal recently knocked out his front teeth flipping off a picnic table. Wolfbeta wore a thumb splint for two months after a monkey vault (so called because the move makes you look like an ape) gone bad. Veterans like Danno have tendonitis in their knees. Drunkm0nk once woke up in the hospital with six stitches after falling 15 feet off a roof and slamming his head against a rock (an accident that was “heard all around the globe”). And, tragically, two people reportedly died after imitating stunts they saw in a movie.
There is a lexicon of basic, ground-level parkour moves, such as wall runs, cat leaps and lazy vaults, although many traceurs have no use for names. Unfortunately, much of the media attention has focused on the big showy moves—like the roof jumps. “Now there are a lot of guys who just want to jump off stuff,” says Wolfbeta. “The first thing we teach people is how to fall, how to roll. If you don’t master the basics, you’ll bail every time.”
With this in mind, I watch nervously as the guys, led by Danno, cross the ledge that runs down the side of Sidney Smith Hall, a sprawling academic building that has all the charm of an army bunker. The ledge is easily 15 feet off the ground. As the traceurs make their way to the back, avoiding the building’s sharp edges, someone inside pounds on a window. Ferret shouts, “Security’s coming any minute!”
Parkour isn’t illegal unless the traceurs are trespassing or damaging property. Surprisingly, pkTO members say that cops and security guards usually leave them alone (except for the time Ferret vaulted a slow-moving car driven by an off-duty cop). In any case, they’re rarely in one spot long enough to attract attention. Drunkm0nk actually approaches cops and explains what he’s up to. “I’m trying to educate the police for the next generation of traceurs, so they don’t judge us as cat burglars.”
After three hours, the guys are getting tired. Before heading over to Chinatown for a snack, they make another stop, giving Ferret a chance to jump one last hurdle. Eight weeks ago, he broke his foot while doing a monkey vault over a walkway behind Robarts Library, dropping six feet and landing hard on a curbstone. He must clear the same jump in order to move on, mentally. His buddies stand around him, alternately offering encouragement and good-natured ribbing. One jokes, “If you get this, I’ll give you 10 bucks.”
Ferret takes several minutes to prepare himself. Then, when he’s ready to go, he has to stop himself a couple of times to make way for people who want to use the walkway to, well, walk. Finally, he flings himself forward. His hands make contact with the top of the wall and he pulls his knees to his chest. His dark form sails up and over the wall, clearing the curb and landing with a thump on the sidewalk. He straightens up and screams “Bitch!” at the offending stone while his cronies applaud and I release the breath I’ve been holding for an eternity. “Do it again,” Danno says. Ferret doesn’t argue. He pulls it off again, faster this time. Borrowing from Bruce Lee once more, the goal is to “play, but play seriously.”
For more photographs of traceurs in action, pick up This at your favourite newsstand
