
Photo by Joshua Kristal
Brandon Lopez, 14, of Red Hook, practiced parkour on a recent cool night in Coffey Park, before the freeze set in. Parkour, also known as free-running, is an urban sport originating in France in which participants run and use their bodies to jump and flip over obstacles in the most efficient way possible. According to Wiki, a practitioner of parkour is called a traceur if male, or traceuse if female, after  the French adjective “traceur,” for something that leaves a trace or a trail behind it. Free-running is a bit more dramatic than parkour.
Lopez and his friend Alvin Santana, 15, had mats and were flipping off of trees and a picnic table, honing their craft.