“You run at a wall head-on.”
That’s not exactly the most attractive description of a move in a certain sport. But to Tony Tobey, a parkour practitioner, it’s perfect.
“You dive into the wall, and you throw your body. I could show you down there,” he said as he described the proper technique for a wall flip, the coolest move he’s landed.
The 18-year-old Los Angeles resident, along with about 60 other people from all over California, was at UCLA Sunday, flipping, jumping and diving all over buildings, walls and monuments on campus. This event was called a jam, where traceurs, as male parkour-ists are called, and traceuses ““ female parkour-ists ““ gather somewhere on a weekend perfecting their art.
They were flipping off the walls of Royce Hall and jumping over the ramp that takes you to the lower level of Lu Valle. I saw a crowd doing flips off the door to the BruinCard office on the outside of Kerckhoff Hall.
Tobey said he began parkour after watching a video of David Belle, a world-famous traceurs and Parkour founder.
“Then I got into it, and I do it every now and then,” he told me. “I’m not hard-core, like everyday.”
Some of the more “hard-core” people at UCLA Sunday were among Tobey’s favorite parkour-ists.
“David Belle, he’s not my idol,” Tobey said. “There’s some Team Tempest guys that are my idols.”
Tobey pointed to somebody busting a one-handed cartwheel like it was nothing.
“Like that guy ““ I really like him; he’s pretty tight,” Tobey added.
Tobey said he has been training with PKLA, or Parkour Los Angeles, one of the local parkour “teams.” I say “˜team’ in quotes because these artists are not in it for the competition or to beat each other. As a few traceurs told me, parkour is not about beating each other or competing for money ““ it’s about challenging themselves and transcending their limits. These people are more than just typical athletes, they’re artists ““ just ask Tobey.
“We record cool-ass flips … of what people are doing and our own stuff as well, and we compose it as well with music,” he said in describing his weekends with PKLA.
Tobey told me he hasn’t been hurt severely in his two years as a traceur. A few minutes later, Tony scraped his head doing a reverse backflip off a concrete bench in the courtyard between Lu Valle and Dodd Hall.
Brendan Romero, a 19-year-old Riverside native, has been parkour-ing for just over two months and broke his collarbone on one of his first attempts at parkour.
“It took about six hours to actually find out,” he said.
Romero kept going after hurting himself, not realizing the severity of his injury.
“It comes with the territory, you know,” he said, shrugging. “You can’t just let something like this stop you.”
Unlike Tobey, Romero, who rates himself as about average in skill, doesn’t train with any specific group.
“Dedication” and “setting your mind to it” are the most important qualities a traceur and traceuse can have, Brendan said.
On the other end of the spectrum of competitive parkour was Gabe Nunez, the founder of Team Tempest, a freerunning group that has been pushing for freerunning competitions.
Nunez, 26, has been parkour-ing since his college days at New Mexico State University and has been doing it competitively for about three years. Gabe got into the sport from watching “Jump London,” a documentary about freerunning and parkour in London.
“When I came down to Los Angeles, I started really focusing on (parkour) and started to treat it as though I was an athlete and part of this sport, and I needed to train my body for it,” he said.
Seeing the jumps and flips these traucers and traceuses were landing, it was apparent to me that Nunez, Tobey, Romero and the other 60 or so people had a serious talent.
As Nunez described, they were not just people jumping around for fun. Their whole sport, their art form, is based on transcending self-imposed limitations.
“You see something and say, like, “˜Hey, I think I can do that,’ or, “˜I think I can’t do that; maybe I’ll go for that next time,’ and you kind of play with your body and see what you can accomplish, and you learn your limits, and you’re always kind of pushing them a little,” he said.
If you’ve shattered your coccyx while backflipping off Bunche Hall, e-mail Mashhood at fmashhood@media.ucla.edu.