Looks like I’m packing my bags for Denmark…
Back at the end of August, famed Danish PK/FR performance team, Team Jiyo, in conjunction with the Danish government, opened the Jiyo Parken in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the world’s largest free, open air playground dedicated specifically for Parkour and Freerunning training, the second park of it’s kind. (The first park ever, Streetmovement Park, is in Gerlev, also Denmark) And as you can tell from the videos and pictures, it is a practitioner’s dream come true.
Concept Art of the Park
But can such parks exist in other parts of the world? It seems so. Today, Saturday, Oct. 24, marks the grand opening of the UF Parkour Park in Chorley, Lancashire, UK. The communuity in Chorley is apparently a thriving one, since the area newspaper, the Chorley Guardian, offers an hour long documentary about Parkour in its online store, called Parkour: Way of Life. Hopefully some solid video and pictures will be arriving online soon so we can get a good look at the new place.
So Europe has officially set the precedent of having permanent, man-made places for practitioners to go and train, free of hassle or complaints. The question now is, is America ready for such an undertaking? After all, according to Team Jiyo’s website, their park had a mammoth budget of $475,000 and government approval. As of now, there have been a few attempts to create a permanent, outdoor park in North America but nothing has materialized yet. There are, however, several indoor Parkour gyms that have popped up across the continent, including Primal Fitness, APEX Movement, The Monkey Vault, and the brand new Parkour Visions Gym.
Practitioners seem to have a love/hate relationship with the idea of Parkour parks. While many eagerly welcome the chance to have such amazing architecture at their disposal 24/7, just as many are hesitant to approve of the concept, fearing that they will be forced to train at the park only and not in the “real world”. (In the same sense as skateboarders and BMX riders being confined to skate parks.) In the end though, only time will tell if Parkour and Freerunning reach enough minds and ears to make such a dream a reality.
Motion 2.0 