Sunday Streets, Sept 14, 2008

[Seng]

I've been in contact with the group that is putting on Sunday Streets in San Francisco and they emailed me today saying that have a spot for us this Sunday, Sept 14th, to table and posslbly do some kind of demo. The event would not be a training session, probably more like the Relay for Life Demo that Aero put together.

Location would be Bayview Opera House and Joe Lee Rec Center and it runs from 9am-1pm. I think this would be more of a demo than a training session or jam, especially since it is right before and overlapping with the usual Sunday time. So what I'm looking for is about 2-4 other people who are down to talk about and teach some parkour. I don't know if it'll be sparse or packed. Also, if anyone happens to have time either tonight or early tomorrow to scout the space and see if there's even obstacles for a demo, that would be really, really helpful. They said we can use their stage, but since we don't have anything really choreographed and have no portable obstacles, I think that would be tough.

Anywho, since it's so late they would like to get a response as soon as possible, hopefully tomorrow (Wednesday) am.

[Bonez415]

im down to go if your cool with me being there...

[monk]

i have a pretty bad idea, but it could work if someone has hauling capability (like an empty trunk). i have a ton (probably almost literally ;) ) of tightly packed boxes of books/booklets/paper products that are heavy and stable enough to hold vaults. they work, i've tested it =)

we can use them like building blocks for varying heights. or just to hold tables/chairs in place. oh, and we don't have to worry about wrecking the stuff, i've been looking to recycle it all because it's basically garbage. theses boxes are downtown at my office.

[SafeNSure]

...ehm ... yeah... maybe I'll check the location first.
=)
But -hey- it's good to have options!
(lol!)

[SafeNSure]

I believe some elements of the "London (UK) parkour (and freerunning) week..." thread could be useful when talking to the Sunday Streets organizers, and setting up the event...

Check it out; lots of info.

[SafeNSure]

...ok, here's the spot (sorry, I'm a little too tired to elaborate or edit pictures, but I'll try to show the pics in a way that they make some sense):
Opera House "compound"

parking lot "inbetween"

Joseph Lee recreation center

...not too bad!
;)

[SafeNSure]

location is convenient enough to get to the spot suggested by Kamau for the Sunday training

View Larger Map

[monk]

nice shots G, thanks much for scoping the place out, seems like we won't have any trouble finding things to demo on, depending on how crowded it gets, but people will move over =)

i'll be there sunday morning at 8:30am to help Seng set up the table

[hillexallen]

the spot looks a little limited to me, but still decent.

[Chris]

I'm in. I see plenty of potential in those spots. Who is printing the fliers?

[Iliketovaultthings]

looks good

[SafeNSure]

Good success, as I understand...
Msgr33 (aka Seng) may report more, but I was happy to hear that a TV crew covering the event spent some quality time interviewing him and Kaos about the topic of "reclamation of public spaces", and the "be strong to be useful" train-of-thoughts...
Will try to find where/when this will show.

In the meantime a peek on our desk there (Jodie and Ryan/AeroSF helped out demoing too):

Kudos to everybody! Great job representing.

[Seng]

Thanks to Jodie, Chris and Ryan for helping out. The turnout at our location wasn't too huge, but people were receptive. Our organization (or lack of it) wasn't out of place and we mostly cruised around the area and played around which was enough to attract attention and talk to people.

First notable thing was that a video crew interviewed Chris and I and it went really well. The interviewed asked us all the right questions, most notably what can the city and the mayor do for us, and we got to give our take on parkour and the community. Nothing about danger or extreme sports or anything. I think the crew was probably affiliated with the city or the event (didn't see any media IDs or associated equipment) so I think if anything they'll be editing to pump up the event and put a positive spin on the groups, or at least I hope so. We forgot to get the name of where it was going to be broadcast, but I'm working on getting that.

Second thing was that we talked a SFSU kinesiology group and they were pretty stoked on us (or maybe it was just Ryan's 5% body fat). They were asking if we could come to campus and do demos, instruction, etc. Of course that sounded great to us so we'll be working that angle to make it possible for parkour to be an accepted (or even sanctioned) activity at a good location.

After that, we went to the Ferry Building in hopes of finding more people which we did, but with so much more activity going on it was hard to actually connect with anyone. The Zipcar gal had heard of parkour and liked it but wouldn't let us use the Mini Cooper as an obstacle (though she said we could if we rented one). After a bit of playing around, Ryan and I dropped into a YMCA quad rugby demo (aka murderball) which was really fun. It's good to know what we'll be doing if we don't quite make that next pop-vault-double-kong-to-cat.