For all of you in the parkour community who are becoming angered and frustrated, yet have never trained nor know about Battery Park, let me assure you, I (although I am not a member of the NYPK community) won’t be affected. I’ve traveled to NYC many times a year since beginning parkour and I’ve only trained at Battery once. The reason behind this is because there is hardly anything of substance there, besides this:

Yes there are a few vaults but the biggest challenge seems like a kong to precision. Yes those are fun, but I’m sure this coupled with the crowding in small areas that happens is what helped initiate a ban. There are other parks I’d rather spend my time.

Of my biggest concern is Battery setting a precedence that might gain momentum systemically. Once one park falls, it will be easier, legally, to drop another. Perhaps New York City is just too big to get noticed in. I’m not worried about Rochester, personally, because the presence we have made has been one of social and community development and one of social responsibility. We’ve held three large scale leave no trace events in the last year and have had everyone from kids to seniors come out on a regular basis to our Saturday jams.

I want to use this sad event as a reminder to the parkour community at large to say that everything you do in public has a consequence. Because we willingly put ourselves in the shoes of a social rebel, everything you do will be criticized, scrutinized, and analyzed. This means that the future of parkour does not rest in the hands of your best traceurs or the community leaders, it rests in your hands.

All it takes is one person to screw up to effect the entire community. All it takes is one accident. Therefore, whether you are connected with the established communities in your area or not, you are expected to be socially responsible, well mannered, moral, and inviting. If not, you sacrifice the freedoms of everyone, not just yourself.

Charles

I love when people tell me this. They see me for a few precious moments, and believe they have all the information they need to judge. They say it with some sort of certainty and some semblance of distaste. I’m sure most traceurs who have attempted training barefoot has heard this phrase at one point or another. This account does not come from some training session, though. The quote above comes from a nice gentleman I met in Bloomfield, NJ coming back from the NYPK jam.

You see, for the past month or so, I have made an effort to be as barefoot as possible and the bottoms of my feet have experienced everything from sand, water, concrete and asphalt, tar, gum, rocks, and the occasional metal piece. I walked, block after block, through the gummy, dirty, and disrespected streets of New York City.

At first I did it simply just to do it. There was no social action or emotional connection to it all. I enjoy being barefoot and I’m not particularly moved or disgusted at the idea of letting my skin touch a well traveled city street. I found it freeing.

Mark Toorock recently posed a question on the American Parkour fourms asking, “Why does most of society follow the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” ideology?” At first I had no decent answer.

This article could be filled with loads of research in an attempt to persuade you and the general public that barefoot is not gross, not unhealthy, and will actually better your gait, improve muscular dexterity, strength, and balance, and also save your toes from all the bacteria that fester in the confines of shoe wearing. But honestly, that means nothing. Every smoker knows the health risks associated with their habit or addiction. Spewing health knowledge will do nothing to solve this problem.

The moment that man in Bloomfield said those words to me, I had an answer. It came to me sharply and suddenly.

“You’re going to hurt yourself. Broken beer bottles and metal, bro, that’s dangerous!”

I stopped and smiled, looking at ground and said, “Imagine a world where no one wore shoes, how much motivation there would be to keep these streets clean…”

He stared at me for a moment, laughed and replied, “Perhaps tomorrow, then.”

I knew he was lying, but imagine for a moment what roads in New York City would look like if, when someone spit their gum out, it meant every resident would have to step in it; If whenever a glass bottle was broken, everyone, including the culprit, were at risk of gouging their feet; If every oil spill, littered decay, and rusted metal piece meant that every last person was suddenly at risk for your own selfishness and disrespect.

Why must we be so connected to our shoes? Why do we continue to spread this stigma that you are somehow dirty or lowly for choosing to wiggle your toes in the free open air? Shoes no longer have to be the necessity they have become, and only now are we realizing the systemic mistake in placing our long term health in the hands of people like Nike, Reebok, and Asics.

Imagine a New York City without broken glass every couple of feet. Imagine a Chicago sidewalk free of chewed up gum. Perhaps I’m a dreamer, but imagine how the world would glimmer, if society broke through their closed mindedness, and embraced the barefoot alternative.

So my site looks kind of blank now, yeah? Well, it turns out my MySQL process was accidentally deleted and is now gone forever. I am in the process of transcribing all 4 years of previous posts back into this blog, but 4 years is a long time. Please be patient and thank you!

Charles Moreland