This Wednesday, one of the first major Parkour based clothing companies in the world will be opening its doors. The company is called Take Flight, and on June 24th at 11:59pm EST, Take Flight will undergo its International Clothing Launch at which time its online store will immediately become available and open for purchasing. Starting with 14 shirts, including 6 core designs across various styles and manufacturing options, the company has a solid core lineup all of which will be shipped internationally to consumers in over 195 countries. In addition to the initial product launch Take Flight will be adding one new shirt a week to the line for the next three weeks, with plans to add pants, training wear, and new designs in the following weeks and months.
Special attention has been paid to the shirts’ designs and construction so as to maximize its benefit to traceurs. Tag-less builds, ring-spun cotton (much softer and more durable than standard cotton tees), and/or light weight cuts have been implemented in all the styles. These aspects provide less skin irritation during movement, pull sweat and moisture away from the body, and provide maximum comfort during training and casual wear. The designs feature an urban and edgy flair and include full color production as well as special manufacturing processes such as embedded silver/gold foil.
The Take Flight homepage (www.TakeFlightApparel.com) currently displays a countdown clock and will update to the site at launch.
As a partner of MisterParkour.com, Take Flight is a trusted company, and we personally stand behind the quality of their clothing as well as their dedication and commitment to Parkour. We hope you take advantage of this opportunity to be one of the first to sport Take Flight Apparel.
If you have ever wanted a premium username for your email account, but have never been able to get one on a popular email provider now is the time! At MisterParkour.com we recently became aware of a new email service that is brining the Parkour community together by providing premium emails to people in the community. Created specifically for Parkour practitioners, email username registration through ParkourMail.com has recently been opened to the Tracers worldwide with virtually no username restrictions.
Registering an address costs a one time fee of $4.95, and through your new email you will receive promotional offers and discounts on Parkour related merchandise that only ParkourMail.com email holders will receive. Other advantages to owning a ParkourMail.com email address include:
Sending and receiving email under your own premium Parkour specific email address.
Working with the worldwide Parkour community to unite practitioners under one. common email.
Supporting Parkour and the knowledge and exposure of the discipline around the world.
Sharing Parkour with friends, family, and contacts in every email you send.
Immediately promoting yourself and your professionalism as a Parkour athlete and/or consultant
Receiving virtually no SPAM.
Never having to change your email address again.
As mentioned before, by being one of the first to act on this new open registration you will also be privy to a slew of premium username availabilities. This is one of the reasons we at MisterParkour.com like the opportunity so much. Other email services (e.g. GoogleMail, YahooMail, Hotmail etc.) have millions of registered users so it is basically impossible to find a simple username with which you can send and receive email from. But Parkour mail is not only specific to the Parkour community (which makes it more open), it is also relatively new which makes the opportunity even better. The ParkourMail.com site currently keeps a running and updated list of available emails. Current emails that have not been registered yet include:
iParkour@parkourmail.com
JamSession@parkourmail.com
Ninja@parkourmail.com
ParkourCoach@parkourmail.com
PK4Life@parkourmail.com
Russia@parkourmail.com
And others!
With so many usernames still available now is the time to sign up. If there is an email you have always wanted but have never been able to own, there is no better opportunity to get it than right now. And with the discounts and promotional offers you’ll receive on Parkour merchandise from your new email account this isn’t something anyone should pass up. Below is the link with which you can purchase a ParkourMail.com email. You can also visit the website ParkourMail.com to read more about owning your own Parkour specific email.
In light of the exciting Beyond Human series by Lee Jones and featuring Daniel Ilabaca, MisterParkour.com was granted exclusive interviews with both Lee and Daniel. The interviews were both recorded with permission from the artists, and the dialogue with Lee Jones is featured below.
In the insightful interview, Lee speaks about his Beyond Human collection as well as his vision and inspiration for creating the paintings. In addition, Lee talks specifically about his draw to Parkour and how he first saw Daniel and decided to include him in the project.
To find out more about the Beyond Human collection please see our Beyond Human article or visit Lee Jones’ website at LeeJonesArt.co.uk.
The U.K. based artist Lee Jones recently created an incredible series of paintings featuring some of the world’s most capable and accomplished athletes. Inspiring for the extraordinary artistic talent and unparalleled vision behind the paintings, the collection’s name(Beyond Human) and its subsequent description are themselves enough to conjure up images of memorable performances and majestic athletic achievements. Says Lee Jones about the project,
[It is] A series of hyper-real paintings, portraying elite athletes as superhuman beings… perceived as… machine[s] so perfectly engineered they become ‘Beyond Human’.
Endorsed with the creative input of each sportsperson, the series is comprised of six unique paintings each featuring an extraordinary athlete including Chris Hoy, Ricky Hatton, Christine Ohuruogu, Victoria Pendleton, Usain Bolt, and Daniel Ilabaca.
Lee Jones’s painting of Daniel Ilabaca is featured above. Every detail of this visionary art piece was purposefully chosen and carefully executed, and the result is nothing short of magnificent. Daniel’s stoic pose, metallic arms and feet, and the surrounding environment clearly reflect not only the power and awe inspiring nature of Daniel’s athletic abilities but also the characteristics of the art of Parkour which Daniel himself is known for. Prints of this one-of-a-kind painting can be purchased at 2050Sports.com starting at ₤10 (about USD $14). One hundred fine art limited edition prints signed by both Daniel and Lee are available for ₤300 (about USD $430).
Lee Jone’s Beyond Human series will be exhibited at the 2050Sports.com exhibition at The Arts Club in London this April. To find out more about Lee Jones and his artwork please visit LeeJonesArt.co.uk.
For some while now we have been flooded with questions about Parkour. Questions such as, “How do I get started?” “Where can I learn?”“Do you know anyone that does Parkour or teaches Parkour in my area?” “What is the proper way to train?”“What is dynamic tension and how do I attain it?” “I was injured doing this, what did I do wrong and how do I recover from it?” etc. For a while we responded to each and every inquiry we received. But after some time of receiving more and more inquiries and not being able to get back to everyone with in depth responses, we wanted to find a better way to communicate with everyone. After some critical thinking and some work we recently launched the MisterParkour.com International Forum to solve this dilemma.
There are many Parkour based forums out there, so when deciding to launch one for MisterParkour.com we asked ourselves a lot of questions and weighed the pros and cons. What is the purpose of launching a forum? There are already a lot of forums that exist so will launching another one bring Tracers together or will it divide them? Why would we launch one instead of directing people to the ones that already exist? After lots of thought the major reason we decided to go ahead with the launch was because we do not agree with most of the Parkour forums out there. Here are a couple reasons why:
#1. Almost all Parkour forums currently in existence are biased and restricted. Put in other terms, they are run by someone, or a group of people, that have an agenda, and that agenda only supports them and furthering their own ideals, publicity, and financial gain. We disagree with this so we have a launched the MisterParkour.com International Forum based on free speech.
#2. Most forums are geared towards one community of Tracers. Usually this is a geographically based group of Tracers, but sometimes there are other focuses (either purposefully or inadvertently) such as the forum being language specific. We do not like closed off Parkour communities so we have launched this forum so that it reaches out to the international Parkour community without restriction.
#3. Most forums and Parkour sites have advertisements. Simply put, we do not like these at all. All Google ads do is clog up sites and distract people from the purpose of the forum. Besides, if you are really to providing something “for the community” you should make it free and not try to nickel and dime everyone that visits. We wanted our forum to be for the community and by the community so we don’t have advertisements.
#4. Lastly and most importantly, the administration of most Parkour forums (and sites) put forth wasteful, inefficient, and downright erroneous information. We can’t imagine anyone would do this on purpose so we have attributed this flaw primarily to their bias as explained in #1. Regardless of the reason for this flaw however, the problem still exists and it needs to be corrected. There is some fantastic information on many Parkour sites, but the majority of their misguiding information becomes readily apparent when discussions begin that deal with proper Parkour training. The misguided ideals of the sites and their administration also become painfully obvious when the administrators talk about Parkour but do not reference David Belle or demonstrate an understanding of his example, philosophy, and achievements.
With all this in mind we decided to go ahead and launch the MisterParkour.com International Forum. MisterParkour.com is the internet’s most succinct compendium of the world’s best Parkour videos so it kind of makes sense to begin with. Taking into account the reasons mentioned above, the content of our site as our foundation, and the diverse international MisterParkour.com community member as our cornerstone, we firmly believe that this forum is a strong and lasting step in the direction of bringing the international Parkour community together.
This forum will provide, for the first time anywhere, an unbiased community location and resource of free information where people are allowed to put forth their ideas and questions without restriction. The MisterParkour.com video library is not linked to the International Forums though, so please go to MisterParkour.com International Forum or click on the International Forum icon at the top left of the page to register a forum account. And as always, we want MisterParkour.com to be for the community so if you have suggestions, questions, or ideas please let us know!
Our partner Revolution Parkour is looking to expand their Parkour Performance Team and they want to consider making you a member! If you are passionate about Parkour, highly skilled in the discipline, and interested in being a part of an internationally marketed Parkour performance team then we encourage you to read their message below and consider applying for their team. Good luck!
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Message from Revolution Parkour
We are looking to expand our Parkour performance team and we want to consider making you a team member! The opportunities for Parkour teams to perform at corporate meetings, product unveilings, trade shows, and other events are growing daily and we want to expand the Revolution Parkour Performance Team to take advantage of this growing market. If you are interested in being a part of an internationally marketed Parkour performance team then we encourage you to read further about the team and consider applying to be a member.
About the Revolution Parkour Performance Team
At Revolution Parkour we aspire to have one of the most talented, dynamic, and diverse Parkour performance teams on the planet. We already have a core group of guys that are committed to our cause, but we want to expand the group as well as diversify our talents and prominence in the world of Parkour.
Unlike most Parkour teams we are not limited geographically or by any other factors. In fact we want our team to be composed of members that are as geographically, culturally, and athletically diverse as possible! Whether you live in Germany, Australia, Spain, Brazil, Egypt, Korea, Russia, the United States, France, Mexico, or any other country we want you to consider being a part of the team. If you speak other languages besides English this is a huge plus. And if you are good at Parkour but are also talented in other disciplines such as break dancing, martial arts, gymnastics, tricking etc, then we want to consider adding you to the team all the more. We firmly believe that team members working together with diverse backgrounds, training styles, and cultural perspectives will create the best team possible.
How We Select the Team
After we receive all the applications we will review the potential team members and take as many factors as possible into considerations. Six factors that will be of primary importance in our evaluations are:
Years practicing Parkour
Parkour skill as demonstrated in individual’s demo tape
Parkour experience (for example if the Tracer has done other jobs – note: pervious Parkour related jobs and performance experience is not required)
Age
Geographic location
Other disciplines practiced and skill thereof
Other attributes that you must personify to be considered for a spot on the team:
Humility
Respect
Professionalism
Strong Work Ethic
We will not be accepting everyone that applies to the team. However, if you are not accepted don’t worry! We are a dynamic team and we are always open to adding new members. So even if you don’t become apart of the team now, keep training and send us another application in the near future. We always look forward to receiving applications and considering adding new members to the team.
Note: Even if you already have a team we still encourage you to apply for the Revolution Parkour Performance Team. Given the current state of Parkour, there are very few Tracers with enough prestige and exposure to create competing ideals between performance teams if they are on more than one. More than anything companies are just looking for teams that are skilled in Parkour and they are rarely, if ever, concerned if a particular “John Smith” is on one team versus another. It’s like if you are a model or small time actor with agents in Paris and New York. Both companies represent you in different markets so there is no competition to worry about.
How We Choose the Specific Performance Team for a Job
Not every member of the Revolution Parkour Performance Team is expected or asked to perform at every job. Sometimes companies want a 4 member performance team or sometimes they might want an 8, 12, or 2 member team. It all depends on the company and their purpose for the performance. With this in mind, after we contract a performance job and know the size team required, we look through the current members and create the best group possible given the parameters and requirements of the performance. If some team members are not available given scheduling circumstances we ask other members until we have formed the best team for the performance.
Note: Being a part of the Revolution Parkour Performance Team does NOT guarantee work.* If you are accepted as a member of the team you will also NOT be an employee of Revolution Parkour. Like any performance team we make money when companies contract our service and we perform, and you will be paid when you perform as a member of the team. There is no guarantee of this, but at the same time no obligation (see Responsibilities as a Team Member below).
*Although there is no guarantee that you will be contracted for a performance job, we only say this for legal reasons to prevent confusion. In reality we expect the team to be very successful and for you to have ample opportunity to perform internationally.
Responsibilities as a Revolution Parkour Performance Team Member
If you are offered a spot on the team you will be featured on RevolutionParkour.com as a member of the Revolution Parkour Performance Team. But being a part of the team is not a free ride to getting paid to travel and do Parkour (although this is a perk). As a part of the team you will also have responsibilities to Revolution Parkour and your team members. These responsibilities include:
Training in Parkour and your other disciplines in order to constantly maintain and/or improve your level and abilities as you initially demonstrated to the team through your demo tape.
Being professional and timely to respond to performance offers
Willing to accept performance roles (we understand that because of scheduling factors such as work, school, unexpected events, and other Parkour jobs, that it may not always be possible for you to accept a specific performance role.)
Being professional on set and during performances (you must remember that performing, although fun, is a job and it is hard work. You therefore must be professional and carry yourself in that sentiment at all times.)
In addition to the above responsibilities we also want our members to be leaders in their perspective Parkour communities working to expand Parkour in a respectful and accurate manner in the ways they see fit.
Applying for the Team
If you are interested in applying to be a member of the Revolution Parkour Performance Team please submit to us an initial application at team@revolutionparkour.com with the following details and materials:
Name
Age
Years Practicing Parkour
Parkour Experience (List jobs or other noteworthy accomplishments – e.g. founded Parkour.com, sponsored by CompanyX, performed for XYZ event, etc)
Other discipline practiced (e.g. break dancing, gymnastics, martial arts, tricking etc) and years practicing them (if applicable)
Head Shot
Demo Tape
A brief paragraph explaining why you want to be a part of the Revolution Parkour team, and why you’d be a good addition to the squad.
Once you have sent us your application we will send you an initial response to confirm we have received it. After this we will be in contact with you as we narrow down the applicants and finalize the additions to the team. The application deadline is November 7th and if you have any questions you can send us an email at team@revolutionparkour.com.
Even though MisterParkour.com possesses the most succinct online compendium of the best Parkour videos on the planet, we are not satisfied with only providing this resource. With members on MisterParkour.com spanning the globe we have been working hard on some great new features that will further unite the global Parkour community. We will hopefully be adding these features to the site in the next couple weeks but until then we wanted to outline two of our most recent additions to the site.
#1. We have successfully added a Partners page to MisterParkour.com. Currently there are four companies that have partnered with MisterParkour.com. These companies (with icons featured below) have fully embraced Parkour and are working in their own areas of expertise to aid the expansion of the sport. We fully believe in and stand behind the products and services these companies produce and we hope that you will take the time to learn more about them just as they have invested time to bring Parkour to a more prominent international platform.
#2. MisterParkour.com is a completely non-profit website. As you can see we do not host advertisements, and there are absolutely no other profit streams coming from this site. However, it does take a considerable amount of time and to develop and maintain this site and as such many have been wondering how to assist MisterParkour.com by donating to the site. We have been very grateful for the interest in supporting the site and to meet such requests we have provided a simple and convenient way to donate on our Contact page. The donations run through PayPal, one of the most trusted online money handling companies in the world, and you do not need a PayPal account to use it. You can click the link below or go the contact page and follow the simple instructions to contribute. We sincerely appreciate your donations and all contributions received will be invested directly back into the site’s development.
As we said at the beginning of this post, in addition to these new features we have many more expansions that we will be adding soon. Until then stay tuned, and as always thank you for being a part of MisterParkour.com!
Over the past few weeks we have been working hard to make some great new additions to MisterParkour.com. We aren’t going to explain all the changes to the site because if you visit regularly then you should already know. However, one important addition that we do feel compelled to point out is the addition of our Free Stuff! page.
In our quest to do everything we can to share and expand Parkour by David Belle we have decided to start giving away free stuff. Even though we are non-profit and we make absolutely no money on or from this site, we are dedicated to bringing Parkour to as many people as possible even if that costs money. After some serious brainstorming we arrived at the simple conclusion that giving away free stuff would help that cause.
Anything we give away will be listed on our Free Stuff! page, and in general the only thing you will have to do to qualify to win is be a member on the site. All details for each prize will be outlined and once we have selected the winner we will contact them and send them their prize as appropriate (if it is a gift then we will mail it, if it is a coupon for a gift we will email it etc.)
Members of MisterParkour.com span the globe and live on every continent (save for Antarctica as far as we know). So even if you live in Russia, or Sweden, or South Africa, or Argentina, or Thailand, or England or the U.S. etc., if you win we will send your prize to you regardless of your location. It might take some time to get there and ultimately we cannot promise that you will receive it due to country specific postal efficiencies (or inefficiencies rather) that are beyond our control. But we always stay true to our promises, and if that means mailing a package to the other half of the globe then we will do it.
That’s pretty much all there is to it. Be a member and win free stuff. Pretty cool, huh? We thought so. There are not very many website that give away stuff absolutely free, and even fewer (if any) Parkour based website that do it. That kind of makes us a first, but we certainly hope that we are not the last. By spreading Parkour around the globe we can only hope that other people contract the same sentiment of giving and sharing that surrounds the discipline. When asked about competition David Belle said (we think he said this but we can’t find the quote anywhere so maybe it was some other prominent Parkour figure), “We already have competitions in Parkour. They are competitions to share your knowledge. Whoever helps the most people is the winner.” That idea of sharing and giving is truly one of the most important and moving aspects of Parkour and a goal that we believe giving away free stuff will help accomplish.
We watched and rated more than 30 commercials and have narrowed the list down to the elite ten. It was a difficult task to say the least, but deciding on the top 10 Parkour commercials of all time would have been considerably harder if we hadn’t applied specific criteria that enabled us to consistently evaluate the commercials. With these criteria in place, the top 10 quickly separated themselves from the rest and the difficult part became deciding which ones were better. Here are some of the things we took into consideration when evaluating the commercial:
Creativity and Uniqueness – Was the commercial conceptually creative or unique? Was the advertising agency able to effectively show Parkour within the confines of a creative plot or story that augmented the action, or did they settle for the easy and obvious method of simply showcasing “running and jumping”?
Production Value – What was the production value of the commercial? How did the concept, action, cinematography, music, and production all come together to create the piece? Did anything in the commercial seem out of place or uncalculated?
Tracer(s) Featured in the Commercial – Who was/were the athlete(s) in the commercial? Was he/she a well known Tracer or someone that you may not recognize? A commercial with David Belle would obviously rank higher than the same exact commercial with an unknown Tracer.
Quality and Prevalence of the Parkour – What was the quality of the Parkour performed and how prevalent was the Parkour in the commercial? Just because a commercial was full of Parkour didn’t make it good, and just because it had great Parkour didn’t necessarily make it a great commercial either (see rest of criteria).
Influence of Commercial – Did the commercial have (and/or is it having) any influences on the development and expansion of Parkour and/or are there other cultural significances that the commercial was a part of? For example being the first Parkour commercial would be much more significant to the 28th because of the precedent of the first and the affect it had on the brining recognition to Parkour.
Product Utilization – Did viewers remember the product advertised or was the action so overwhelming that the commercial lost sight of its purpose? Also, how was the product featured in the commercial and incorporated into the Parkour?
Intentions of the Parkour – Was Parkour utilized or exploited to make this commercial? This criterion was very tricky to evaluate because it is more implicitly understood than can be explicitly defined. There is a fine line between the two no questions, but it’s like David briefly explained in his interview with Lina Manso. It’s the whole idea of ‘utilizing Parkour to sell [a product] vs. using [a product] to promote Parkour.’ More than anything it comes back to the heart and intentions of the advertising agency. The other criteria (especially the Creativity and Uniqueness and the Tracer(s) Featured in the Commercial) influenced our judgment on this part of the evaluation immensely.
And last but not least…
Overall Quality of Commercial – Was the commercial good or bad? Did it grasp a viewers attention? Did it have a staying quality so that someone wanted to watch it over and over again, or was it just another commercial that you wouldn’t pay much attention to or remember?
After all the commercials were watched and rated we found that the top 10 stood out because they were the ones that effectively a) utilized Parkour in a creative way beyond simple and purposeless jumping and running, b) combine Parkour into the marketing of the commercial so that the product was remembered, and c) were “awesome” and had viewers wanting to watch them over and over again.
Stay tuned in toMisterParkour.com as tomorrow we start the countdown with the tenth best Parkour commercial of all time.
#1. We want your videos! Since MisterParkour.com was founded we have crammed the site with the most well known Parkour videos from the founders of the art. The majority of these have of course featured David Belle, Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux, and the Yamakasi. However a website dedicated to the discipline would not be complete without showing the influence Parkour is having around the world. We have decided to feature just that by creating a series comprised of videos of Tracers from all locations and all walks of life. Parkour isn’t about who can jump off the tallest building or who can do the biggest saut de bras. Absolutely anyone can do Parkour! And regardless of whether you have been training for one week, a month, or five years, we want to include your video in our feature! If you have a demo tape, an annual Parkour achievement reel, or any other video of you doing Parkour which you would like to submit, please send us the link at Contact@MisterParkour.com. We will sort through the submissions and post as many videos as we can in our future series which will be dedicated to highlighting Tracers from all around the globe. Please also provide your name, age, location, and how long you have been practicing Parkour so we can make sure to include this information in the post. As always thank you for being such an integral part of MisterParkour.com!
#2. There are still a handful of well known Parkour videos that are missing from our library which feature David Belle and other famous Tracers. If you have been wondering why we haven’t yet added these to MisterParkour.com it is because we have been saving them for another special series which we will be launching tomorrow. Starting tomorrow we are going to begin an unprecedented series that will last almost two weeks titled the Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown. As the title suggests it will be comprised of a countdown of the top 10 Parkour commercials ever made. We have been working diligently to find these commercials and view and rate them in order to create the top ten, and we know you will not be disappointed with the results. No less than six of theses commercials feature David Belle, and other Tracers included in the commercial countdown include Sébastien Foucan, Stephane Vigroux and Kazuma. This is an unprecedented Parkour feature in any form of media and we are excited to be the very first to ever conduct the countdown. Stay tuned to MisterParkour.com for the Top 10 Parkour Commercial Countdown and a few extra surprises we are planning to throw in as well.
