I've had some comments saying that I'm ignoring the poor behavior of freerunners, perhaps I should have elaborated on this.. I don't condone the very small percent of freerunners who left litter and were poorly behaved, however this was a small percent of them. I believe from the loss of these spots the Parkour culture has further matured and learned from this. I totally agree that free runners need to respect locals and be upstanding citizens and the majority are!
I think stating that 'very small percent' of freerunners might be considered a cop out by many. If we consider the large groups of people that visited such locations as vauxhaull and say that one out of a hundred of those people was a bad egg... well, that could be a bad egg once every day to once every week (I'm not actually sure HOW popular the location was, I don't have any numbers, but it seems like it was a regular spot based on your accounts). This, along with the simple fact that people often wanted to be just left alone when they approach their home (not that you're bothering them, but loud noise is loud noise in a lot of people's opinions), I can see why they'd have a justified bone to pick. You had mentioned yourself that the spot didn't look good to a non-parkourer... it really did look meh and bland. Same with the other locations. Some of these locations and stunts looked quite dangerous if performed incorrectly. With very high falls, or even nearby traffic. To say London has a war on parkour may be over reaching or not, but I wouldn't blame them if they did. People who they don't know, performing dangerous tricks without any credentials can lead to a lot of issues that they want to avoid. You had even mentioned it yourself that a lot of the best parkour places were derelict locations... a lot of these could've been redone for the simple sake of redoing them, with parkour as an 'in design' decision rather than the decision that they based the entirety of their action on. Now instead of being a negative nancy or a critique on all things parkour. I do think it's a cool concept, but it's often considered damaging and dangerous... for example, those that do any roof action can potentially damage the roof or fences. I would suggest that the parkour community get together more often and put money into community facilities where they got all sorts of cool and fun parkour designs for their tricks whilst also adhering to safety standards such as having someone medically trained or at least a kit and someone who can call an emergency line.
Even if none of them are behaving "poorly" by freerunning standards, I still wouldn't want a bunch of people running around near my home and doing stunts that could potentially result in having their brains splattered over the pavement because they miscalculated a jump and landed head-first on the corner of a concrete block.
Yeah, im from Finland so my english is not great, but i own property that had popular youth hangin spot, some spots to parkour and skate. I had them demolished becos first, the damage of places and cleaning the trash started to cost me, peoples didnt want to move in because loud youth whit carrying speakers blasting music and if polices were called they just moved away for half our or so and came back. Also one kid broke there leg and quest who the parents came to yell at. To me, so i chose to demolish the spots and install couble stone to make skating imposible. I have no sympathy for parkour and skaters who do it on wrong places. My town build 2 skate parks and parkour stadium but they are almost empty becasue nobody uses them.
Hey not sure if you'll see this but I think an interesting video would be you talking to some people (Ideally in a live format for transparency) about the two sides to this. You aren't really responding or interacting with people that don't share the same outlook as you in the comment despite being fairly active in responding to those you do have the same views as. Your comment is dismissive and shows either disregard or lack of understanding of how other people must feel, even in the video you showed some small signs of understanding that this was the natural course the city would take, an underused park home to a group that actively breaks laws and preforms dangerous stunts is not something anyone outside of said group would want to encourage. Junkies Jungle likely required maintenance that would be cheaper without the walls and people jumping on them and almost certainly leaving more litter than you lead on. As for Vauxhalls after being asks to leave so many times to the point where residents had to put up signs, ask for police intervention and more signs, then finally destroy it shows a constant disrespect towards the people that lived there by everyone involved that by definition would be the majority of the people you've mentioned. I think people would be more accepting if you focused on transitioning what should really only be happening in places designed for parkour or completely out of the way of city development and especially property owned by people that don't want you there. If you want to actually support this community you could at least respond with more than "Most don't do anything wrong, and I don't support those that do," which comes off as extremely disingenuous as a comment on its own let alone in the context of your video. I deeply respect the sport and was interested not only in practicing but the community too, but after watching this it is hard for me to respect the people involved.
Yep, one bad apple ruins the bunch. Such a shame to hear about this, as an outsider who has never even thought about parkour watching this really felt like parkour was a warm community and somewhere chill and escapist to hang out.
@@camdamcool6125 Nah man, everything's cool. These are just the rare bad apples, but you gotta think of all the good ones who never do anything wrong, and if you dare to question the culture of our apples we're going to have you committed to a mental hospital.
@Active Username You don't just claim these public space as your own and be a nuisance to the public. Just because its public, you hang around on that spot every single time to the point that you're not letting others use it for other purpose.
Had tour through London with a an absolute mad lad who loved his job felt like a NightBus Harry Potter day tour through the city to Bath, and Avery/Stone Henge , best tour ever
It's amazing how much funding goes into such vain attempts to keep people down. And in the end, it doesn't work. They end up wasting more than they could have made with just renovations. But hey, it's London. Or really, just a big city. It's hard to find a city that actually runs itself effectively.
Recreating famous spots in a gym is an amazing concept. I would love to see a gym make a combination of shapes of all the best spots around the world, kind of like the concept of Tony Hawk American Wasteland
I feel like the title "London's WAR on Parkour" is a bit of a reach. The first two examples could very easily be the cause of the places being in bad condition, like you mentioned, and Vauxhalls' demolish could be kind of a fault of the parkour community at the time. I mean, how would most people feel if there were large gatherings all the time in front of their home, loud music and littering. The reactions of the residents are very understandable and I often feel that us as a community need to have some understanding and respect for the muggles who don't understand the sport, even if they don't show us the same respect. Trying to change a whole community is hard, but hopefully worth it. However it's really fucking annoying when the demolish spots
@@bjarki_rafn I think you guys are both right. You can create a clickable headline without misleading. Why London is Destroying Iconic Parkour Spots would be more accurate and still intriguing.
Bjarki Rafn: The title isn't far from the truth. Since you're talking about community, then why you divide the practitioners as if like some of them are not residents there or like they're two different things? If you want to talk about community then share a thought of those residents to approach the people gathering on those spots and talk about being collectively concerned and to just train while keeping it low. The same goes for littering and so on. This by the way does not mean that every person is aware and/or concerned of the same things, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of it or to just sit and accept the destruction of places. You could also pay attention that certain people and companies took advantage of such "opportunities" to make profit out of workers residential areas. The concerns of those residents are not even in person, 88% of them found themselves being annoyed and they put it in a sign.. Like wtf, that's not a community, that's squidward's hometown. Not to mentions fines and all sort of measures. So the title is more than enough.
For real. Living in small towns and suburbs really fucks with my ability to train. Yes, there are some things you can train anywhere, but there is so much more that you can’t.
One - I love that you've interviewed so many people on this. Two - I'd love to get your take on Parkour competitions (and possibly the divide between how North Americans see them vs. other places in the world)
I live in North America and do parkour/free running. I'm just curious what you guys see the divide is. Personally I think here people don't really even know what parkour is which is so surprising for me.
As a north american, i can say this. No competitions. Its just not what the sport is about. I came into parkour at the end of my high school days. Which was apparently around the end of the whole debacle involving that MMA guy and his big parkour branding thing that almost killed it. I came into parkour not as a sport or competition, but as a philosophy and way of life. A freedom of bodily movement. I think to try making it a competition would cheapen the philosophy and sort as a whole, and start us on that old path again that almost destroyed us. I find the lack of competitive attitude around parkour breeds a very friendly atmosphere within the community to lift eachother up and do better, rather than be about being better than others.
Love the sport but if you're gonna do things that can damage or otherwise accelerate the wear of public or private property that is not your own, you're gonna get pushback. Shopping centers get tired of rebuilding curbs because skaters grind concrete. Then there's the chances of you hurting others or impeding traffic, just saying don't get upset when the local gov says no.
1. Do you understand how flesh and clothes on concrete and metal trucks on concrete curbs are seperate things right? Skin and clothes will never wear down concrete as it is softer, so the concrete wears down the parkour-ers not the other way around. So that point's just illogical, not like the whole point of public property is for use by the public(including freerunners) either. 2. Picking the bad apples from the basket and saying 'this is how all parkour is' isn't how to view things (also trespassing isn't illegal by any means as it's a civil offence not a criminal one, not that i agree with it) the parkour groups that litter ect isn't because they do parkour it's because they're just idiots and theres no correlation or statistics around 'doing parkour forces you to litter' other than in your biased anecdotes.
Im_Ryan You guys seem to harp on about “bad apples”. But you do realize that to the resident LIVING there, all of the freerunners were bad apples. You can’t intrude on a person’s living space and comfort space for your own enjoyment and not be a “bad apple”. There were literally 40 kids at one point. Even if they were all respectful and not your so called “bad apples”, to the residents having 40 kids constantly jumping around, making noise, and just generally being a disturbance is more than enough to leave a bad taste. Imagine if where you live, eat, and sleep you had a bunch of kids hanging around, playing music, messing around, and etc.Yes it’s not as destructive as skating but it’s just as intruding nonetheless. Not even to mention the repercussions of getting sued bc a kid’s mom was angry their child was hurt on the location. You don’t realize these freerunners were being very selfish and enjoying things without thought of consequences.
Im_Ryan Not to mention that by freerunners using that spot to parkour, they are taking the space for themselves when it was originally meant for the residents. Even the IMAX jump is incredibly selfish. It’s a really cool spot and all and the jumps are amazing but that’s when you don’t think about the consequences. It’s a jump literally right next to a very active road. The jump itself forces you to jump towards and in a lot of cased directly onto the road. At this point it’s a game of statistics. Somewhere down the line someone is going to get seriously hurt or killed doing so. Are the cars there supposed to drive slower bc freerunners decided to make that their spot? What is the city council going to say when an understandably upset mother confronts and probably sues the city about why they let these kids put themselves in that danger. It’s not that the city council is a great evil out to destroy freerunners’ happiness, but the fact that a lot of the ways that freerunners enjoy their sport is at the expense of others. It’s an incredibly selfish sport in the city. Yes trespassing isn’t a criminal offense but it’s a 100% dickhead move. Because it isnt their property. When they damage, and yes they will inevitably damage property, whether it be through their disruptive presence or physical damage, they aren’t the ones paying for it.
@@brianjc720 people with that logic have clearly never lived in the suburbs where you have to deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis and its just part of life just like how I dont complain when every guy cuts there grass every two seconds making my allergies spike during the summer making it damn near impossible to go outside for more than 15 minutes on a hot day
@@Iat850 Nah but i do occasionally still bust out a flip or two. Been meaning to go to a gym so i can learn these side / front pre things everyone doing
Junkies just looks like it was redeveolped to reduce maintenance cost. If they had fixed the fountain, they'd then have to maintain the fountain. Can't help but feel Vauxhall might still be around if the people using it had always left it tidy, not made a nusance of themselves (loud music etc) and respected the residence and given back to the area in some why. I'm not taking a side, more just looking at it from other angles, it's a case of people not realising how their actions are percieved by others. The parkour guys and girls just want to get out, do some excercise and push them selves, but if they're leaving litter, making noise, intimudating the residence and percieved as a nusance, they'll get moved on. The residence just want to live a quiet life and enjoy their homes, if you've got groups of people whooping and hollaring, that's not going to happen and it can make people feel like prisoners in their own homes. The councils should really see these kinds of emerging sports as things that require some focus and build facilities or dedicate space for them but then accidents happen and could cost the councils money they don't have. I also imagine that those large groups would get unfairly associated with street gangs\etc which also wouldn't help in keeping spots open. Really interesting video though, I'd love to see a street tag game.
mrman991 you want to know what that does? You’re not stopping them from parkouring. You just took away the relatively safe places that they could parkour at. They will then move onto doing more dangerous parkour. Such as on rooftops, at home, or even actually being a nuisance. They were out of the way at Vauxhall and Junkies. By the way, it didn’t seem like anyone else was using the parks...
@@endyender1703 sounds like you're agreeing with me tbh. They need safe places to practice etc. People might not have been using the space at junkies but people lived around Vauxhall which was my point.
@@endyender1703 were others not using the space because of them though? I don't get many free runners in my neck of the woods but I have seen someone crash into a fairly elderly man after clowning around on a wall with his friends. luckily he only seemed to be rattled by it and the guy who fell shrugged off his scrapes but the old guy could have been badly hurt and at his age it probably wouldn't have been a speedy recovery. When someone comes careening out of nowhere it can be very alarming. People often don't like to be scared out of the blue so it can make you come across as scary and aggressive even if you aren't and you don't hit anyone. Some of the stunts also looked like they might cause a car accident. You might well be the nicest bunch on the face of the world but a group of people "loitering" around would certainly be enough to make me take a detour, especially if I was alone and it was a quiet location. People often (rightly or wrongly) make snap judgements about others to keep themselves safe. This can be incredibly unfair but there we are. If you want others to respect your hobbies then you have to be respectful of the wider community. A couple of bad apples can easily tarnish the publics opinion of your whole community so it is important to self police even if it takes some of the fun out of it. Consider yourself to be an embassador for your community and contemplate ways to integrate with others through outreach (for instance providing properly run activities for children, or taking part in relevant community improvement projects). If you actually contribute to society in a visible way then others tend to be a lot more accommodating.
Endy Ender Yes but the key point is they aren’t bothering those residents. They even asked the freerunners to stop and held a petition to ascertain the general opinions of the residents. But as you can see the freerunners mocked the signs telling them to stop and kept going. And the thing is, it did stop a lot of them from freerunning. As the video states, there was a dip in parkour popularity in the UK. So what they essentially lost was a convenient hang out spot for freerunning that they used at the expense of the residents there just trying to rest and live their lives.
While I am glad to see so many younger people doing parkour, these days, you must act responsibly, especially on TH-cam videos. ;) (I was doing parkour in the 1980s). e.g. If I had several young men per day bouncing off the roof of my house, or over my fence, it would not only be irritating, but it would cause damage to the roof and fence. That would cost me $$$. Be aware that others also have rights. ;)
1.- what do you mean by "acting responsible on TH-cam" 2.-if you see people enjoying but having a problem why not as a mature adult, speak to them and to make an agreement.
Yea i dont fuck with peoples buildings. A couple small municipal structures of concrete maybe, to practice my wall runs. But im not going on top of buildings or houses. And most good practitioners will tell you not to either.
Mate the story of your first time at vauxhall got to me. So so relatable. Everytime you would see people in baggys heading for the promise land in front of you
I only very casually follow Storror and the parkour scene so I did not expect to get chills from seeing people rebuild an iconic spot that I only learned about 5 mins earlier from the same video! Just goes to show that this is a passionately loved sport that encompasses a lot of important ideals of adaptation, freedom and perseverance. Hats off guys! Keep doing what you do 🤟🏻
As I'm from Malaysia, where pkfr isn't as big of a deal as it is in London/UK but still very impactful, I'm so grateful to be able to say that our government hasn't decided to take any negative actions whatsoever on any of the spots here so far. It will be inevitable (at some point in my life as a teen) that spots will die out or be demolished, but this video has now let me have a newfound appreciation for my spots. I'll be sure not to take them for granted now, haha. There's always true quality content from this channel, keep up the awesome work!
I love watching these semi-nostalgic parkour videos from you. You really capture the feeling people would've had at those spots and manage this in all of your videos. Back when parkour was really booming I was pretty young (I'm only 18 now so that says a lot) and I thought I was awesome to be able to lazy vault over small benches at my school lmao. Even though I never got to train at big spots or anything I got to see a lot of freerunners doing stuff at different spots in my hometown (which have been demolished now) and I was always in awe and wanted to do things like them so much. I used to play Mirror's Edge and watch youtube videos on parkour (around my beginner's level) and get that feeling of being a part of this awesome sport even though I only had 1 or 2 friends into it at the time. You could always get a sense of the community feeling in those old videos and it's great to see you re-capturing that feeling in your videos. I guess what I'm trying to say is even though I wasn't very old or good at parkour at the time of its booming, your videos still remind me of the feelings I had back then and give me a glimpse of what it would've been like to visit those spots and make new friends instantly- be a part of the culture, y'know?
As someone not into Parkour I have to say the take way I get from this video is that the people who do parkour kind of did this to themselves. The places you talked about had people going and hang outside of people's homes, being disruptive, trespassing, and causing damage, with a chance of injury and possibly causing a lawsuit. If I lived somewhere where large group of people who don't live there come to hang out and make noise I wouldn't like it ether and I would feel intimidated to tell them to go. Hell some of these are done right next to roads and what if someone overshoots into a vehicle or in front of one? Now some innocent person could be scared for life and/or take a financial hit and people injured or killed because of somebody's fun. Now if a parkour park was created or it was done in a public square without disrupting the rest of the general public fine, but just finding a spot willy nilly and hanging out with a disregard to the surrounding area, you're asking for trouble.
Parkour can be done anywhere and doesn't need structual support. Freerunning however (this video is mainly about shitty free running) needs this stuff to perform trickery.. aaand they don't have the money to build a park of their own.
I'm still quite new to training but something about london makes me want to just forget my limits and push my boundaries in ways that not many other places can. Truly the mecca of parkour
Did at no point anyone in the community just... idk actually attend any public meetings of the council or any hearings discussing the demolition of these sites? I'm not entirely sure what the differences are between city/county council business in the UK versus the US. Here in the US if you're going to do any construction work on a site you have to get permission first and that includes a public hearing. Anyone in the public can attend and even bring legal representation to in order to voice reasons for or against the project. I also see your pinned comment about how you don't discuss the behavior of free runners who used these spaces. I think it is a much larger issue than even your off hand comment seems to make it out to be. If a majority of 88% of residents don't want you there it's not because you leave a couple pieces of litter or only played loud music. Vauxhall doesn't look like a nice neighborhood that would have enough money to make false claims and persuade the council to spend the money to do this kind of thing. There's also the issue of trespassing and not for its own sake. Again I'm in the US, but here if you're on someones property and get hurt they can be held accountable. For example if you own a bunch of saws for wood working, leave them out in your front yard unattended, and someone walking past you house tripped into one you can be found at fault. Why were you leaving shape blades where someone could get hurt? is the question that drives these negligence cases. If someone got badly hurt while doing these, sometimes, risky tricks the company who owns the property (or the city itself) could be held accountable. They knew people were there who weren't supposed to be performing dangerous tricks why didn't they ensure the public's safety? These two reasons combined are why cities don't want free runners around. It might help if the community actually behaves like a part of the bigger community. This is not an 'us' vs 'them' situation, free runners are the ones who didn't take any legal measures and instead, from your own video, chased residents around with their pants pulled down? I love Parkour, but for it to be taken seriously the rest of the community needs to take responsibility and we all need to grow up.
I'm a young man in the UK who spends my full time campaigning for local community, environmental, cultural and social projects. I'll tell you this, trying to get anything done by local councils or authorities is a similar sensory experience to receiving a severe concussion. Everything moves at a glacial pace. There is no accountability, reason and logic is optional. It would be funny if I didn't have to watch my community dissolve in real time.
Hell states like Texas and Ohio can get you shot and killed for trespassing on land as so many people have attempted to harm livestock steal or murder people trying to live their lives
So, without getting into the usual arguments, what would you think about this: Get some people together and day dream up and idea setup for parkour, kind of like this place you described. Draw it, tweak it, etc etc.. Then make a 3d model and make a silverlight of it or something so it can be on a web page where a person can turn it around and look at it from all angles. Maybe even where they could WASD their way around the inside. Then find a piece of land somewhere, demographics and such. Once you've found a great place and you've got a solid idea of what you would want there, start a kickstarter campaign. If you could get the land bought, the structures built, then you could sell memberships to pay for upkeep and insurance. Here in the states, there's a city close to where I live that has tons of things like you showed. They're popular with free runners as well as skate boarders. The issue the city has with these people isn't that they're climbing over things. It's not even that they litter (which they do). It's the lawsuits. A person would do something stupid, get messed up, then sue the city or the owner of the property AND WIN. One that got in the paper that I remember reading, the kid got a quarter of a million dollars out of the lawsuit. In order to find a solution to this problem, a guy's really got to look at it from all sides. There is a solution, we just have to find it.
I think your idea is excellent. Don't think US would be the best place to put the first such spot in though, for the same reason you described in your comment. As much as your bill of rights is a masterpiece, your law system as a whole is complete garbage.
The only problem Sith that would be ages I don't got a problem with kids but you know how it is with Karen's and Chad's it would be like a skate park parkourists getting snaked every five seconds and parents thinking it's just some playground to leave your kids at and the second a kid get knocked down by accident or falls its hell from the parents who want the whole place to burn
The costs would be too extreme. Esp in us. The legal fees alone (combating the concept being set up too) . Whoever owned the land as well as the city would be a target forever. I Dont think you can get around that. Sad.
There's a huge difference between you and maybe a few friends hitting a spot occasionally, and spots like Vauxhall that became so popular that there are basically dozens of people there all day everyday. You should absolutely expect a spot to get shut down when its like that
I wish I had a counter of how many times I've watched resurgence, I would LOVE to see a video about its influence on modern PKFR. Also you're killing the content game right now I'm loving it
You would probably not be picked up by any project to do so though. People do not want their property to be used by others and that will always be true, regardless how much people whine about it.
This takes me back to when I skateboarded. I went to the Brooklyn banks on my own little pilgrimage like you did to Vauxhall. My hometown also demolished all the good spots so I related to the crushing feeling of watching a favorite spot reduced to rubble. Keep up the good work, man. I love your content!
This is solid evidence for the terrible dystopian world we're creating. "Why don't you kids play outside?" Everyone asks while they take away every fun thing that's free. If you want to have fun nowadays you have to pay. Parkour was free. It was a friendly cool community around the world and you could have fun doing it with your friends and they're trying to take it away.
As someone who was lucky enough to hit Vauxhall but sadly just missed Elephant & Castle, this was an awesome piece to watch. It's sad that local communities feel urban sports in general, are a threat. The signs up around Barbican, criminalising movement, are reminiscent of the signs from Vauxhall. It sounds like you could have gone down the rabbit hole, talking about the role gentrification has played in destroying many spots and I certainly would have enjoyed watching it. Part 2 soon. Great video. Thanks for sharing.
Hello, my name is Rodrigo I am 16 years old, now that I did it on April 13 and I am from Portugal, I started Parkour when I was 13, 3 years ago, I started watching security vs parkour videos and when I heard I was watching Storror training in those places, those moments, they exchanged joy and happiness, I wish I could see those spots in real life but unforeseen events happen. I hope to see more of your videos.
@@JimmyTheGiant what i live the most about parkour is the movement and the community it self we can anderstand each other and the fun we have when doing it. In personal with out the parkour community (because i train alone for 3 years now) i love to brake mental barriers and when i brake i feel good and proud
Problems with well know parkour spots: 1) Crowds 2) Property damage 3) Noise 4) People getting hurt 5) Lack of respect for locals. High level parkour athletes are impressive and very entertaining. Lots of background work goes into much of what is done. People don't become high level parkour athletes without all the practice. However, the public expectation is that a respect for others (including their property) comes first. Intrusion and passing the bill for ones mistakes onto the general public is not acceptable.
The year I moved to London, the first day I walked up to Imax to look around and immediately was greeted by all the boys that then formed PHAT, learned so much from them and levelled up immensely training there, switched out parkour for Olympic weightlifting and miss pk everyday!
It's unfortunately unfair but what you said about how the public sees parkour quote "the parkour community were often seen as a bunch of hoodlums " Is the truth for most folks. The honest truth of the matter is free runners don't own the stuff they are using and they are often trespassing on places that belong to others. I know that most of the community is just having fun and doing no harm intentionally but the sad truth of the matter is the general public sees it as a bad thing. I think that what really needs to happen is official parkour parks be made in city centers similar to skate parks.
Speaking from the neutral stand. 5:30 Do they not do all of those things? From all of this, the parkour community pretty much played themselves. They act disruptive and then complain about the consequences of their actions. If they just kept the volume down, respected the residents and clean up after themselves everything would have been fine. You found your paradise and then you destroyed it with your negligence. I love parkour but you need to protect what you love in the right way.
This sounds more like a story of not respecting your environment and the people already living there. I can understand why anyone would be annoyed by loud noise and anti social behaviour. I think parkour is sick but shit man imagine having that next to you 24/7, would be hell.
i ain't even do parkour but i skate and i feel for these guys. what really were the kids doing wrong? old guys get away with blasting music out their balconies and in their gardens all the time and the only reason is because people understand it. the kids were enjoying themselves, listening to music they liked and getting exercise. simply put the residents were just scared because they didn't understand. it's such a contradiction, they'll complain that kids don't get enough exercise nowadays but they don't want them outside if it's near their homes. pure hypocrisy
The reason they do this is because if someone gets hurt or killed which has happened multiple times the council get investigated and fined for health and safty
While that sounds like a good reason, I've only heard it sighted once for this 3 story high jungle gym in Nassau. Every other time it's to get rid of loiterers.
@@jorionedwards I think it’s more just keeping people safe and covering there ass and of course to stop tress passing on private properly as people don’t pay for people to jump on there land
@@jorionedwards I think it’s more just keeping people safe and covering there ass and of course to stop tress passing on private properly as people don’t pay for people to jump on there land
Well, here’s the thing, if you guys hang out at certain spots all day long being noisy then don’t be surprised if the residents take matters into their own hands. It’s the same with skateboarding! Parkour is probably nowhere nearly as noisy as skateboards, but hoards of people, talking, laughing and playing music loudly definitely are! Imagine something that really annoys you that goes on right outside your window day in day out, would you enjoy that?!
I have been doing parkour since I was 8 (am 21) and I always had the dream of visiting London not only for the city but for the incredible spots I saw and that I grew up in parkour. Parkour in my country is still seen as vandalism but whenever I saw one more video it gave me motivation to continue Today I continue to dream to visit London just to train and learn more about this incredible culture that is parkour Parkour is not just a sport it is a way of life Portugal has much more to know than Lisbon
My favourite thing about the days when I used to train was merging with groups of freerunners that I didn't know, spending a whole day together and walking away with a lifetime of friendship.
The clips that you show all have talented people, my question is how many people trying this have injured themselves and litigated against the council or the residential corporation? or worst still having free runners crashing into pedestrians or causing traffic incidents?
As a skateboarder, I can respect bemoaning the loss of your favorite spots. At the same time: as someone who pays bills, don’t bitch when the owners kick you out.
Yep, also liability costs too. Unlike skating, these guys are just running and walking. You can take the property owners to court for a much longer time if they can’t prove you did anything to endanger yourself.
Boy i kid you not, for the past two weeks I have been planning a video on the history of IMAX. Anyway - the joke you made about IMAX being taken down is actually quite interesting. During my research, I found out that the Waterloo roundabout (where IMAX is) may be re-done. There are plans to remove parts of the roundabout and replace it with a larger pavement - let's hope IMAX isn't affected. Also great vid btw 👍
Was a sick piece Jimmy, thanks for including me in the interview! :) Really interesting topic. Theres plenty here on ethics which is well worth the discussion from this video - claiming back urban spaces to make our own is a big part of parkour, its very anarchist in that sense ... .squat the streets so to speak. However there needs to be respect to the "muggles" , environment and surroundings we use as the sport gets larger and larger... Something that definitely has changed over the years, and sadly it will lead to sites and spots being bulldozed / parkour bans etc. But a royal fuck off to great architecture that we (and other practises) bring life too, being turned into awful fucking brick mosaics with TAX payer money haha.
Thanks for your work man, it's really cool to have access to all of these informations without having been in the sport for 10+ years lol, feels like the sport is really growing because of dedicated people like you
I was not doing parkour at this time but but I'm always wandered where is this spot exactly before I just learn with this video that he was destroy... So sad ...
I never realised how much London has played a role in the videos I watched. Thanks for this mate. I just now realised that parkour doesn't have to be enjoyed in luxurious and exotic locations.
After a good 13 years in parkour, I finally met Blue at IMAX, when Kie brought me to a Storm shoot they were doing. That was history for me bruh. Met him at the spot I saw him get down at in 05 Jump Britain. Brazy!
Such an amazing video Jimmy! I remember first going to London in 2018 and visiting imax. I was in awe at first because it was the first time I had been at such an iconic spot. I started training and then I noticed other freerunners started to show up. That was something that I wasn’t use to because here in Chicago we have a very small community and everyone who trains here knows each other. The fact that you could go to imax and see other freerunners there at any time of the day was so incredible to me and it just goes to show how strong the parkour community is not only in the city of London but in the world! This is the reason why I love this sport keep it up with the amazing content.
yo your videos are SICK! definitely earned my subscription man! I was part of the parkour community back in the times of Vauxhall! Great times indeed ! almost made me cry
If I could ever come across any freerunner in the wild, I would be soooooo happy! I've literally started the scene around me, and have only met new people at jams
In the summer of 2019 my friends and I took a trip from Spain to London to do parkour.After a long night at the airport, the flight and the trip to London we finally arrived.The first thing we did was eat breakfast to replenish energy and start training.Our first tour destination we had was Vauxhall, I remember having the location on the phone, we were crazy looking for the spot for an hour, watching videos, photos, asking people, after that we discovered that it was demolished.It was a disappointment for us to discover that one of the most mythical spots of parkour no longer existed. Luckily it was an incredible trip, visiting the rest of the areas, meeting people, being able to attend the WCT, it was a great experience to travel to London.
I know next to nothing about parkour but watching this video I'm surprised they let you guys do this as long as they did. A bunch of raucous young men hurling themselves at concrete walls at break-neck speeds (how common are serious injuries in parkour?), what could go wrong? I get the draw of it for the guys doing it. Hell, if I were younger I might give it go. But it should be obvious that this looks like a tremendous liability issue for everyone looking at this from the outside. Good to see this taking on a more sustainable form in space specifically designed for this. I could imagine this evolving into an Olympic sport like gymnastics.
Its bc they dont want to see u jump around all over their stuff, if they asked and I bet they have, parkour would never stop happening there So it makes sence
@@gamertrask9153 hate to be the one to point this out, but it is spelled Vauxhall. You also missed some punctuation - don't critique grammar if you won't use it accurately yourself, it reflects poorly on yourself.
Bro, I was almost blind until 3 years ago and thus I missed the whole park our thing as a kid. These videos make the inner kid I have so glad. Please continue witht he content. It's bloody brilliant as they say in England
Yeah love the fact they're trying to play innocent. Its obvious its them who's being a nuisance and they start claiming public space as their own place to mess around. This video is simply a propaganda.
Aye man i love this channel. Being that my a PK athlete. The stories u tell Jimmy are just beauitful. And insprition much love to u Jimmy❤❤ #PkLondonForever 🏃
What wonderful documentaries you produce. This particular video did not generate much sympathy in me as I am not a traceour but I really like seeing the evolution and the possibilities as gyms begin to recreate these special locations.
Yeah, the Covid 19 death toll creeps steadily to it's half a million mark, American cities are burning...but the man is focused on the real danger... Seriously mate, Parkour has no message that will alarm any government, it doesn't even have a message. Honestly, these people in power tend to focus on threats to the status quo, I don't think Revolutionary Parkourians worry them thet much. Do you really think kids climbing around old buildings is new or a threat to anybody other than the folks who do it?
@@BaseDeltaZero1972 It's the same problem that skateboaders/bmx/rollerbladers had. As an activity for one or two people it wasn't much of a problem, but when 30 or 40 teens are loitering in an area it brings a unique set of problems. Activities like this dominate an area, which crowds out the locals from using it. Teenagers also tend to be jerks about things like loud music, which causes further confrontations. Skaters/BMX ended up getting enough legitimacy that skate parks were created, which solved a lot of the issues.
Actually i didn't travel anywhere and all i wanted is to go to London's spots Madird's spots and that Maze of Singaphore that has been gone too Great documintiry Jimmy 🙏 Much love from Syria,lattakia ❤️❤️
I've had some comments saying that I'm ignoring the poor behavior of freerunners, perhaps I should have elaborated on this.. I don't condone the very small percent of freerunners who left litter and were poorly behaved, however this was a small percent of them. I believe from the loss of these spots the Parkour culture has further matured and learned from this.
I totally agree that free runners need to respect locals and be upstanding citizens and the majority are!
I think stating that 'very small percent' of freerunners might be considered a cop out by many. If we consider the large groups of people that visited such locations as vauxhaull and say that one out of a hundred of those people was a bad egg... well, that could be a bad egg once every day to once every week (I'm not actually sure HOW popular the location was, I don't have any numbers, but it seems like it was a regular spot based on your accounts). This, along with the simple fact that people often wanted to be just left alone when they approach their home (not that you're bothering them, but loud noise is loud noise in a lot of people's opinions), I can see why they'd have a justified bone to pick. You had mentioned yourself that the spot didn't look good to a non-parkourer... it really did look meh and bland. Same with the other locations. Some of these locations and stunts looked quite dangerous if performed incorrectly. With very high falls, or even nearby traffic.
To say London has a war on parkour may be over reaching or not, but I wouldn't blame them if they did. People who they don't know, performing dangerous tricks without any credentials can lead to a lot of issues that they want to avoid. You had even mentioned it yourself that a lot of the best parkour places were derelict locations... a lot of these could've been redone for the simple sake of redoing them, with parkour as an 'in design' decision rather than the decision that they based the entirety of their action on.
Now instead of being a negative nancy or a critique on all things parkour. I do think it's a cool concept, but it's often considered damaging and dangerous... for example, those that do any roof action can potentially damage the roof or fences. I would suggest that the parkour community get together more often and put money into community facilities where they got all sorts of cool and fun parkour designs for their tricks whilst also adhering to safety standards such as having someone medically trained or at least a kit and someone who can call an emergency line.
Even if none of them are behaving "poorly" by freerunning standards, I still wouldn't want a bunch of people running around near my home and doing stunts that could potentially result in having their brains splattered over the pavement because they miscalculated a jump and landed head-first on the corner of a concrete block.
Yeah, im from Finland so my english is not great, but i own property that had popular youth hangin spot, some spots to parkour and skate. I had them demolished becos first, the damage of places and cleaning the trash started to cost me, peoples didnt want to move in because loud youth whit carrying speakers blasting music and if polices were called they just moved away for half our or so and came back. Also one kid broke there leg and quest who the parents came to yell at. To me, so i chose to demolish the spots and install couble stone to make skating imposible. I have no sympathy for parkour and skaters who do it on wrong places. My town build 2 skate parks and parkour stadium but they are almost empty becasue nobody uses them.
Free runners could also band together and maybe clean spots across London to maybe improve the public view of free runners.
Hey not sure if you'll see this but I think an interesting video would be you talking to some people (Ideally in a live format for transparency) about the two sides to this. You aren't really responding or interacting with people that don't share the same outlook as you in the comment despite being fairly active in responding to those you do have the same views as. Your comment is dismissive and shows either disregard or lack of understanding of how other people must feel, even in the video you showed some small signs of understanding that this was the natural course the city would take, an underused park home to a group that actively breaks laws and preforms dangerous stunts is not something anyone outside of said group would want to encourage. Junkies Jungle likely required maintenance that would be cheaper without the walls and people jumping on them and almost certainly leaving more litter than you lead on. As for Vauxhalls after being asks to leave so many times to the point where residents had to put up signs, ask for police intervention and more signs, then finally destroy it shows a constant disrespect towards the people that lived there by everyone involved that by definition would be the majority of the people you've mentioned. I think people would be more accepting if you focused on transitioning what should really only be happening in places designed for parkour or completely out of the way of city development and especially property owned by people that don't want you there. If you want to actually support this community you could at least respond with more than "Most don't do anything wrong, and I don't support those that do," which comes off as extremely disingenuous as a comment on its own let alone in the context of your video. I deeply respect the sport and was interested not only in practicing but the community too, but after watching this it is hard for me to respect the people involved.
Great work jimmy
big love, blitzdem is still a classic
one like one comment lol
Fun videos for both of u
@Tyrus Hunter r/YoungPeopleTH-cam
POLSKA GUROM
That's what sucks. Even if 90% of a group are respectful and considerate, there are still the 10% who ruin it for everyone.
Yep, one bad apple ruins the bunch. Such a shame to hear about this, as an outsider who has never even thought about parkour watching this really felt like parkour was a warm community and somewhere chill and escapist to hang out.
That's life in general.
that's what happend to the rc hobby
@@camdamcool6125 Nah man, everything's cool. These are just the rare bad apples, but you gotta think of all the good ones who never do anything wrong, and if you dare to question the culture of our apples we're going to have you committed to a mental hospital.
@Active Username You don't just claim these public space as your own and be a nuisance to the public.
Just because its public, you hang around on that spot every single time to the point that you're not letting others use it for other purpose.
This is like taking a tour with a guide who actually loves his job 👌
Had tour through London with a an absolute mad lad who loved his job felt like a NightBus Harry Potter day tour through the city to Bath, and Avery/Stone Henge , best tour ever
Thats a cool analogy bro. Got a smile from me
Annie...Where’s the blacksmith
@@calcium6253 How would I know? We just went shopping. That's all we did😅
London: * destroys parkour sites *
Parkour Pros: * goes up to the roofs of buildings, factories, and establishments *
London: *0o0*
It's amazing how much funding goes into such vain attempts to keep people down. And in the end, it doesn't work. They end up wasting more than they could have made with just renovations. But hey, it's London. Or really, just a big city. It's hard to find a city that actually runs itself effectively.
i mean, if we do get some teens falling to their deaths, can be a good thing you know, clean up the gene pool a bit.
The biggest middle finger to safety
The biggest middle finger to safety
@Wills Pram lmfaooo
Recreating famous spots in a gym is an amazing concept. I would love to see a gym make a combination of shapes of all the best spots around the world, kind of like the concept of Tony Hawk American Wasteland
that'd be dope
@@JimmyTheGiant Well there's a will, there's a way. And I've got a friend name Will, he works in construction.
@Got_nuffin_on_me this is specifically recreating the most famous places, not just places you can do it
Ahh man I actually get upset thinking about all the memories from Vauxhall’s maze, I vow to one day recreate it exactly the same! RIP ❤️😭
Yes brother i'm with you on that.
Please do that would be awesome
@@JimmyTheGiant Jimmy
@@JimmyTheGiant Jimmy
@@JimmyTheGiant JIMMYYY!
I feel like the title "London's WAR on Parkour" is a bit of a reach. The first two examples could very easily be the cause of the places being in bad condition, like you mentioned, and Vauxhalls' demolish could be kind of a fault of the parkour community at the time. I mean, how would most people feel if there were large gatherings all the time in front of their home, loud music and littering. The reactions of the residents are very understandable and I often feel that us as a community need to have some understanding and respect for the muggles who don't understand the sport, even if they don't show us the same respect. Trying to change a whole community is hard, but hopefully worth it.
However it's really fucking annoying when the demolish spots
It's just a title that sounds nicer. Who would click a video titled "various instances of London parkour spots being demolished for various reasons"
@@sefflikejeff1917 However it is misleading and inaccurate. I don't really fancy a catchy title that makes me feel cheated.
@@bjarki_rafn I think you guys are both right. You can create a clickable headline without misleading. Why London is Destroying Iconic Parkour Spots would be more accurate and still intriguing.
Bjarki Rafn:
The title isn't far from the truth. Since you're talking about community, then why you divide the practitioners as if like some of them are not residents there or like they're two different things? If you want to talk about community then share a thought of those residents to approach the people gathering on those spots and talk about being collectively concerned and to just train while keeping it low. The same goes for littering and so on. This by the way does not mean that every person is aware and/or concerned of the same things, but that doesn't mean they're incapable of it or to just sit and accept the destruction of places. You could also pay attention that certain people and companies took advantage of such "opportunities" to make profit out of workers residential areas. The concerns of those residents are not even in person, 88% of them found themselves being annoyed and they put it in a sign.. Like wtf, that's not a community, that's squidward's hometown. Not to mentions fines and all sort of measures. So the title is more than enough.
@@onreact Great title, because the story is quite interesting but sad and I really did enjoy this video essay, if that's the right term.
man, seeing spots like these makes me wish i didnt live in a small town
For real. Living in small towns and suburbs really fucks with my ability to train. Yes, there are some things you can train anywhere, but there is so much more that you can’t.
Makes me wish I didn’t live in America.
Make me wish I didn't live in Australia
Makes me wish I didn't live in Croatia
@@p.gin3955 ehej, još jedan Hrvat! Pozdrav
One - I love that you've interviewed so many people on this.
Two - I'd love to get your take on Parkour competitions (and possibly the divide between how North Americans see them vs. other places in the world)
yeah i deffo want to do something like that
I completely agree. North America vs Europe
I live in North America and do parkour/free running. I'm just curious what you guys see the divide is. Personally I think here people don't really even know what parkour is which is so surprising for me.
As a north american, i can say this.
No competitions.
Its just not what the sport is about.
I came into parkour at the end of my high school days. Which was apparently around the end of the whole debacle involving that MMA guy and his big parkour branding thing that almost killed it.
I came into parkour not as a sport or competition, but as a philosophy and way of life.
A freedom of bodily movement.
I think to try making it a competition would cheapen the philosophy and sort as a whole, and start us on that old path again that almost destroyed us.
I find the lack of competitive attitude around parkour breeds a very friendly atmosphere within the community to lift eachother up and do better, rather than be about being better than others.
Love the sport but if you're gonna do things that can damage or otherwise accelerate the wear of public or private property that is not your own, you're gonna get pushback. Shopping centers get tired of rebuilding curbs because skaters grind concrete. Then there's the chances of you hurting others or impeding traffic, just saying don't get upset when the local gov says no.
1. Do you understand how flesh and clothes on concrete and metal trucks on concrete curbs are seperate things right? Skin and clothes will never wear down concrete as it is softer, so the concrete wears down the parkour-ers not the other way around. So that point's just illogical, not like the whole point of public property is for use by the public(including freerunners) either.
2. Picking the bad apples from the basket and saying 'this is how all parkour is' isn't how to view things (also trespassing isn't illegal by any means as it's a civil offence not a criminal one, not that i agree with it) the parkour groups that litter ect isn't because they do parkour it's because they're just idiots and theres no correlation or statistics around 'doing parkour forces you to litter' other than in your biased anecdotes.
Im_Ryan You guys seem to harp on about “bad apples”. But you do realize that to the resident LIVING there, all of the freerunners were bad apples. You can’t intrude on a person’s living space and comfort space for your own enjoyment and not be a “bad apple”. There were literally 40 kids at one point. Even if they were all respectful and not your so called “bad apples”, to the residents having 40 kids constantly jumping around, making noise, and just generally being a disturbance is more than enough to leave a bad taste. Imagine if where you live, eat, and sleep you had a bunch of kids hanging around, playing music, messing around, and etc.Yes it’s not as destructive as skating but it’s just as intruding nonetheless. Not even to mention the repercussions of getting sued bc a kid’s mom was angry their child was hurt on the location. You don’t realize these freerunners were being very selfish and enjoying things without thought of consequences.
Im_Ryan Not to mention that by freerunners using that spot to parkour, they are taking the space for themselves when it was originally meant for the residents. Even the IMAX jump is incredibly selfish. It’s a really cool spot and all and the jumps are amazing but that’s when you don’t think about the consequences. It’s a jump literally right next to a very active road. The jump itself forces you to jump towards and in a lot of cased directly onto the road. At this point it’s a game of statistics. Somewhere down the line someone is going to get seriously hurt or killed doing so. Are the cars there supposed to drive slower bc freerunners decided to make that their spot? What is the city council going to say when an understandably upset mother confronts and probably sues the city about why they let these kids put themselves in that danger. It’s not that the city council is a great evil out to destroy freerunners’ happiness, but the fact that a lot of the ways that freerunners enjoy their sport is at the expense of others. It’s an incredibly selfish sport in the city. Yes trespassing isn’t a criminal offense but it’s a 100% dickhead move. Because it isnt their property. When they damage, and yes they will inevitably damage property, whether it be through their disruptive presence or physical damage, they aren’t the ones paying for it.
@@brianjc720 Cope.
@@brianjc720 people with that logic have clearly never lived in the suburbs where you have to deal with this kind of stuff on a daily basis and its just part of life just like how I dont complain when every guy cuts there grass every two seconds making my allergies spike during the summer making it damn near impossible to go outside for more than 15 minutes on a hot day
How much quality content are you gonna put out bro!?!? Seeing 15+ min vids about a good ass topic makes me so excited! Keep it up big man🤠
haha biggup bro, I just love telling these stories.
such an interesting and quality content! keep it up bro🤘🏻
Cheers for the cheeky shout out! Solid video as always man, glad I could help
Big love brother, day one
Yo this was sick. I'd love to see a video on the impact basingstoke had to parkour, with 3run and the original famous spots!
Ye
@DrewIsSharing do you still practice parkour/ tricking in your free time? keep up the skateboarding and informative content 👍
@@Iat850 Nah but i do occasionally still bust out a flip or two. Been meaning to go to a gym so i can learn these side / front pre things everyone doing
Junkies just looks like it was redeveolped to reduce maintenance cost. If they had fixed the fountain, they'd then have to maintain the fountain.
Can't help but feel Vauxhall might still be around if the people using it had always left it tidy, not made a nusance of themselves (loud music etc) and respected the residence and given back to the area in some why.
I'm not taking a side, more just looking at it from other angles, it's a case of people not realising how their actions are percieved by others.
The parkour guys and girls just want to get out, do some excercise and push them selves, but if they're leaving litter, making noise, intimudating the residence and percieved as a nusance, they'll get moved on.
The residence just want to live a quiet life and enjoy their homes, if you've got groups of people whooping and hollaring, that's not going to happen and it can make people feel like prisoners in their own homes.
The councils should really see these kinds of emerging sports as things that require some focus and build facilities or dedicate space for them but then accidents happen and could cost the councils money they don't have.
I also imagine that those large groups would get unfairly associated with street gangs\etc which also wouldn't help in keeping spots open.
Really interesting video though, I'd love to see a street tag game.
mrman991 you want to know what that does? You’re not stopping them from parkouring. You just took away the relatively safe places that they could parkour at. They will then move onto doing more dangerous parkour. Such as on rooftops, at home, or even actually being a nuisance. They were out of the way at Vauxhall and Junkies. By the way, it didn’t seem like anyone else was using the parks...
@@endyender1703 sounds like you're agreeing with me tbh.
They need safe places to practice etc.
People might not have been using the space at junkies but people lived around Vauxhall which was my point.
@@endyender1703 were others not using the space because of them though? I don't get many free runners in my neck of the woods but I have seen someone crash into a fairly elderly man after clowning around on a wall with his friends. luckily he only seemed to be rattled by it and the guy who fell shrugged off his scrapes but the old guy could have been badly hurt and at his age it probably wouldn't have been a speedy recovery.
When someone comes careening out of nowhere it can be very alarming. People often don't like to be scared out of the blue so it can make you come across as scary and aggressive even if you aren't and you don't hit anyone. Some of the stunts also looked like they might cause a car accident.
You might well be the nicest bunch on the face of the world but a group of people "loitering" around would certainly be enough to make me take a detour, especially if I was alone and it was a quiet location. People often (rightly or wrongly) make snap judgements about others to keep themselves safe. This can be incredibly unfair but there we are.
If you want others to respect your hobbies then you have to be respectful of the wider community. A couple of bad apples can easily tarnish the publics opinion of your whole community so it is important to self police even if it takes some of the fun out of it.
Consider yourself to be an embassador for your community and contemplate ways to integrate with others through outreach (for instance providing properly run activities for children, or taking part in relevant community improvement projects).
If you actually contribute to society in a visible way then others tend to be a lot more accommodating.
Endy Ender Yes but the key point is they aren’t bothering those residents. They even asked the freerunners to stop and held a petition to ascertain the general opinions of the residents. But as you can see the freerunners mocked the signs telling them to stop and kept going. And the thing is, it did stop a lot of them from freerunning. As the video states, there was a dip in parkour popularity in the UK. So what they essentially lost was a convenient hang out spot for freerunning that they used at the expense of the residents there just trying to rest and live their lives.
RESURGENCE: game changing moments pls!!
lets goooo
While I am glad to see so many younger people doing parkour, these days, you must act responsibly, especially on TH-cam videos. ;) (I was doing parkour in the 1980s).
e.g. If I had several young men per day bouncing off the roof of my house, or over my fence, it would not only be irritating, but it would cause damage to the roof and fence.
That would cost me $$$.
Be aware that others also have rights. ;)
1.- what do you mean by "acting responsible on TH-cam" 2.-if you see people enjoying but having a problem why not as a mature adult, speak to them and to make an agreement.
@@nighthawk3305
Better question.
Why does he have 69 likes (ey!) and you have none?
Something to think about.
Yea i dont fuck with peoples buildings. A couple small municipal structures of concrete maybe, to practice my wall runs.
But im not going on top of buildings or houses. And most good practitioners will tell you not to either.
@@yoketah Actually, if a large group of strangers regularly gathered near my private residence, I'd be a bit worried.
night hawk I didn’t bring crayons to explain such a simple comment to you
Mate the story of your first time at vauxhall got to me. So so relatable. Everytime you would see people in baggys heading for the promise land in front of you
Maannn, it was such a incredible place
I only very casually follow Storror and the parkour scene so I did not expect to get chills from seeing people rebuild an iconic spot that I only learned about 5 mins earlier from the same video! Just goes to show that this is a passionately loved sport that encompasses a lot of important ideals of adaptation, freedom and perseverance. Hats off guys! Keep doing what you do 🤟🏻
Very glad you connected with that ♥️
As I'm from Malaysia, where pkfr isn't as big of a deal as it is in London/UK but still very impactful, I'm so grateful to be able to say that our government hasn't decided to take any negative actions whatsoever on any of the spots here so far. It will be inevitable (at some point in my life as a teen) that spots will die out or be demolished, but this video has now let me have a newfound appreciation for my spots. I'll be sure not to take them for granted now, haha. There's always true quality content from this channel, keep up the awesome work!
Brooo Singapore Bishan Maze gone!! I haven't even touched it yet! Now it's a bicycle parking area
I don't do Parkour, i didn't looked anything about it up in years. Why is this in my Recommendations and why did I watch and enjoy the hole thing?
Welcome to the world of parkour
Dude, same. This is interesting stuff
Yeah this was a random suggestion to me but it's always fascinating to watch them do stuff that I never could.
RIP Vauxhall! Biggup all the real ones who share this video on their Insta story ❤
JimmyTheGiant anyone know where I can find the shirt at 10:19? I went to their website and it’s not listed, was it a limited time run or something?
~|~
Rip
I love watching these semi-nostalgic parkour videos from you. You really capture the feeling people would've had at those spots and manage this in all of your videos. Back when parkour was really booming I was pretty young (I'm only 18 now so that says a lot) and I thought I was awesome to be able to lazy vault over small benches at my school lmao. Even though I never got to train at big spots or anything I got to see a lot of freerunners doing stuff at different spots in my hometown (which have been demolished now) and I was always in awe and wanted to do things like them so much. I used to play Mirror's Edge and watch youtube videos on parkour (around my beginner's level) and get that feeling of being a part of this awesome sport even though I only had 1 or 2 friends into it at the time. You could always get a sense of the community feeling in those old videos and it's great to see you re-capturing that feeling in your videos.
I guess what I'm trying to say is even though I wasn't very old or good at parkour at the time of its booming, your videos still remind me of the feelings I had back then and give me a glimpse of what it would've been like to visit those spots and make new friends instantly- be a part of the culture, y'know?
As someone not into Parkour I have to say the take way I get from this video is that the people who do parkour kind of did this to themselves. The places you talked about had people going and hang outside of people's homes, being disruptive, trespassing, and causing damage, with a chance of injury and possibly causing a lawsuit. If I lived somewhere where large group of people who don't live there come to hang out and make noise I wouldn't like it ether and I would feel intimidated to tell them to go.
Hell some of these are done right next to roads and what if someone overshoots into a vehicle or in front of one? Now some innocent person could be scared for life and/or take a financial hit and people injured or killed because of somebody's fun.
Now if a parkour park was created or it was done in a public square without disrupting the rest of the general public fine, but just finding a spot willy nilly and hanging out with a disregard to the surrounding area, you're asking for trouble.
Parkour can be done anywhere and doesn't need structual support. Freerunning however (this video is mainly about shitty free running) needs this stuff to perform trickery.. aaand they don't have the money to build a park of their own.
I don't even parkour, and i'm not even from London, but hell this video was great.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed
I'm still quite new to training but something about london makes me want to just forget my limits and push my boundaries in ways that not many other places can. Truly the mecca of parkour
Did at no point anyone in the community just... idk actually attend any public meetings of the council or any hearings discussing the demolition of these sites? I'm not entirely sure what the differences are between city/county council business in the UK versus the US. Here in the US if you're going to do any construction work on a site you have to get permission first and that includes a public hearing. Anyone in the public can attend and even bring legal representation to in order to voice reasons for or against the project. I also see your pinned comment about how you don't discuss the behavior of free runners who used these spaces. I think it is a much larger issue than even your off hand comment seems to make it out to be. If a majority of 88% of residents don't want you there it's not because you leave a couple pieces of litter or only played loud music. Vauxhall doesn't look like a nice neighborhood that would have enough money to make false claims and persuade the council to spend the money to do this kind of thing. There's also the issue of trespassing and not for its own sake. Again I'm in the US, but here if you're on someones property and get hurt they can be held accountable. For example if you own a bunch of saws for wood working, leave them out in your front yard unattended, and someone walking past you house tripped into one you can be found at fault. Why were you leaving shape blades where someone could get hurt? is the question that drives these negligence cases. If someone got badly hurt while doing these, sometimes, risky tricks the company who owns the property (or the city itself) could be held accountable. They knew people were there who weren't supposed to be performing dangerous tricks why didn't they ensure the public's safety? These two reasons combined are why cities don't want free runners around. It might help if the community actually behaves like a part of the bigger community. This is not an 'us' vs 'them' situation, free runners are the ones who didn't take any legal measures and instead, from your own video, chased residents around with their pants pulled down? I love Parkour, but for it to be taken seriously the rest of the community needs to take responsibility and we all need to grow up.
I'm a young man in the UK who spends my full time campaigning for local community, environmental, cultural and social projects.
I'll tell you this, trying to get anything done by local councils or authorities is a similar sensory experience to receiving a severe concussion.
Everything moves at a glacial pace. There is no accountability, reason and logic is optional.
It would be funny if I didn't have to watch my community dissolve in real time.
Hell states like Texas and Ohio can get you shot and killed for trespassing on land as so many people have attempted to harm livestock steal or murder people trying to live their lives
So, without getting into the usual arguments, what would you think about this: Get some people together and day dream up and idea setup for parkour, kind of like this place you described. Draw it, tweak it, etc etc.. Then make a 3d model and make a silverlight of it or something so it can be on a web page where a person can turn it around and look at it from all angles. Maybe even where they could WASD their way around the inside. Then find a piece of land somewhere, demographics and such. Once you've found a great place and you've got a solid idea of what you would want there, start a kickstarter campaign. If you could get the land bought, the structures built, then you could sell memberships to pay for upkeep and insurance.
Here in the states, there's a city close to where I live that has tons of things like you showed. They're popular with free runners as well as skate boarders. The issue the city has with these people isn't that they're climbing over things. It's not even that they litter (which they do). It's the lawsuits. A person would do something stupid, get messed up, then sue the city or the owner of the property AND WIN. One that got in the paper that I remember reading, the kid got a quarter of a million dollars out of the lawsuit. In order to find a solution to this problem, a guy's really got to look at it from all sides. There is a solution, we just have to find it.
I think your idea is excellent. Don't think US would be the best place to put the first such spot in though, for the same reason you described in your comment. As much as your bill of rights is a masterpiece, your law system as a whole is complete garbage.
The only problem Sith that would be ages I don't got a problem with kids but you know how it is with Karen's and Chad's it would be like a skate park parkourists getting snaked every five seconds and parents thinking it's just some playground to leave your kids at and the second a kid get knocked down by accident or falls its hell from the parents who want the whole place to burn
The costs would be too extreme. Esp in us. The legal fees alone (combating the concept being set up too) . Whoever owned the land as well as the city would be a target forever. I Dont think you can get around that. Sad.
There's a huge difference between you and maybe a few friends hitting a spot occasionally, and spots like Vauxhall that became so popular that there are basically dozens of people there all day everyday. You should absolutely expect a spot to get shut down when its like that
I wish I had a counter of how many times I've watched resurgence, I would LOVE to see a video about its influence on modern PKFR. Also you're killing the content game right now I'm loving it
If I'm someday an architect, im gonna create something for the lads
+15 chad respect
You would probably not be picked up by any project to do so though. People do not want their property to be used by others and that will always be true, regardless how much people whine about it.
This takes me back to when I skateboarded. I went to the Brooklyn banks on my own little pilgrimage like you did to Vauxhall. My hometown also demolished all the good spots so I related to the crushing feeling of watching a favorite spot reduced to rubble.
Keep up the good work, man. I love your content!
This is solid evidence for the terrible dystopian world we're creating. "Why don't you kids play outside?" Everyone asks while they take away every fun thing that's free. If you want to have fun nowadays you have to pay. Parkour was free. It was a friendly cool community around the world and you could have fun doing it with your friends and they're trying to take it away.
play inside. we don't care. as long as you're not bothering people who try to chill at home with an open window.
i'm not a free runner, but damn this was well put together. great job man. and sorry to hear all these great spots got taken out.
Thanks man, i love hearing people outside our sport enjoy the stories
As someone who was lucky enough to hit Vauxhall but sadly just missed Elephant & Castle, this was an awesome piece to watch. It's sad that local communities feel urban sports in general, are a threat. The signs up around Barbican, criminalising movement, are reminiscent of the signs from Vauxhall. It sounds like you could have gone down the rabbit hole, talking about the role gentrification has played in destroying many spots and I certainly would have enjoyed watching it. Part 2 soon.
Great video. Thanks for sharing.
Hello, my name is Rodrigo I am 16 years old, now that I did it on April 13 and I am from Portugal, I started Parkour when I was 13, 3 years ago, I started watching security vs parkour videos and when I heard I was watching Storror training in those places, those moments, they exchanged joy and happiness, I wish I could see those spots in real life but unforeseen events happen.
I hope to see more of your videos.
What thing do you live the most about parkour?
@@JimmyTheGiant what i live the most about parkour is the movement and the community it self we can anderstand each other and the fun we have when doing it.
In personal with out the parkour community (because i train alone for 3 years now) i love to brake mental barriers and when i brake i feel good and proud
Problems with well know parkour spots: 1) Crowds 2) Property damage 3) Noise 4) People getting hurt 5) Lack of respect for locals. High level parkour athletes are impressive and very entertaining. Lots of background work goes into much of what is done. People don't become high level parkour athletes without all the practice. However, the public expectation is that a respect for others (including their property) comes first. Intrusion and passing the bill for ones mistakes onto the general public is not acceptable.
Thanks for video!
The year I moved to London, the first day I walked up to Imax to look around and immediately was greeted by all the boys that then formed PHAT, learned so much from them and levelled up immensely training there, switched out parkour for Olympic weightlifting and miss pk everyday!
It's unfortunately unfair but what you said about how the public sees parkour quote "the parkour community were often seen as a bunch of hoodlums " Is the truth for most folks. The honest truth of the matter is free runners don't own the stuff they are using and they are often trespassing on places that belong to others. I know that most of the community is just having fun and doing no harm intentionally but the sad truth of the matter is the general public sees it as a bad thing. I think that what really needs to happen is official parkour parks be made in city centers similar to skate parks.
Speaking from the neutral stand. 5:30 Do they not do all of those things? From all of this, the parkour community pretty much played themselves. They act disruptive and then complain about the consequences of their actions. If they just kept the volume down, respected the residents and clean up after themselves everything would have been fine. You found your paradise and then you destroyed it with your negligence. I love parkour but you need to protect what you love in the right way.
Jimmy "I could probably make a whole video on this" the giant.
hahaaha
I never got into parkour, but the amount of passion and love you show to the scene is beautiful. I hope you never lose that.
Thank you very much, I've learnt so much from growing up with this sport so i want to do everything i can to share that
This sounds more like a story of not respecting your environment and the people already living there. I can understand why anyone would be annoyed by loud noise and anti social behaviour. I think parkour is sick but shit man imagine having that next to you 24/7, would be hell.
hopefully the scene has learnt from it, i feel most are very respectful
i ain't even do parkour but i skate and i feel for these guys. what really were the kids doing wrong? old guys get away with blasting music out their balconies and in their gardens all the time and the only reason is because people understand it. the kids were enjoying themselves, listening to music they liked and getting exercise. simply put the residents were just scared because they didn't understand. it's such a contradiction, they'll complain that kids don't get enough exercise nowadays but they don't want them outside if it's near their homes. pure hypocrisy
@@jaywilliams720
Agreed. People are far to on guard towards their community nowadays.
The reason they do this is because if someone gets hurt or killed which has happened multiple times the council get investigated and fined for health and safty
While that sounds like a good reason, I've only heard it sighted once for this 3 story high jungle gym in Nassau. Every other time it's to get rid of loiterers.
@@jorionedwards I think it’s more just keeping people safe and covering there ass and of course to stop tress passing on private properly as people don’t pay for people to jump on there land
@@jorionedwards I think it’s more just keeping people safe and covering there ass and of course to stop tress passing on private properly as people don’t pay for people to jump on there land
Gyen is secretly the MVP for the London scene.
Ssssh no one is meant to know
@@Gma.parkour We ALL know
Not wrong
Well, here’s the thing, if you guys hang out at certain spots all day long being noisy then don’t be surprised if the residents take matters into their own hands. It’s the same with skateboarding! Parkour is probably nowhere nearly as noisy as skateboards, but hoards of people, talking, laughing and playing music loudly definitely are!
Imagine something that really annoys you that goes on right outside your window day in day out, would you enjoy that?!
yeah. but none of them seems to be capable of figuring that out.
@@Amphyb yeah, because they feel so entitled!
I have been doing parkour since I was 8 (am 21) and I always had the dream of visiting London not only for the city but for the incredible spots I saw and that I grew up in parkour. Parkour in my country is still seen as vandalism but whenever I saw one more video it gave me motivation to continue
Today I continue to dream to visit London just to train and learn more about this incredible culture that is parkour
Parkour is not just a sport it is a way of life
Portugal has much more to know than Lisbon
Got onto your channel after a Bouldering >>climbing >> Storror>> Jimmy rabbit hole .....good content mate ive enjoiyed everything
My favourite thing about the days when I used to train was merging with groups of freerunners that I didn't know, spending a whole day together and walking away with a lifetime of friendship.
The clips that you show all have talented people, my question is how many people trying this have injured themselves and litigated against the council or the residential corporation? or worst still having free runners crashing into pedestrians or causing traffic incidents?
Does parkour on Parliament Parliament oh shoot we're going to have to tear that down
As a skateboarder, I can respect bemoaning the loss of your favorite spots. At the same time: as someone who pays bills, don’t bitch when the owners kick you out.
Yep, also liability costs too. Unlike skating, these guys are just running and walking. You can take the property owners to court for a much longer time if they can’t prove you did anything to endanger yourself.
Boy i kid you not, for the past two weeks I have been planning a video on the history of IMAX. Anyway - the joke you made about IMAX being taken down is actually quite interesting. During my research, I found out that the Waterloo roundabout (where IMAX is) may be re-done. There are plans to remove parts of the roundabout and replace it with a larger pavement - let's hope IMAX isn't affected.
Also great vid btw 👍
Can't wait to see that please send it to me!
Nice i want to see that video bro
Was a sick piece Jimmy, thanks for including me in the interview! :)
Really interesting topic. Theres plenty here on ethics which is well worth the discussion from this video - claiming back urban spaces to make our own is a big part of parkour, its very anarchist in that sense ... .squat the streets so to speak.
However there needs to be respect to the "muggles" , environment and surroundings we use as the sport gets larger and larger... Something that definitely has changed over the years, and sadly it will lead to sites and spots being bulldozed / parkour bans etc.
But a royal fuck off to great architecture that we (and other practises) bring life too, being turned into awful fucking brick mosaics with TAX payer money haha.
Holy moly why haven't I seen your channel before?
Welcome to the world of Jimmy
Thanks for your work man, it's really cool to have access to all of these informations without having been in the sport for 10+ years lol, feels like the sport is really growing because of dedicated people like you
thank you man, glad to hear that
I was not doing parkour at this time but but I'm always wandered where is this spot exactly before I just learn with this video that he was destroy... So sad ...
I never realised how much London has played a role in the videos I watched. Thanks for this mate. I just now realised that parkour doesn't have to be enjoyed in luxurious and exotic locations.
:)
These dude doing flips off high places even jump 2 feet without breaking my ankles
Yeah I do pray for Doms ankles sometimes man, their too strong
@@uzi-07 they're*. But yeah Dom's ankles are steel.
i can’t even jump without nearly dying
Love how in-depth this video is man
After a good 13 years in parkour, I finally met Blue at IMAX, when Kie brought me to a Storm shoot they were doing. That was history for me bruh. Met him at the spot I saw him get down at in 05 Jump Britain. Brazy!
Such an amazing video Jimmy! I remember first going to London in 2018 and visiting imax. I was in awe at first because it was the first time I had been at such an iconic spot. I started training and then I noticed other freerunners started to show up. That was something that I wasn’t use to because here in Chicago we have a very small community and everyone who trains here knows each other. The fact that you could go to imax and see other freerunners there at any time of the day was so incredible to me and it just goes to show how strong the parkour community is not only in the city of London but in the world! This is the reason why I love this sport keep it up with the amazing content.
This parkour series is so damn good! You and Storror are the real MVPs of this lockdown
yo your videos are SICK! definitely earned my subscription man! I was part of the parkour community back in the times of Vauxhall! Great times indeed ! almost made me cry
If I could ever come across any freerunner in the wild, I would be soooooo happy! I've literally started the scene around me, and have only met new people at jams
Where are you guys based?
Please give us more rollerblading content every single time you post about your rollerblading journey everybody enjoys it!
you could post anything rn and i'd watch if this INSANE quality is kept up
In the summer of 2019 my friends and I took a trip from Spain to London to do parkour.After a long night at the airport, the flight and the trip to London we finally arrived.The first thing we did was eat breakfast to replenish energy and start training.Our first tour destination we had was Vauxhall, I remember having the location on the phone, we were crazy looking for the spot for an hour, watching videos, photos, asking people, after that we discovered that it was demolished.It was a disappointment for us to discover that one of the most mythical spots of parkour no longer existed. Luckily it was an incredible trip, visiting the rest of the areas, meeting people, being able to attend the WCT, it was a great experience to travel to London.
Freerunners: having fun*
London: _and i took that personally_
I know next to nothing about parkour but watching this video I'm surprised they let you guys do this as long as they did. A bunch of raucous young men hurling themselves at concrete walls at break-neck speeds (how common are serious injuries in parkour?), what could go wrong? I get the draw of it for the guys doing it. Hell, if I were younger I might give it go. But it should be obvious that this looks like a tremendous liability issue for everyone looking at this from the outside. Good to see this taking on a more sustainable form in space specifically designed for this. I could imagine this evolving into an Olympic sport like gymnastics.
I wouldn't want children screaming on top of their lungs and playing loud music under my window either
I remember hitting all of these spots for the first time. Me from Sydney, Anan from Bangkok, we travelled across the globe for London
Maaaan I wish I met y'all on that trip, little fanboy jimmy
Its bc they dont want to see u jump around all over their stuff, if they asked and I bet they have, parkour would never stop happening there
So it makes sence
Your grammar and sense is worse then the Vauxhall’s Destruction and such a Horrible take on it They wanted the noise to stop
@@gamertrask9153 hate to be the one to point this out, but it is spelled Vauxhall. You also missed some punctuation - don't critique grammar if you won't use it accurately yourself, it reflects poorly on yourself.
@@Tehinstrumentalist dude this was a year ago but thanks and believe me I’ve had worse opinions then this
Bro, I was almost blind until 3 years ago and thus I missed the whole park our thing as a kid. These videos make the inner kid I have so glad.
Please continue witht he content. It's bloody brilliant as they say in England
Parkour brought their own demise, Playing loud music, littering, spray painting walls and annoying local residents
Yeah love the fact they're trying to play innocent.
Its obvious its them who's being a nuisance and they start claiming public space as their own place to mess around.
This video is simply a propaganda.
so good man, really get excited when you drop a new vid
Aye man i love this channel. Being that my a PK athlete. The stories u tell Jimmy are just beauitful. And insprition much love to u Jimmy❤❤
#PkLondonForever 🏃
Thank you brother
@@JimmyTheGiant Anytime fam thx. For the content
What wonderful documentaries you produce. This particular video did not generate much sympathy in me as I am not a traceour but I really like seeing the evolution and the possibilities as gyms begin to recreate these special locations.
My g !! The London parkour scene will never die.
these videos are so just well done i can't help but learn
One question: Why couldn't they just put up no trespass signs?
bruh who cares about a sign
This video is so valuable! Thanks a lot for making this.
7:09 it says "we don't not want" and only specifies yu cant be a class of 15 or an individual or train at 8am or 4pm, so basically that's fine 😂
Nicely put together history right here
I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about.
Yeah
Good job Jimmy. Thank you so much.
Jimmy : "I could probably make a whole video..."
me: "DO IT!!! ITS WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT!"
The quality of these vids are mental. Such great content Jimmy
Let me guess... is this was in ur recommened
Loving these documentaries.
Pleasant surprise to see Gilles and Rene in there too.
didn't know Harry Potter had a youtube channel. Why did it take me this long to find out.
Wow what an amazing high quality video! Yes I’d like to see the video you suggested doing.
"If they cannot control the art, they will try to ban it."
Yeah, the Covid 19 death toll creeps steadily to it's half a million mark, American cities are burning...but the man is focused on the real danger...
Seriously mate, Parkour has no message that will alarm any government, it doesn't even have a message. Honestly, these people in power tend to focus on threats to the status quo, I don't think Revolutionary Parkourians worry them thet much.
Do you really think kids climbing around old buildings is new or a threat to anybody other than the folks who do it?
@@BaseDeltaZero1972 It's the same problem that skateboaders/bmx/rollerbladers had. As an activity for one or two people it wasn't much of a problem, but when 30 or 40 teens are loitering in an area it brings a unique set of problems. Activities like this dominate an area, which crowds out the locals from using it. Teenagers also tend to be jerks about things like loud music, which causes further confrontations.
Skaters/BMX ended up getting enough legitimacy that skate parks were created, which solved a lot of the issues.
imagine if they spent that money on making more safe parkour spots
I seriously love these videos!
Actually i didn't travel anywhere and all i wanted is to go to London's spots Madird's spots and that Maze of Singaphore that has been gone too
Great documintiry Jimmy 🙏
Much love from Syria,lattakia ❤️❤️
Bedok Maze was lit
@Kiekhia Flow
Is there still war in syria?
@@horstmuller5918 Yes mate 😓
We can do nothing
All what i want is to fly out this country 🙏
@@MatthewTraceur Lit AF 🔥
sick documentary as always 🌊
RIP junkies jungle. Was probs my fave
was such a fun spot, i can't imagine what people would be doing at it these days