STORY: Free Running

Jared used to invite me to come watch him jump off things in the neighborhood. We have these old mansions in Parkdale that are now halfway houses and shelters. When the city built the expressway, the neighbourhood was cut off from the lake and its old-time gazebos. Rich people have a tough time living without basic amenities, like gazebo access and a place to stroll in their white summer clothing. That’s the way our history teacher explained how Parkdale became pretty rundown. [...]

The evidence of poverty is everywhere. Rusty fire escapes have totally screwed up mansion property value, kind of like corrective orthodontic head-gear screws up a pretty girl's dating prospects. Some people say it’s a shame. Not if you’re into free running, it’s not. The stores at street-level are run by Asian immigrants and all their dumpsters have wheels so that they can be pushed into obstacle courses that make free running an interesting spectacle to videotape.I was the first in our group to have a phone that could record video. 

I became director of photography. I've got all of Jared’s greatest moves locked in my Samsung.I'll tell you something though. Jared got his start on the jungle gym at Parkdale Public School. He’d run straight up the side at top speed and do a headstand on the crown, where all the bars mesh. He'd stay there suspended above the tough playground gravel, like some kind of weird totem pole. He’d count out the used condoms peaking from the earth like struggling flowers and then stick the dismount. What he was doing was practicing parkour, which is an emerging sport if you can trust the people on MTV. They have a reality show where urban kids come up with city-scape routines and compete for cash money and a shot at a feature film. Parkour was actually invented by French soldiers who admired the way the Vietcong used ninja style flips and jumps to escape their crude machine-gun fire. The French will respect you for some pretty appalling reasons, like how you manage to evade their genocide-ambitions and entertain them at the same time. That’s the kind on insight Jared would come up with before tucking his legs and vaulting up to the top of a bus shelter. 

People in the neighbourhood were watching. They were already finding uses for these special skills. He started stealing bikes for this thug named Wolfgang at fifteen. Maybe you've heard of Wolfgang, the world’s most ambitious bicycle thief. Something like four thousand bikes stashed in warehouses across the city. More of a psychological defect than a business plan, if you ask me. Wolfgang pressured Jared into breaking and entering after that. Then he branched out into the running of other freedom-inducing substances. 

Sometimes I watch Jared on my Samsung. He could walk on walls and dive down fire escapes. He had light blonde hair, a shade from white. He had a scar on his left cheek from a cigarette burn his brother gave him. His favourite thing was to run across the roofs of the really old houses on the side-streets, hopping down the wood fences into the alleys like there was someone dangerous chasing him. "Imagining this scary motherfucker gives my jumps juice," he said into the camera on 29/10/2006, his spit thick from the Red Bulls he’d consumed that morning. It was only a matter of time until someone dangerous really was after Jared. Jesus, I almost forgot how blond his hair was. Like a baby's.