Issue #3 of Wend Magazine has just come back from the printers and should be on the shelves within a couple of weeks. I wrote a story on 'Parkour' for this issue. It was a great opportunity to expand upon some of the themes I touched upon in the last story I did for them, in terms of radical urban theory. While I was intially unsure how I would write about Parkour, after following around a group of Portland Traceurs, it became obvious that they were re-interpreting and re-defining the urban enviroment in much the same way skateboarders do. In a sense, what they do is more radical than skateboarders, in that Parkour is largely about 'escape' and 'over-coming' obstacles. While they are mainly concerned with physical escape, I focussed largely on the symbolic implication of escape from the confines of the modern American city.
While Wend Eds Stiv and Ian and myself all took photos this day, I'm not sure who took this one. Ian was the one getting down and dirty, laying in water fountains and such, so it is most likely one of his shots with a fish-eye lens. I liked this image largely because it is in front of PSU's College of Urban and Public Affairs. I like to think these lads were challenging some of the ideas that the lecturers might be throwing at students in the confines of this building.
