Parkour Is Crazy, Parkour Is Cool. What the Hell Is Parkour?

What the hell is parkour? Parkour is that curiously captivating activity seen on hundreds of web videos, that involves running like a madman through an urban landscape, vaulting just about everything that can be vaulted, bouncing off walls, climbing, flipping and leaping like someone who took all the wrong drug and is glad he did. It is also, apparently, hard to resist. Writing in the Washington Post, Colin Bane profiles Mark Toorock, a man who is nudging parkour toward respectability. Kind of.  Banes tells us that Toorock, who once worked in London as a stock brocker, became increasingly aware of the physical and psychological benefits -- and of the business potential in parkour. Outside of work, as he began to approach superhuman feats in his own runs around the city, he realized he might have already found it. So he left a career he'd begun to hate to take a shot at opening a gym back in the United States, with the aim of bringing the underground French sport into the American mainstream. How's he doing? Read more in the Washington Post, and do not miss the video. It's crazy.