For those of you who, like me, anticipate with frothy-mouthed enthusiasm the arrival of the annual “Journeys” issue of the New Yorker, this year’s recent issue was a bit of a disappointment, eh? There was Pankaj Mishra’s travel tale about the new railroad from Beijing to Lhasa, Tibet – the highest train ride in the world – which, I have to tell you, I found kind of boring.
Patricia Marx’s piece on luggage had a few clever moments, and might have appealed to me if I had any interest in designer luggage, but alas, I’m afraid it just didn’t do it for me.
There was one piece, however, which I really enjoyed and I recommend you read. And thankfully Remnick and Company finally made the foray into the 21st century and have most of their content online. This piece by
Alec Wilkinson on the “sport” of Parkour, was fascinating. I thought I knew a little bit about the sport, which is really more of a very physical activity and basically involves running around and jumping over and off things. If you happened to catch the most recent Bond, Casino Royale, you saw Parkour at the very beginning. Cool stuff. Well, Wilkinson’s piece takes a look at the invention of Parkour and introduces us not only to its inventor, a Frenchman named David Belle, but also to some of the American pioneers of Parkour who live in Boulder.
I would guess that this is just the beginning of much greater popularization of Parkour and is as fine an intro to it as you’re going to find.