PKV Community Spotlight: David Kraus
Community Spotlight highlights someone who is very involved in the PKV community.
At age 47, David still holds on to a playful inner-child. He spends quality time with his son training parkour, writes poetry and stories, plays music, and teaches himself how to work on cars for fun. This year, he’s working on the third draft of a young adult fantasy book in collaboration with an artist friend, and working on his 1985 Porsche 944. He works as a 9-11 dispatcher, a job he describes as not too evil and still serves society on some level.
How did you get into parkour?
I was trying to get my kids into a physical activity. My oldest child when they were 13 expressed interest in krav maga and parkour, so I looked up some classes. The parkour class we went to was in Revolution Parkour, taught by Ryland. When I sat down to watch my kid, Ryland said to me “dads train too.” I said that I’m not ready, I’m not dressed for this, and he said “that doesn’t matter, you’ve got shoes on” and convinced me to join the class.
How is it being a dad that does parkour?
For a while, every Monday, the kids and I would go to parkour class. My love language is doing activities with people. It was really nice to have something to do with the kids that was active, and if there was any family tension going on, it didn’t matter because we could still go train together.
What is something you really love about parkour?
Once you start practicing parkour, you realize that people who practice parkour generally have a community mindset. It can be intimidating when you see people doing huge jumps, but after being in parkour for some time you realize that if you see someone training, you can just go up to them and say “hey I do parkour too, maybe not exactly what you’re doing, but can I train with you?” Very rarely would anyone say no.
How else has training parkour added to your life?
There’s something very child-like about parkour, a sense of curiosity and playfulness. When you watch a young kid walk along the sidewalk and they see a curb, you can bet that the kid will try to walk on the curb. If they see something they can climb, they’ll try to climb on it. Parkour brings back that curiosity and playfulness. I’ve also noticed that if you’re doing parkour and a little kid is nearby, they’ll come over and start doing what you’re doing. They recognize that what you’re doing is playing, and they don’t feel barriers to join. I think this is a mindset that we need to have as adults, that when we see play, feel empowered to join.
I was training at a PKV class at Mt Tabor and a woman about my age in her mid/late 40s was in the class. We were doing top outs on a wall and two other women about our age walked by. They gave her a dirty look, as if to say “what are you doing, you’re an older person, you shouldn’t be doing whatever you’re doing on that wall”. The woman I was training with felt ashamed. She caught the social dismissal from them, so I said “Imagine that it was a kid that walked by. They would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world that there’s a grown up climbing on the wall. It doesn’t matter what those two women think, you’re here playing, having fun.” Luckily she was able to take the perspective of the kid and get back on the wall and keep training. I think taking that curious child’s mindset is super important, and that’s one of the biggest lessons parkour can offer for life in general.
How do you think we can reduce the social stigma for older adults playing?
We can create more adult classes. As an adult, when you’re interested in an activity, you’re looking for a space to do it in and people to teach you. Adults are very conditioned to doing things the “right” way, find the right teacher, use the right materials… More opportunities for activities with less rigid structure such as parkour can help break away from that.
Having more public parks and multi-use recreation areas can also help. Right now the adult recreation spaces we have are very rigid, single use, like tennis courts or calisthenics parks for example. Parkour parks would be nice, but rather than calling them parkour parks, it would be cool if they were just adult play spaces.
What were some of your favorite experiences with PKV?
I went to PKV classes in the fall and just sort of assumed that everything would stop for the winter when it got cold and dark and wet, but that didn’t happen. There were fewer people, but it was cold and dark and rainy, but we were still out there jumping, and that was really powerful. There’s something about doing it with another person - the camaraderie, you almost have to laugh sometimes because you’re muddy and cold and slipping all over the place, but you’re all laughing because you’re having a good time.
I also really enjoyed the monthly “Leave No Trace” cleanup jams that used to happen in Portland. It was fun wandering around picking up garbage and then training for a couple hours. It helped build community and reinforce our value of taking care of our environment, and it was really cool that people who were more hesitant when it came to parkour still felt good about participating in our community and helping to pick up garbage.
About the Author
Sheep Zhang started training parkour in 2016, and the practice and the community have been a major part of her life ever since. Sheep sees parkour as a powerful tool for building community and building connection to the physical environment, as well as a versatile and nuanced medium for self-expression and self-discovery.