Take Flight

The 10,000 Facebook fan mark has been reached! We repeat, the 10,000 Facebook fan mark has been reached!

In less than a year 10,000 Traceurs from around the world have become fans of Take Flight on Facebook. We see this as a monumental achievement for Parkour globally and we couldn’t be happier to be bringing authentic Parkour wear to so many people around the world.

In return for your efforts, loyalty, excitement, and spreading the word about the page around Facebook we are having a huge sale as promised. The sale will be a no limits 25% OFF weekend event when everything in the TF store will be discounted by one quarter of its price. This will bring the price of Original Parkour Tees down to only $11, the price of Parkour Wings Tees and Vault Man Tees down to only $16, the Take Flight Gold Tee will be only $18.75, Original Parkour Pants will be only $24, and posters, DVDs, and other products down to similarly unbelievable and previously unseen prices!

We hope you take this time to celebrate with us and the momentum this time of milestone brings to worldwide Parkour. The details of the sale will be released right here on the Take Flight blog and also on our Facebook page so keep your ears open so you don’t miss out!

You guys have done it again! For the third week in a row you have accomplished the task of making 1,000+ interactions on our Facebook page! This means we are giving away more free Parkour clothing.

We'll be giving away this tee later this week!

Every week that fans make 1,000 or more interactions (Likes, comments, or posts) on the Take Flight Facebook page we give away free clothing. Because we reached 1,042 this week, you have another chance to win. Sometime this week we will be posting on our Facebook page regarding this opportunity. When we do, all you have to do is follow the directions (which will be “comment on this post”) and you’ll be entered. One commenter will be selected at random and we will contact them and let them know they’ve won!

Thank you everyone for interacting and spreading Parkour to your friends through Facebook. This is the #1 thing we do through our page, and we’re overjoyed to see everyone participating by critiquing, commenting, liking, sharing what we we post. Keep it up next week for another chance to win!

By popular demand we have recently expanded the Parkour Skyline Tee! As part of our first international clothing line, the Parkour Skyline Tee was originally introduced in only two colors: red and yellow. After two months we introduced a third version (navy) and in one fell swoop we have now have introduced 3 new colors all at once!

The three new colors of the Parkour Skyline Tee are charcoal, green, and white. With the three additional colors offered in the Parkour Skyline design, the tee is now available in 6 total varieties! The original Parkour Skyline shirt still costs only $19.95 and it ships within 24 hours, so if you’re looking for a Parkour-true design sporting the name of the discipline, you have no further to look than this one.

P.S. We’d like to recommend the charcoal version. Of all the colors this one looks especially amazing.

P.P.S. Just for reading our blog and finding this post here is a coupon code: PKsky3. Use it and receive $3 off the Parkour Skyline Tee in the color of your choice!

Today is the 234th birthday of the United States! Celebrated on July 4th of every year to commemorate the Independence of the United States from Britain in 1776, this is one of the most energy packed celebrations of the year in the United States filled with fireworks and BBQs, and, since the foundation of Parkour, countless community Parkour jams!

In order to celebrate the birthday of the USA we are having a two day 20% of sale! During the 4th and 5th of July we are releasing a 20% off coupon good on absolutely anything you purchase from the Take Flight Store including Parkour gear, magazines, posters, DVDs, Parkour clothing, Parkour tee shirts, hoodies, pants and more. Simply use promo code “PKindependence” at checkout and the savings will be immediately applied to your shopping cart!

Today the U.S. celebrates independence and freedom. But these two ideals are not specialized to the United States. In fact, independence and freedom are two very essential ideals that go hand in hand with the movement of Parkour. So whether you live in the U.S. and you are making special attention of the 4th of July with fireworks, BBQs, and PK jams, or whether you live in another country the 4th is just another day on the calendar, you too can take advantage of our celebration by taking 20% off everything in our store.

You’ve done it again! For the second week in a row we’ve had 1,206 interactions (“Likes” and comments) on our Facebook page. That means we are giving away more FREE* Parkour clothing!

This week we are giving away a free Parkour Wings Tee. All you have to do to enter the contest is comment on our Facebook page on the contest entry post we made. The winner will be randomly selected from those who comment and he/she will be given the Parkour Wings Tee of THEIR CHOICE! (there are 4 different color options)

Every week we get 1,000 Interactions on the Take Flight Facebook page we give away more PK apparel. With almost 10,000 fans on the page now we have reached a critical point where we expect to have 1,000 interactions every week. So stay connected to our page and spread the words to your friends. Winning FREE Parkour clothing has never been easier!

*Free international shipping IS included!

Today is the one year anniversary of the Take Flight International Clothing Launch! We couldn’t be happier for this day and what has been accomplished in the last year, not just for us, but more importantly for Parkour worldwide. In fact, the way we see it, if anything it is NOT us that has advanced as much as our advancement is a reflection of the growth Parkour has experienced around the globe.

With that in mind we wanted to take this time to look back on how far we’ve come since June 25, 2009. Here are a couple milestones to give some perspective:

• In the last year we’ve tripled our product offering through our site by adding new Parkour clothing and PK gear.
• We’ve released new shirt color combos for the Original Parkour Tee, the Parkour Wings Tee, the Parkour Skyline Tee, and the Take Flight City tee.
• We’ve added completely new clothing products including Parkour hoodies, PK thermals, and training pants.
• We’ve added the completely new category of “Gear” to our site and filled it with Parkour DVDs, Parkour posters, gift cards, and most recently magazines!
• Our Take Flight Facebook Fan Page has grown almost 10,000 fans!
• Shared more than 500 of the world’s best Parkour video through our Facebook page.
• We’ve been endorsed, worn, filmed by/at some of the best Traceurs around the world from Australia, to Vienna, from England to Russia, and from the USA to France, including the Red Bull 2010 Art of Motion competition in Vienna and the largest Parkour event in U.S. history via the Revolution Parkour Gym Grand Opening.
• We’ve partnered and sponsored some of the most well known and influential Parkour athletes and communities in the world including Texas Parkour, Parkour Egypt, Kinetic, Apex Parkour, Revolution Parkour, and Urban Vanguard.

With another year behind us and the next one beginning we are super excited with what we have store for the PK community including new clothing launches, new brands, and some huge athlete sponsorship announcements as well. We’re hoping you’ll be there with us as we continue this journey and continue our focus on Parkour and bringing Traceurs around the world the most authentic and highest quality Parkour clothing, gear, and products.

We have just launched two new t-shirts for female Traceurs! The two shirts are both versions of the Original Parkour Tee. One is the Pink Women’s Original Parkour Tee and the other is the Women’s Original Parkour Tee in white.

The pink and white versions of the Original Parkour Tee and made using our girls classic tee. They feature “Parkour” written down the right side of the shirt and are incredibly versatile and stylish tops for female Traceurs. What’s exceedingly special about these shirts is the color combos are “For Women Only” so to speak. We currently do not have a white or pink Original Parkour Tee for guys. It took us added effort to produce the new colors, but it was well worth it.

By way of our personal commitment and goal we are continuing to expand our Parkour clothing options for female Traceurs. Even though the number of male Traceurs far outnumber the number of female ones, the philosophy behind Parkour is that it is for everyone. And to us that means that whether there are 100,000 male Traceurs or just 100 female Traceurs, we are unwavering in our dedication to bringing all of them Parkour specific products to fit their needs. These two new shirts for girls are what it’s all about.

One of the first color combos we added to our line after our International Clothing Launch was the Parkour Wings Tee in an army version. When it came time for our Holiday Closeout we decided to discontinue the shirt in order to focus production on some of our other colors. However, soon after we did this received tons of feedback from Traceurs wanting us to re release the army version of the tee! We are proud to announce that this is exactly what we have done.

After selling for 3 months on our site, then spending 6 off, the Parkour Wings Tee – Army is now officially back in our store! The shirt features the classic Parkour Wings designs with a dig-down-deep army color scheme. Being the only army colored shirt in our Parkour clothing line, this tee is a great addition to your clothing whether you are looking for a new summer tee, or are already planning your back-to-school wardrobe.

There is no telling how long this shirt will be in stock. We’ve done our best to manufacture more than enough, but the pent-up demand could have these flying off the shelf. Offered in sizes Small through 2XL the shirt is also only $19.95, so get to the Take Flight Store and pick up this iconic tee up today!

Following is an article recently published yesterday in the L.A. Times discussing Parkour and its expected growth in the U.S.  Take Flight founder Adam Dunlap was interviewed for the article and is quoted in the piece.

________________________

Will the acrobatic street sport follow skateboarding’s trajectory and find its legs in the popular culture? Parkour fans and athletes say it’s just a matter of time.

June 20, 2010|By Adam Tschorn, Los Angeles Times

For a glimpse at one potential growth area in the action sports arena, look no further than the Westfield Culver City mall on a recent June afternoon, where a handful of young men clad in baggy sweat pants, slim-fitting T-shirts and ultra-lightweight sneakers take turns flinging themselves off the shopping center’s third-story mezzanine, leaping from level to level, before back-flipping, belly-sliding and bouncing to a stop on the ground floor of the atrium, to the cheers and wild applause of some 100 spectators.

It’s the taping of the June 11 season finale of MTV’s “Ultimate Parkour Challenge,” a six-episode series showcasing the practitioners of parkour, a street sport that’s part gymnastics, part stunt work, and all about moving from point A to point B by any means necessary even if that means careening over a coffee kiosk, piloting a Segway scooter while doing a handstand or propelling yourself through (yes, through) the back of a mall shopping cart.

If you’re unfamiliar with the name (which has its roots in the French word parcours, meaning “route”), you may have seen the human pinball effect in the opening chase scene of the 2006 James Bond film “Casino Royale,” in which parkour legend Sébastien Foucan plays a baddie who leaps over, under and through every imaginable obstacle in his path, before scampering up a construction crane and through the scaffolding of a building like Spider-Man to do battle with Daniel Craig.

More recently, Disney’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” featured acrobatic fight scenes that had the cast careening off walls and leaping off roofs in parkour-style moves. (David Belle, the Frenchman considered the founder of the sport, worked on that film as parkour stunt coordinator.)

At its most basic, parkour, which Belle developed in France in the late 1990s, consists of running along a route and negotiating any and every obstacle as efficiently as possible. Some purists argue that the phrase “freerunning” should be used when referring to the iteration of the discipline that incorporates theatrical flourishes such as flips and spins, but used here, parkour refers to both. From France, the sport spread to the U.K. and then to the U.S. in the early years of the new millennium.

Despite being a below-the-radar discipline with a community that ranges from an estimated couple of thousand hard-core practitioners nationwide to maybe 10 times that number who’ve tried it at least once, some involved in the sport think it’s headed from a niche physical fitness subculture into mass consciousness — and that it will happen this year or next.

“I think parkour is going to be twice as big as skateboarding — it’s going to be huge,” says Mark Toorock, a Washington, D.C., fitness trainer and parkour practitioner who founded an online community called American Parkour (APK) in 2005.

“Skateboarding is the $4 1/2- to $5-billion industry it is because it’s not just [for] people who skate,” Toorock notes, “but people like my uncle who’ve never gotten on a skateboard but still own a pair of Vans [skate shoes].”

Toorock uses the skate industry to explain why he’s not just making a leap worthy of a traceur (as parkour athletes are sometimes called) when he forecasts freerunning is about to become a major force in the action sports arena.

“Skateboarding first came out of surfing in the late ’60s,” he said, “but took until the late ’80s and ’90s to become what we know it as today. It took snowboarding about half that time to become an Olympic sport, and the next thing you have that’s similar to that is parkour — which has been out of France for about eight years — so it’s close to that point.

“Just search for ‘parkour’ on YouTube versus ‘snowboarding’ or ‘skateboarding’ and you’ll be surprised. That’s what makes me think things are ready to pop,” he said. (As of June 16, a “parkour” search returned 351,000 hits, “snowboarding” 245,000, and “skateboarding” 684,000.)

Victor Bevine, an executive producer of “Ultimate Parkour Challenge” and a co-founder (with David Thompson, also an executive producer on the show) of the recently created World Freerunning & Parkour Federation, shares that view of the future. “I actually think it can be twice as big,” Bevine said. “Everybody under the age of 18 knows what this is.”

Adam Dunlap, who started a parkour-inspired clothing line based in Beaverton, Ore., called Take Flight Apparel, is more naunced: “Can this be as big as skateboarding? The simple answer is yes. But the people in the parkour community have been saying that this is going to be the next big action sport for years. But it’s taking a lot longer than I thought.”

Parkour as a launchpad for soon-to-be popular lifestyle brands is far from a universal opinion, especially since no specialized equipment or clothing is actually needed. While many consider sturdy, lightweight running shoes a basic necessity ( K-Swiss launched the first parkour-specific shoe in 2007), some think barefoot is best. Pants are usually loose-fitting enough to allow unhindered movement and offer some protection from abrasion, although here personal choices include running shorts, baggy sweats modified to mid-calf and cargo pants (so maps and other gear can be stowed in the pockets). Tops are soft, lightweight T-shirts.

“As a subculture I don’t think it will go too far past rock climbing,” says Cliff Kravit, the founder of a California parkour community called PKCali. “I doubt it will even reach the popularity level of yoga.”

But, as anyone who has ever heard the words “downward dog” can tell you, yoga begat yoga mats and drawstring pants, yoga-centric sweat towels and even yoga-appropriate tank tops with built-in sports bras. Now, just imagine the potential for the yoga community if MTV had decided to run six episodes of something called “Ultimate Yoga Challenge.” Kravit, who teaches a weekly class locally, said he notices a surge in popularity every time there’s media focus on parkour. “After ‘ Prince of Persia,’ the class was overflowing,” he said.

That brings us back around to the boys — and it is mostly, though not exclusively, a male sport — literally bouncing off the walls of Westfield Culver City on a Wednesday afternoon, a nine-pack of the sport’s best and brightest stars: Daniel Ilibaca, Ryan Doyle, Tim “Livewire” Shieff, Pip Andersen, Michael Turner, Ben Jenkin, King David, Daniel Arroyo and Oleg Vorslav, wrangled together by the WFPF to introduce the discipline (or a version of it, anyway) to the MTV generation.

MTV first aired “UPC” as a one-hour special in October, then picked it up for the six-episode run, which started airing in May. The show tries to balance the philosophy of parkour (which eschews the notion of competition) with the flash of extreme sports and graft it onto the story arc of an elimination-based reality show by pitting six of a rotating cast of nine against one another in each episode for a panel of judges.

While Bevine and Thompson have earned detractors within the community for giving parkour a competitive element, they’ve also managed to expose it to 1 million impressionable eyeballs. Which makes the zip-front hoodies, T-shirts and long-sleeve T’s emblazoned with the WFPF shield and the mantra “Know Obstacles, Know Freedom” noteworthy. Some are worn by the show’s crew, some by the athletes themselves.

“The shirts are mostly giveaways,” Bevine said during a break in the Culver City taping on June 9. “But this is what we’re really excited about.” With that, he bent down, pulled off his right shoe and brandished it for inspection.

Weighing in at 9.4 ounces each, the KO (“Know Obstacles”) Parkour Shoe feels like holding a piece of balsa wood (“It literally floats on water,” Bevine says). He points to the single piece of leather around the toe box that he says makes the shoe more durable, a sole that supposedly provides just the right amount of traction for the traceur, and a retail price of $39.95, an important factor, since shoes engaged in hard-core parkour get so much wear and tear, they need to be replaced every month and a half. (A fact acknowledged in the slogan: “the best shoe you will ever destroy.”)

The WFPF website includes glowing testimonials from the star athletes (“Perfect grip … the lightest freerunning shoes I’ve ever worn,” Shieff is quoted as saying). Bevine said the shoe was off to a good start. “We started selling them a few days ago and sold 400 pairs in the first three days.”

As with other issues, the parkour community has a difference of opinion on the idea of using the discipline to move merchandise and make money. Kravit thinks it runs completely counter to everything the sport stands for (“Telling you what clothes are right for parkour is putting you in a box,” he says), while Bevine and company see themselves as providing an environment and an infrastructure for the emerging sport as it finds its legs in the popular culture. “We’re helping them with the storytelling part,” said Francis Lyons, an executive producer of “UPC.” “But those guys are the stars. It’s going to go wherever they want it to.”

The crowd gathered at the Westfield Culver City shopping center for the taping doesn’t seem to suffer from the same conflicts. Several of the tweens and teens watching with slack-jawed awe are already sporting parkour-related T-shirts.

Three of them, friends Matt Leonoudakis, 16, of Northridge, Kenji Kang, 15, of Canoga Park, and Cameron Cudiamat, 16, of Grenada Hills, take parkour classes at White Lotus Martial Arts Center in Northridge. Leonoudakis wears a red T-shirt, with the word parkour in white letters across the chest, and several tiny men in silhouette vaulting over the letters. “I made it myself on the Internet,” he said.

Cudiamat’s white T-shirt depicts a man back-flipping over a city skyline that spells out the phrase “I’d rather be freerunning.” His was a gift made by a friend.

When asked if they’d buy parkour-related gear, Leonoudakis bobbed his head enthusiastically. “I already ordered a pair of those new KOs,” he said. “Have you seen those? They’re going to be here in 12 weeks. I can’t wait.”

Asked about the appeal of parkour, Leonoudakis didn’t hesitate a second.

“It’s like skateboarding,” he said. “Only without the skateboard.”

Spiked has joined forces with Parkour Generations to launch the first ever authentic magazine dedicated to Parkour! The result is an England based quarterly publication that includes articles, training tips, technical insights, and a Parkour perspective from some of the most respected Traceurs in the world including (already) original Traceurs Sebastien Foucan and Stephane Vigroux. The magazine also includes spotlights on PK communities, as well as a constantly growing variety of new features for the worldwide Parkour community to learn from and enjoy.

After being contacted by Spiked regarding their undertaking and their connection with Parkour Generations, we spoke with the directors about the endeavor and knew we wanted to be integrally involved in the promotion and distribution of the magazine. We discussed different options and what has resulted is a distribution arrangement where we are now officially selling Spiked Magazine through the Take Flight store! With Spiked Magazine now for sale via TakeFlightApparel.com, this means that Traceurs across the U.S. can receive copies of the magazine faster and for a cheaper price due to our U.S. based shipping center.

We are extremely excited to be working with Spiked to bring this Parkour magazine to Traceurs in the U.S. and around the globe! If you haven’t had a chance to check out the magazine you can read more information about it on the Spiked website at wwww.GetSpiked.co.uk and pick up the a copy of the newest Parkour issue here!