Money Running

Perhaps the saddest thing for me in the whole of the Mayor’s Thames Festival (and there were also a few delights)  last weekend was this structure in Jubilee Gardens, used for a performance by Urban Freeflow, a professional group of ‘freerunners‘.

I first came across this urban sport a few yards away, with groups of young men developing their skills on the buildings of the Shell Centre and the South Bank complex.  It’s a sport that was started in France, in the Paris suburb of Lisses by David Belle and given the name ‘parkour‘, and most of those involved in it seem very much against the kind of competitive aspect that is being brought into it with sponsorship by Barclaycard.

May 2004
Parkours on the Shell Centre, May 2004

There are some spectacular parkour videos on YouTube, many of which feature short sequences from the South Bank, but one I can’t resist sharing with you, although perhaps not the most spectacular is Parkour Generations‘s  City Gents, which gives a rather different perspective on the journey to work!

On his blog, ‘traceur’ Ben Nuttall, a student from Sheffield writes: “I’m totally against competition in parkour, it’s completely wrong in the philosophy of the discipline which is about self-improvement, continual progression at a naturally-defined pace, and the achievement of being better than we were yesterday rather than being better than Fred is today. Competition only causes people to find the need to show off, perform stylish flashy moves, and attempt things they are not physically or mentally prepared for and trained for. Competition is about winning and being better than someone else, which is not why we do parkour, and if it is, then what we are doing is certainly not parkour.”

It isn’t an activity I’ve taken a great personal interest in, having absolutely no head for heights – I often find myself shaking too much to take pictures when standing on even very low fences and walls to get a better viewpoint – but the event in Jubilee Gardens seemed to sum up  something about the way that commercial interests increasingly appropriate aspects of our lives in pursuit of profit.

I’d like to make it clear this isn’t a specifically anti-Boris rant. I’ve enough against him for throwing away public money by cancelling the cheap oil contract with Chavez and back-pedalling on congestion charges while pushing up fares – policies which put public transport in the capital at risk.  Thames Day after all was one of Ken’s ideas and I felt much the same about similar events – including many of those in Trafalgar Square – organised during Ken’s time in office, as well as some of those organised by London Boroughs of various political hue.

south bank

I didn’t stay to watch the performance, though I’m sure it delighted the crowds. I’ve seen plenty of circus acts and there was one around the corner, as I walked across the Jubilee bridge. On the other side I came across another symbol of our declining nation, newly installed turnstiles at the public toilets on the Embankment. For the moment at least, those in Trafalgar Square remain free – as too is our fine National Gallery there. It’s a great collection and I should visit it more often.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.