Brokeback Alley

click on pic for video

"Parkour" or "free-running" is basically skateboarding without a skateboard, with kids literally scaling walls with just their bare hands and some momentum. As my e-buddy Ted said, free-running is to skateboarding as MP3s are to CDs. It's not a new story, except no Americans I've talked with have heard of it. Everyone I've shown this video to has had an intense reaction ("that's the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen" is typical), including straight male friends, who pretend their lust is admiration/envy (heh just kidding, I'm sure your freerunning fixation is totally lust-free).

But even Madonna included free-runners in her latest video, there are free-runner video games, and it's so mainstream in the UK that it's featured in BBC ads.

Apparently it's even huger in Russia, where, to paraphrase my friend Jon, juvenile delinquents in post-industrial urban wastelands apparently have nothing better to do than stand in bread lines or practice their free-running.

I especially love the bit in the video where the main runner spots another nubile and proceeds to do a shirtless mating dance of gratuitous twists and booty-bumps, until the guy is seduced and joins in. They really ratchet up the homoerotic tendencies latent in other youth sports.