Get to Know How Parkour Culture Survived a Decade of Controversy

When we tallied the best parkour survived incidences that have occurred over the decade, we found lots of controversies. While controversies aren’t great, there has been a lot in the world of Parkour since 2010. As crazy as it sounds, looking back, these controversies accelerated the growth of this sport in the industry.

In this light, it’s important to look at parkour survived controversies so that you can understand Parkour and the transformations that have taken place over the last couple of years.

There were more than five controversies that stood out in the community of Parkour.

These controversies are relevant because they’ve helped in solving big issues, discussing important points, and the transformations that have happened over the last few years. Sometimes such things happen, something gets stronger after years of tough circumstances and lives further much better blossoming and shining. This is pretty that occasion, when someone gives you the lemon and you make a lemonade of it. So, let’s get started!

1. Urban Freeflow

Urban Free Flow was one of the biggest parkour brands in the world. It was founded by Paul EZ in England back in 2003 together with his business partner Mark. Mark split from the famous brand in 2005 and started working on American Parkour.

Everyone who practiced Parkour between the early 2000s to 2010 was either inspired or involved with Urban Free Flow. Urban Free Flow made it possible for Parkour to accelerate its growth in many ways. The Glyph logo is still popular today and it can be recognized by all traceurs who were active back then.

So how did Urban Freeflow turn into a controversy? How did it become a pain if most people supported it? If you are from the US, you might not understand how it all started. But here are a few things that led to this:

• Urban Free Flow’s aim to commercialize Parkour through merchandise, competition, and business was criticized because most traceurs around the world were focused on the non-profit vision at the time.
• The marketing strategies that Urban Free Flow executed together with Paul EZ put off a lot of interested parties in parkour. They used titles such as Parkour Network and The Worldwide Free run which were not well received by most people.
• Many people were jealous of the Urban Free flow’s success. Back then Urban Free Flow had the largest YouTube channel on Parkour with more than one million subscribers.
• Paul EZ didn’t agree with some of the things that parkour members told him. And this led to resentment.
• Looking back, all of these seem quite shallow. However, most people hated Urban Free Flow for some time. If you lived in the UK back then, you’d probably understand.

Since this controversy, what happened to Urban Free Flow? Paul EZ shifted his focus from Parkour to weight lifting and training. And this made it possible for Urban Free Flow YouTube to focus on the same. This didn’t continue for long since the YouTube channel is no longer active and all the weight training videos have been removed.

Rumor has it that Paul EZ sold the brand to four German athletes. The group created a new Urban Free Flow site and started publishing great articles. The old website is no longer functioning and social media pages appear to be abandoned too. Not every successful brand lasts for centuries. Urban Free Flow didn’t manage. But they can come back this year.

2. Take Flight Controversy

Take Flight is a Parkour brand that was founded back in 2009. It all began with a focus on t-shirts and quickly grew to own an extensive clothing line in the world of Parkour. In 2014, the organization branched out by launching its shoe line. From 2010 to 2015, the organization sold more than any clothing brand in the Parkour world.

Take Flight also sponsored some of the most influential and iconic parkour survived legends such as Shaun Wood, Pedro Salgado, Tapp Bros, Joey Adrian, and Stanislavs Lazden to name a few. The company also launched a David Belle clothing line.

The company grew rapidly and became successful. However, this didn’t last too long. Controversies had started welling up around the business. And they followed them year after year. There were a series of events that led to a negative reaction in the world of Parkour. The most prominent were:

• Take Flight was a business entity. Back then, the majority of parkour fans and players were against people making money from the activity. Take Flight was perceived in a negative light for promoting business.
• The marketing strategies that the business executed were not accepted. Take Flight referred to themselves as the World’s First Clothing Company in Parkour. They then changed the slogan to The Official Parkour Clothing. When they launched their first shoe, they referred to it as The Greatest Parkour Shoe. Such strong words did not sit well with many parkour fans because they had crossed boundaries and lacked humility.
• Parkour fans discovered that the company had purchased close to 100 domain names related to Parkour. They included things like ParkourPants.com and ParkourTees.com to name a few. This led to a lot of accusations, assumptions, and fears about their plans and vision for the industry.
• People also discovered that Dunlap had registered the names of Parkour athletes as domain names. They included MarkToorock.com and Danielllabaca.com to name a few. This further drove the negative questions and perceptions about the motives of Take Flight.
• Rumor has it that Take Flight had copyrighted Parkour. This issue brought a lot of concern in the world of Parkour that it was brought up during the Tempest Pro Takeover.
• Dunlap took everything and countered the accusations regularly in videos, interviews, and blog posts. But with all these facts, Traceuers hated Take Flight. Things became so bad that some popular sponsors had to leave the brand. People burnt its products and prominent brands and gyms refused to work with Take Flight.

You must be wondering what Take Flight is doing right now. Despite all the accusations and assumptions, Take Flight has been operating to achieve its goals. The company manufactures Parkour gear. However, they have focused on shoes. Most parkour fans have received their products well. Most people respect the company today and how parkour survived.

3. Parkour competitions

According to the reviews of the dissertation service, one of the most exciting events in the world of Parkour is Parkour competitions. Today, every parkour fan dreams of attending these events. However, a few years ago, most people were against them. It was not easy to find a Parkour event being held anywhere in the world.

As we said earlier, Parkour was a non-competitive activity. And most people wanted it to remain that way. They believed that Parkour would lose its fun and excitement if people focused on becoming better than others. Isn’t it amazing how people change? Today, the people who were against parkour competitions are supporting them 100 percent.

 Conclusion

A lot has happened since parkour came into the world. The activities that parkour fans shamed and avoided are the same activities that they support today. With all these controversies, parkour survived. And it’s getting stronger, the fashion and popularity of parkour is stable and grows each year.