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.

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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.”

Grappling with gravity

Revolution Parkour turns urban architecture into playground and offers enthusiasts an extreme challenge

By Ed Johnson – The Beaverton Valley Times,

You’ve probably seen parkour, but didn’t know what to call it.

The French sport jams breathtaking athleticism into the urban environment; its practitioners sprinting, jumping and weaving in and around the things we normally take for granted. That railing on the stairs may look like a good place for your hand, but in parkour, it’s also a good place for a foot-launching jump.

The parkour-thinking mind sees urban architecture as, literally, a playground.

Adam Dunlap is a 23-year-old, life-long Beaverton resident who runs Revolution Parkour and teaches a twice-weekly class in the discipline. He wants the public to know that the sport is not just insane stunts like those seen at the beginning of the James Bond film “Casino Royale” — it’s a serious training method.

“I think a lot of people see parkour incorrectly,” Dunlap says. “They haven’t made the connection that this is something people do.”

Dunlap admits that what first interested him in parkour were the incredible YouTube videos of elite practitioners like parkour-founder David Belle. But, as he focused his craft, his insight into the sport changed.

“The ideas of movement and how to move quickly are built into us,” Dunlap says. “You take from parkour what you want.”

Craziest thing you’ve ever seen

Parkour can best be described as an outgrowth of a particular French philosophy, which is built on the fluid movement of the physical body through urban spaces. It’s about encountering obstacles and overcoming them using both your wits and your physical prowess. If you look up videos online, it will also seem like the craziest thing you’ve ever seen.

Right after graduating from Oregon State University, Dunlap got a temporary job at Nike, but quickly grew restless. The office environment wasn’t for him. He decided to take his long-brewing interest in parkour and turn it into a business.

Revolution Parkour was intended first as a parkour-instruction program, then as a TV and film consulting firm. For the last year and a half, Dunlap has been teaching twice-weekly classes at ADAPT Training, and seen a steady increase in participation. Tuesday night, 25 students, from pre-teens to people in their 20s, attended the class to get a dose of Dunlap’s expert instruction.

And while the consulting side of the business has been slow going, with only a few projects here and there, Dunlap says that a potential deal with a new major-network television show is in the works.

To develop his training program, Dunlap took the effusive parkour technique videos that were available online and broke them down into step-by-step methodology. He stresses that while these techniques are tried and true, there isn’t necessarily one single way to do parkour. It’s always about doing what comes natural.

‘No parkour on the furniture’

Besides technique training, the class also gives its students extensive physical conditioning, focusing on lean-muscle, body-weight exercises rather than free weights.

“A lot of people just want to find a unique way to workout,” Dunlap says. “As far as I’m concerned, parkour is the best there is.”

Students at the class seem to agree. Brandon Latocki, a 21-year-old Beaverton resident who’s been going to the class since it started, seems to echo the obsession of a lot of dedicated parkour enthusiasts.

“I’ve been looking for my entire life for something to do,” he says, “and this is it.”

Another student, Rick King, 25, says he first saw parkour when he saw the videogame Mirror’s Edge, about a dystopian future where revolutionaries use parkour-like methods to combat an all-knowing, all-seeing government.

“I didn’t know it was an actual thing,” King says. “I showed up (to class) one day and have been hooked ever since.”

Gerald Wright, of Tigard, was watching his 12-year-old son take part in the class on Tuesday night. He says that he’s been impressed by the rigorous and professional nature of the class since his son started it a few weeks ago.

“How can you say no to a kid who wants to do something different?” Wright says. “We do have one rule though: no parkour on the furniture.”

An adrenaline rush

Dunlap says that most students interested in parkour are exactly who you’d expect: young men looking for an adrenaline rush. He’s quick to point out, however, that as parkour grows in recognition — and there’s every indication that it will — the people who participate will likely diversify. Just like how other extreme sports became mainstream in the ’90s, Dunlap expects parkour to do the same.

Dunlap says the local parkour community is small but passionate, and often gets together to take advantage of downtown Portland’s diverse architecture. He says that, unfortunately, the suburbs like Beaverton don’t offer the same obstacle-rich environment as urban areas.

In the end, Dunlap stresses the simple joys of the sport he loves and the independence of its movement. He also stresses that watching the elite athletes shouldn’t scare people off. Most people will never leap from such great heights.

“Just because you train,” he says, “doesn’t mean you can jump off a building.”

For more information, visit www.revolutionparkour.com.