For the third edition of ParkourNorthAmerica.com’s Traceur Profile, Kaos interviewed San Francisco traceur Giorgio aka SafeNSure. Giorgio was born in Italy as he puts it “before the first man walked on the moon.” He has since traveled all over the world before settling in San Francisco in 2000. First and foremost he is a husband and a father. Second to that, he works as a general manager for a manufacturer, runs a non-profit business networking association, and is an avid windsurfer. In the short time he has been training Parkour, Giorgio has been a great asset to the community, and after six months of regular bi-weekly training is starting to consider himself to be a beginning traceur.



Kaos – Can you give us a brief history of how you heard about and got into Parkour and what were your motivations when you first began?

SafeNSure - I have always been the active, committed type, while I haven’t been excelling extraordinary in any particular activity, physical or mental… “luckily” I might add. I have been a competitive savateur (another “French twisted” discipline, this time a kick-boxing modification) for three years (the wear & tear of which is enough to give one a good taste of it), and that taught me that I didn’t have to win at all costs, I could be content with participating at a certain level.

So now, after a history of trying and doing a bunch of things, all of which I really liked or I had to like (i.e., work), I concluded that it is always important for me to be good at something…not necessarily the best. One of the reasons being that I supremely appreciate variety; the other that I enjoy my efforts more, if they are geared to self-enhancement rather than to competition, struggle and eventually victory with and over others.

So when I saw Sebastian Foucan in Madonna’s video and then in the 007 chase, I thought “that would be cool…given the chance, I would give it a shot”. That, ironically, came to be when I saw a picture of Chris/Kaos on a flyer at my little daughter’s gym. He was powerfully tic-tac-ing a big garbage bin…nothing too flashy…ha. I dropped in his class once, and I’ve been hooked ever since.

Kaos – What are your thoughts on training indoors and outdoors?

SafeNSure – (They are) two different animals, but I realized it only after a while. Initially, my body had just to adapt to the new activity and environment. In 20 years my gym activity had been limited to pick-up basketball and condition training. While this could be considered a valuable cross-training, learning to do something in the gym that had to be transferred outdoor, was something completely new, and I started appreciating the difference and the value of alternating the two, only after three months.

But, of course, outdoor is terrific. Once you understand that you do not have the chance to bail like in the gym, that nevertheless you still have to “go for it”, this is when I started to consider myself a beginner traceur, not just somebody jumping (poorly) on architectural element. So, of course the #1 characteristic about outdoor is that it’s unforgiving, but the #2 is that it is randomly challenging.

I mentioned that I do windsurf (and if I would be given a last day to live, I’d like it to be a windy, sunny day, close to the water), but having that been always a complicate activity to access to (due to weather conditions, seasonality, geographical location), I always had to complement it with other activities somehow related, namely snowboarding and mountain biking. At an advanced level the three have in common the necessity of being able to “read” the terrain. Parkour adds to these a third dimension: the vertical climb or drop, and subtracts from the excess of equipment, making one rely more on the raw physical/technical ability of his/her body. Moreover, Parkour uses familiar, “domestic”, elements (walls, rails, stairs) and translates them from barriers, or forced paths, to obstacles to overcome and trampolines to use for a new track, a modified path, in a very creative manner.

Kaos – At what point did you know that Parkour was something you wanted to continue with?

SafeNSure - Ha!... Never…I just know that Parkour is something I can’t stop doing… that’s the way that works with me: I’m obsessive-compulsive, I guess… ha!

Kaos – As one of the older members in the community do you feel that you have any advantages or disadvantages?

SafeNSure - HA! Like compassion?...No, seriously…as I said, I haven’t seen them all, but I have seen a bunch: when I was in middle school, I was in a respectful, but plain, track and field program. Some cooler guys started skating, later some other free-climbing, than it came snowboarding and mountain-biking. Para-gliding, bungee- and base-jumping seemed to be the next big things. Some I tried, some I kept at it, some I let go.

I personally met and talked to extreme sports superstars: Robby Naish and Patrick Edlinger to name two who are on David Belle’s level of creativity, dedication and commitment. You talk to them and you find out that they are like you…only better, HA! I have also known personally a lot of guys who died: scuba-divers, moto-cyclists, skiers, sky-divers…and that’s NOT cool. It actually sucks. Knowing all this first hand is an unbelievable advantage. It allows you to know the difference between reasonable caution and irrational fear, to focus on progressing to the point that you reduce the second and preserve the first. Not having my body of when I was 20-28 is a little bit of a pain, but it would be a real disadvantage only if I would be competing at something.

Kaos – You are a family man. Are they mostly supportive of your training or do they worry about injury and pressure you to stop?

SafeNSure - That’s a very good point: I’m in the fortunate position of sharing my life with a person that comes from a very active family. Even if maybe more conventionally, my wife’s father and brother always picked up all the sports that they felt like doing. Also, having a good health insurance and a job that mainly requires my mental/decisional skills is a relief. My wife, who is a surgeon, had to patch me nicely a couple of times, so she’s probably happy to know that, with Parkour, at least I’m close to emergency rooms. My daughter is in the dark, ‘cause we don’t need her to jump around any more than she already does on her own.

Kaos - What advice would you give to other traceurs who are just starting out?

SafeNSure - Be safe…become sure. The amount of confidence that you gain training in a measured way, and reaching a level that seemed hard/impossible, is enormous and invaluable.

Kaos - You have progressed very quickly in a short amount of time. What factors do you attribute this to?

SafeNSure - Did I?...I guess you should know, because you are my mentor/instructor. Disclosing this, I should refrain from saying that it was because of my teacher, or the class I took, but I can’t. A very good part of it is thanks to “Kaos approach” to teaching Parkour or should I say “communicating” Parkour? The rest is thanks of where I was in life when I started and to all that happened before.

All we do in life has consequences, direct and indirect; your Parkour today will influence your Parkour tomorrow, and your approach to it will affect the way you will relate to happy, challenging or sad moments in your life.

Kaos - What do you think about the San Francisco community?

SafeNSure - The SF Parkour community is VERY enthusiastic about PK, in a fresh, young and sometimes naïve way, that is typical of teenagers (younger and older…hehehe), of the Parkour community in general (as I can understand it from seeing videos and reportage, and reading about it) and to San Francisco itself. Maybe a bit different from the British and probably from the East Coast Parkour crowd.

We are all considerably unified by doing the “Parkour Thing”, but I have the feeling that this is mainly because it’s also the new thing, it’s a pioneers attitude (you know: people shake hands and introduce themselves at jams and smaller sessions). It may fade away with time and with the practitioners’ pool growing; i.e. doesn’t happen very often on a pick-up basketball courts, but I’m positive it was the case when the game started to spread out of gyms; it’s a clan or tribe thing…nice.

Also, the San Francisco Bay Area community is most definitely something special per definition… and I guess we are just part of that. I like it because I hear everybody speaking their mind bluntly, but respectfully, which is a very difficult balance to achieve and to maintain.

Kaos - What contributions have you made (big or small) to the community or its members?

SafeNSure - While I’m still unsold on the concept I’ve heard that PK may be able to “affect positive changes on society at large”, I’m pretty certain that every- and each one of us can be positively affecting the immediate next one.

Therefore, my secondary goal when interacting with the community is to give everybody a little perspective: this gym is not the only gym, this spot is not the best spot, a kong is not necessarily better than a dash, parkour is not better than, say, biathlon, and the people that you see and interact with only on the Internet are not really close, even if you may think you know them better than your brother…

My primary goal, instead, is to have fun altogether… you know… helping one another while practicing, filming each other, cracking a joke. I do my best to keep everybody passionate about-, and true to-, whatever it is that we are doing.

Kaos – Giorgio, thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!