The History of Parkour

As I noted the relative success of my history of Ultimate Frisbee post, I decided that writing a short history of cool things is a good formula for creating posts. For this reason I thought I would share the hopefully amusing (I haven't started researching yet so I don't know) history of Parkour.

Parkour was founded by a man named David Belle who was the son of a fireman. While David may have founded Parkour, it was his father that started the movement. Belle senior led a group of elite french firefighters who he trained in the art of methode naturelle. This was a concept he developed while in Vietnam, where he apparently had to run away a lot. These firefighters used any means necessary to get in and out of buildings (including jumping, vaulting, running up walls, etc). Their movement inspired the young David Belle to create Parkour. And while you may doubt anything this cool could come from France, I urge you to watch this clip of David in action. 

The clip which you should have just watched is from a French movie called B13, and while I have a few qualms with the scene (What happened to his shirt? How did he know that rope was there? Seriously though, where is his shirt?) it certainly shows the sheer awesomeness of Parkour. Unfortunately the awesomeness does not carry over to the dialogue/plot parts of the movie, whose hilarious awfulness places it firmly in the MST3K category of movies.

In closing I will quote David Belle himself: "Everything that is an obstacle, is part of our art." 

What, you seriously thought I was going to end the post with a meaningful quote?