PKBC.net Parkour Jam 2007

Paul. 360 backflip. (P): Oker

Ard. Tic Tac Cat. (P): Oker

Over 70 people gathered at the Art Gallery on Saturday, June 30th for the largest parkour jam Vancouver has yet to see.

The event was organized by www.pkbc.net . If Parkour is your thing and you live in Vancouver, check out the PKBC forums.

As for the jam, Rene kicked things off with a warm up routine. It was quite a sight to see 70 odd people in a huge circle doing push-ups in downtown Vancouver. Rene, Paul, Dane, Alex, and many of the old school Van parkour crowd were in attendance, and it's obvious by their vastly increased skill and muscle mass that they've been training hard.

Security was pretty much a non-issue which was amazing given the group size. We stayed at the Art Gallery for an hour before we got kicked out for jumping off some public art sculptures (if you call a multicolored windowless van "art").

The Paramount theater provided a nice right-angle under-bar for people to show off their flow. Come to think of it, we did get kicked out of here as well, but not until everyone had a good session anyway.

Dane. No hands 360 vault...so like a Misty flip? (P): Oker

From there it was to a gap at some residential building, which was a quicker bust given that multiple residents had informed us that "they've called the cops". Thanks for the warning fuckers, and I DON'T mean that sarcastically. Seriously: thanks for the warning, and you ARE fuckers.

Next up was the impossible building (and a few things along the way), where we spent the rest of the afternoon. Actually that's not true, some folks went to Coal Harbour later, but I retired early. It's hard being an old man. Paul quite impressed me with his crazy flips out of a very long precision jump. I think Dane was also pulling off some sick shit, but for some reason Paul sticks out in my mind. Maybe it's cause he was showing off his dreamy physique. Seriously, some of these guys whom I've known from their prepubescent stages have flourished into full on John Woo movie stars.

Nice work guys.

Super-pro photog Oker took some great shots of the event, which are available at his Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anavrin/sets/72157600576672841/

I've been sitting on video footage of the event, which I will eventually get around to editing, but in the meantime Hobocop from the pkbc forums posted a decent video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=HXBjTKQPKqE