October 5, 2021 • 49 mins
You’ve seen The Office clip, but what actually is Parkour and how can it help you as the world crumbles? This episode we talk Parkour and Urban Stealth and how you can get started.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You suddenly wake up to the loud growling of a
tactical vehicle. Must have left your window open. A few
streets away, you can hear the troopers doing their morning patrols.
This is closing in on week four of the all
day curfew. Cops and state troopers have put checkpoints at
every bridge and on all major streets for about every
ten blocks. Your friends and the city's local liberal majority
(00:27):
are now calling this what it is. Your city is
functioning as a full on police date. National establishment media
has been more hesitants to use that term, but your
Fox watching conservative family from out of state has been
texting you about how good it is that someone is
finally establishing law and order and taking back the town.
(00:48):
After months of senseless looting and destructive riots, You've been
mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit your job
when the recent amount of protests started up, which now
means you don't qualify for the working hours exemption of
the curfew. You've got enough money saved up for another month,
but you're looking to get a grocery delivery job, which
(01:09):
would have the added benefit of allowing you to go
outside during the day. Luckily, you've been able to sneak
out at night to do rooftopping and surveil the police's
checkpoints and patrol routes in your neighborhood. You've noticed that
the cops rarely look up. You've been feeding your intail
into a surveillance database shared on a telegram channel ran
(01:30):
by some various activists. After lying in bed gathering your
thoughts for a few minutes, you finally roll out and
pick out your clothes, dark loose pants, a plane shirt, beanie,
and a high vis jacket. Ordinarily, you'd break into your
red bull stache from morning caffeine, but you've already got
plenty of energy. Today it's your boyfriend's birthday, and for
(01:53):
the past week you've been planning to surprise him. You
think there's finally enough information into surveillance database US to
plan a trip across town with little to no law
enforcement interaction. Between the in person reconnaissance and hacking into
the city's traffic cams, which was surprisingly easy, you've been
able to figure out a route using city buses and
(02:14):
on foot that should be able to avoid checkpoints and
the regular patrol routes from what you've seen online. Bus
drivers won't ask for your work authorization card, and you're
hoping the high his jacket will make it look like
you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you grab your small
yellow messenger bag and jam in a water bottle plus
a ten of a half a dozen cupcakes. Deep breaths, slowly,
(02:38):
twist the handle of your door, and stare down in
your apartment hallway. You're on your way. You keep telling yourself,
just act like you belong. After taking the stairs down
to ground level, you make your way street side. This
part you feel more confident about. You've been able to
study the patrol patterns around your media area more carefully.
(02:59):
The bust you're going to is just four blocks away.
You can zig zig through two streets and to avoid
the main drags. As you walk through the sidewalks, you
keep your head down, but your eyes are darting side
to side to get a lay of the land. Don't
walk too fast or too slow. Match the people around you. Obviously,
not many people are out right now, but there are
(03:20):
enough to mirror their movement and pace. It feels like
it took forever, but you get to the bus stop
without incident or seeing a single cop waiting at bus
stops always feels like an eternity, but today it's worse.
Within a few minutes, the blue metro bus does pull up.
The bus driver gestures you want the electronic ticketing system
(03:41):
isn't turned on. You peek up to the driver. The
look in her eyes is telling you just a head
on back. At least you know she's probably on your side.
You picked this bus not because it's the most direct
route to your boyfriend's place. It's not, but because he
gets you close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and
your internet buddy have mapped out. It's a slower, more
(04:02):
jagged route, but at least you get to relax for
a while and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can
get an in person look at the rest of the
city under the curfew and police occupation. The ride is
now closing in on a little over half an hour,
about ten more minutes until you get off. Your heart's racing,
you might actually do this. In your flash of nervous excitement,
you look up ahead on the road and your face drops.
(04:25):
About half a mile up ahead, you spot a checkpoint.
Fuck no, this, this is wrong. This wasn't on the map.
The checkpoint on this street was supposed to be further
up the road. After you get off, your mind flashes
through different possibilities. Did the cops change the checkpoint this morning? Wait?
Did the police find the database map on telegram and
(04:45):
are getting a false info? You stop yourself from thinking
because you realize you need to act now and think later.
You jump out of your seat and sprint up the
bus towards the driver. You blurt out, I need to
get off this right now. Please. The driver looks ahead,
looks at you, and tilts her head down and pulls
over quick. That's all she says to you. You dart
(05:09):
out of the bus and into the half residential, half
retail labyrinth, and as you're running, you hear sirens. Fuck
they saw you. Your head swivels around to catch a glance.
One car from the checkpoint is headed your way. You
hope the bus driver doesn't get in trouble. But right
now that's not your problem, you think. First thing you
(05:30):
need to do is prevent the vehicle from pursuing you.
So off the big streets. You take a second to
tighten the messenger bag around your body. And here we
go to You're right. You see a walled courtyard for
a small two story apartment. Estimate The wall is eight
feet tall, doable. You turn out the street and run
towards the wall, slowly gaining speed, jump up and planch
(05:52):
your from the side. Then your arms reach up and
grab the top. It's a bit of a struggle to
pull yourself up. You've got some stuff weighing you down
and you're a bit out of proctics, but you get up.
You hop down onto the other side and keep going
for now. You battle through some dense bushes and vault
a few small railings as you traverse the side streets.
Soon enough you're far enough away from the car, with
(06:12):
plenty of obstacles in between you and it that you
feel like you can catch a quick breather. Now you
have a choice hide it out here for a bit,
or figure out a way to your boyfriends. You still
got a decent sense of where you are. The destination
should be only about ten blocks away now in a
diagonal direction, you'll get plenty of time to rest your
(06:33):
boyfriend's place, so you figure you should continue on. As
you're about to head on your way to armored state
troopers turned the corner on foot, you remember you're still
pretty close to the checkpoint. One look at you with
your hands on your knees. As you pant. The cops
know you're out of place. Stop, yells the cop. You're
(06:54):
being detained. Fuck, time to book it. Gonna have to
think as you run. Goods is is that they're in armor?
Bad news is is that you're tired and your outfit
is blown. You can change clothes once you get to
your boyfriends, So you decide the best course of action
now is to make it hard for two people in
armor to follow you. Time to put some obstacles between
you and them. You're already mostly out of the retail area,
(07:17):
which means it's time to hop some backyard fences Ferrerius
Bueller's day off Shit. You make a sharp left turn
behind the car and into someone's yard and up and
over their fence. One hand grabs on top, one hand
goes to the far side, and you flip your body over.
Next few fences are shorter, regular speed vaults will do.
The sound of the clinky tactle boots chasing you gets
quieter as you traverse through the yards and zig zigging
(07:39):
around blocks. Before you know it, you're on the back
street of your partner's place. Only a few more steps
and you can see their backyard in the distance. You
quick in your head and look around. From what you
can see, you've lost the State troopers. You scurry through
four more yards before you reach your target. You let
it a sigh of relief. You jogged past the side
(08:00):
towards the front. You probably should use the front door
before you knock. You take a look inside your messenger bag.
You unclipped the latch, and inside lies a smushed pile
of cupcake crumbs with pink frosting coating the insides of
your bag. Well, at least I made it in one piece,
you say out loud. After an exhausting trek, you finally
(08:22):
knock on the door. It could happen here. Podcast Robert Evans.
Sophie is not here today, so I get to open
the episode with a tonal grunting um because she was
unable to stop me. Welcome to the podcast that this
is talking about things falling apart? How to you know
(08:46):
make it not? Maybe? Uh? My guest today, well, my
my co host today first is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how
are you doing today? I'm doing good. Good. We have
a little bit of A fun update, This actually happened
last week, but this will be the first eisode we're
recording since it happened. UM. Last week we put up
some links to ago fund me in a couple of
different episodes of Bastards and of it could happen here
(09:08):
to try to help a woman named Ruba who lives
in Portland, UM and is a community activists save her house. UM.
When we started the fundraiser, she'd raised about twenty eight
grand to to you know, get basically keep her home. UM,
and it's up to the fifty grand she needed. Y'all
did that in about three days. UM. So you've you've
(09:31):
you've kept a woman in her home UM and allowed
her and her family to stay where they are. And
I'm just extremely grateful to everybody who donated, who shared, UM,
it's just awesome. UM. You know this comes after earlier
in this year you all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. UM.
I just continue to be very impressed with with how
(09:51):
how much people who listen to these shows are willing
to throw down to help people out. So thank you all, UH,
and now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison,
what are we? What are we what are we? What
are we? What are we? What are we talking about? Today?
So today we're gonna be talking about and discussing two
of kind of my favorite practical skill sets. They been
(10:14):
training for I don't know seven eight, I think almost
eight years now. UM, and it's what, Yeah, one of
one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's
also useful for fun. We're talking about parkour, which people
may have heard me discussed before, but also just kind
of like stealth in general, UM, and how to become
(10:36):
mindful of your presence among other people. UM. As a big,
clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in aggressive situations,
I can confirm that your parkour is very very effective
because you are a fast, little set of a bit
very good at getting away from the cops and getting
to where you need to be to film things. It
(10:57):
was always, um, kind of a amazing as frustrating as
it was sometimes when you would when you would start
out ahead of everybody, but yeah, I can't argue with
the results. So and to help us kind of talk
about parkorn stealth, I have brought on a friend of
mine who is the person who mostly taught me um,
(11:19):
Parker and stealth. My friend Rick, who has been teaching
Parker for a long time, UM, say hi Rick, that
that that's right. Rick is very not super social, so
it's I think it's amazing that I was able to
convince him to come in a podcast. Pretty funny. Um.
First off, Rick, do you want to kind of just
like give your definition of like park or in general,
(11:42):
because I know whenever we say Parker, everyone just thinks
to the office, um, which I know you find frustrating,
but yeah, for people who maybe aren't as into it
as us, do you want to give the kind of
a brief overview of of Parker as like a concept? Uh,
Parker is really annoying concept to actually pin down. UM,
(12:04):
But basically speaking, its movement with purpose. You are somewhere,
you want to get somewhere, and you're trying to find
the best way of doing that. When we're training, we
kind of focus on efficiency, safety, speed, and the reason
behind the movement. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's thinking of
(12:27):
it more as like the movement with purpose or like
like intentional movement UM is much better than thinking of
it's like Parkour isn't like flips like flips, and that
kind of stuff is more of what we call like
UM free running. It's it's more of like a creative expression.
It's more of like a kind of kind of like
a sport, whereas like Parker is more usually I mean,
(12:47):
there's always gonna people that are going to fight you
on this in the park, in the Parker community, but
it's generally Parker is kind of more based on utility.
So like last last summer at the protests, I I
used you know, park Or in a lot of different ways,
both to like you know, get somewhere specifically or park
Or is grade is like a recovery tool, like if
you get pushed over by cops. UM, park Work would
(13:08):
be very useful for like getting up very fast. You know.
It's like all that kind of more practical side of things.
And I've used Parker you know before I was doing
filming at different kind of activism related type things. It's
just just it's a super useful skill to have. UM
And today I wanted to talk talk a bit about
like Parker's practical application in you know, conflict ish scenarios,
(13:29):
but also wanted to touch on stealth um as you know,
sometimes you don't need Parker and if you can avoid
a scenario where you have to use it would be
kind of great. So I've asked Rick to kind of
prepare a few things on stealth, which then we'll kind of,
you know, bounce off each other and talk kind of
a general general discussion of Parker and stealth in general
(13:51):
and how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. Um, So, Rick,
where would you like to start for you know, stealth overview? Well,
in conflict with other people, there's like three different levels
of the conflict um and all of these get trained
in different places. Usually there's the actual um like conflict.
(14:17):
The combat, which is more of a martial arts or
gun training or weapon training of any kind as well,
compares you for that Beneath that is the Parker level,
where you can avoid getting into the conflict in the
first place. If you can get away from the situation. Yeah,
if you're more of an arm's length of way, then
you can create more distance between you and someone it's
(14:38):
trying to hurt you. And in nine percent of conflict situations,
that's going to be a better self defense option than
literally any weapon you could carry. Getting the hell away
is always the preferred there's there's there's a really good comic.
Um it's it's like it's it's like a it's like
a like like a comedy comic of like someone someone
trying to get into a knife fight and you're just like, nope,
(15:01):
I'm running away because there's no there's no winner in
a knife fight. The only way to win a knife
fight is to be oh far away from someone with
a knife. Yeah, I mean literally, Again, the only justified
situation I can think of to physically getting into a
knife fight is like what happened on the Portland Max
train when someone else can't get away. Yeah, you're stuck,
(15:21):
gonna stick to them. And the two guys who did
that died. They died. Yeah yeah, um, not that they
did the wrong thing. They did the only thing they could.
But that's what a knife fight is. So yeah, it's
being able to get the funk away is the best
self defense. Yeah. I carry weapons with me wherever I go,
but I don't want to ever use them. My first
(15:42):
response is always going to be look for an escape path.
Yeah yeah, yeah. A weapon is only for if you
can't get away or if someone else can't get away.
So pretty much like yeah, well, yeah, I've always been
interested because again I've watched you know, Garrison hop away
from cops over fences where I had to like, you know,
(16:03):
fall over the fence essentially because I'm not nearly as good.
I'm someone who exercises. But like number one, is it
even possible to like learn this stuff without fucking your
thirty three year old body up a bunch in the process.
That's a lot of scared of is like over sixty,
and he's good, very good. He's actually like one of
(16:25):
my high intermediate, low advanced students, honestly, and he started
when he was like fifty. How do you uh, I
mean like it? It just seems like injury, I guess
because my my my stereotypical view of it is like
a bunch of jumping up on buildings and leaping over stuff, like, um,
(16:46):
it seems like injuries would be a pretty common fact. Um,
So I guess that's kind of like always been my
first concern there, like how do you how do you
how do you train people to do this stuff with
a minimum of risk? Well, that's kind of always the
focus of my teaching. There certainly are other instructors out there,
like the guy who taught me Parker was basically, this
(17:08):
is a con vault. This is what it looks like.
Do it my training, Like, I sucked at Parker when
I started, So my teaching method has been coming at
this as a sort of Okay, I'm gonna try to
break this down into as many pieces as I can,
and I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. Um,
(17:29):
Bumps and bruises do happen when you're training Parker. That's
just unavoidable. It's learning how to do walking but fancy.
So you get bruised when you're learning how to walk.
You get bruised when you're learning every technique in Parker.
But I've been doing it for fourteen years now and
I've never broken any of my bones. If you do
(17:49):
it right, you should be able to stay safe when
training you. Definitely, if you can get someone who's more experienced,
getting them to break down steps for you was very useful.
Either that be like a park Ord gym in your
area or just like a friend that that's that's been
that's been messing around trying to like train with somebody
is probably one of the most important things, um, is
(18:09):
to have someone else there both if you like want
like get hurt, you need help, but to to kind
of prevent to help prevent that from even happening in
the first place, because there's a lot of like very
simple moves that can be introduced in very safe environments.
I've I've I've been wanting to get Roberts down to
the gym for like over a year now, just to
go over like a few basic kind of stuff that's
just really really useful, pretty and like pretty easy. Like
(18:32):
we're not we're not jumping to like you know, doing
like roof topping right where we're like jumping from one
roof to another. We're starting by we're starting by being like,
here's like a concrete barricade. What's the safest way of
getting over this if you're under pressure? Right? It's it's
it's it's that kind of stuff that's specifically useful and
like conflict scenarios, right, because like when we're when we're
facing in a riot line, I'm not gonna be doing
like flips and cart wheels to like get over fences.
(18:53):
I'm trying to be like, what's the safest, fastest way
I can get over this thing? Well, making sure I'm
not going to get like shot with the of a bullet. Right,
that's kind of it's it's it's it's it's very different
from like what you see on like YouTube. Right, YouTube
is very like showy people are like trying to like
basically when what you see on YouTube is people are
doing people are doing like a choreographic performance, whereas Parker
from a utility standpoint is very different from what you
(19:16):
see online. Yeah, And that's one of the things that
we try to train to when we're training Parker is
we just give ourselves an environment and say, okay, I'm
going now, yeah, and like do it over and over
again and try to figure out what's the best way
of getting over this specific path. Right, if you can
like make a designed path, be like, you know, even
(19:37):
doing this at like a playground or like any any
place with like logs, you know, you can do Parker
in the forest and stuff, be like I'm just like
setting this path and experiment with how many ways can
I move through this kind of set set of obstacles, um,
And you can kind of figure out Parker on your
own in in in that kind of way, because because
your body knows what it's gonna do, like, you know,
people have been moving like this for thousands and thousands
(19:58):
of years. It's only in the past few hundred years
where we've like kind of lost this ability, or it's
like become it's become less necessary. So like we we
know how to interact with our environment in creative ways,
like we we we know how to do this, but
just that, you know, we the past, the past few centuries,
it's been less important. And I think Parker is really
(20:19):
fun because you can kind of rediscover interacting with your
environment in these, you know, kind of more wild ways.
It's something that we all do as children, just like
evolutionarily for some reason, as children we do this as play.
We climb trees and we try to go over fences.
It's just that something in our society has made a
(20:42):
shift so that when we become adults, it's suddenly not
acceptable for us to do this anymore. Yeah, I mean,
I can remember when I was a little kid growing
up on the farm. We had a bullpen because we
kept the bowl away from the cows, and my my
cousin I would hop over the fence and we would
throw stuff at the bowl and then when it started
to charge, we would back over the fence. I mean,
(21:02):
obviously I'd never do that today because it's mean to
throw things at a bowl. I was six. But also
I couldn't physically hop over the fence that way today.
But I'm guessing within like, I don't know, even just
like a few hours of practice, you could figure out
a lot of ways together. I could be back to
fucking with bowls. Is what exactly? You don't need to
kiss kiss the bull fucking goodbye? You can? We can?
(21:25):
We can go back to this. We could go I could,
I could return to tradition, Yes, exactly. What is the
degree of this that can be done without? Again, like
you know, we have we have a wide variety of
(21:46):
income levels that listen to this show. Um, what is
the degree this can be done without like paying for training?
You know that? Like, like, how is it even possible
to like start on this kind of thing if you're
in reasonable shape, you know, on your own without paying someone?
Because that that seems like a recipe for breaking something
to me, But again, I don't know. I don't know
she yet. It is very much about knowing yourself and
(22:11):
knowing what you're ready for. Uh, this was something I
mean I say that I never broke a bone in
my training, But there were a couple of times I
started pushing myself further than I should have, and it
would have been really good to have someone there to say, hey,
you're probably not ready for this yet. Let's break this
down into little pieces. But if you come at it
(22:33):
methodically and you don't endanger yourself too much. What I
started out with in parkour is I would just put
a piece of tape on the ground and another piece
of tape and jump from one piece of tape to
the other. And went out to parking lots and jumped
from just an arbitrary pebble to the curb on the
(22:55):
parking lot and found some just railings and learned how
to go over those railings safely. Gradually just started building
up to higher and higher things. You always want to
start at ground level when you're training park corps. Don't
go up to high places for your first thing. Yeah.
I think there there's a lot of like instructional videos
(23:16):
on YouTube to that that are not just like showing off.
It's actually people trying to break down movements. So you
can like get find a specific video and be like, Okay,
I want to, you know, bring this on my phone,
go out into like a playground, a parking lot, like
like a wooded area, and be like, okay, this is
this is this one vault. I'm gonna watch the video
and I'm gonna try to replicate it myself. That's really
the the kind of easiest, cheapest way to kind of
(23:38):
break that down without having to you know, pay someone
tons of money. Um. You know, if parker classes aren't
the most expensive thing. Um so that's if you do
have a little bit of disposable income. I I like
park work classes. I did them for a long time,
but there was a certain point actually that like I
couldn't afford classes anymore. And luckily I've been doing park
(24:00):
whore enough at that point that I was able to
become an assistant instructor, which means I've got like a
free I got like a free membership in exchange for
you know, helping out in classes, like a few hours
a week. So that's what that's what I did for
years when I couldn't afford classes. Is it's just helps
help teach, which I mean eventually I got leveled up
to being like a full time instructor. Um. So that
(24:22):
is kind of the other way is, you know, once
you get enough stuff, there are you know, there's there's
ways you can make friends who know more park or
than you. You can do you know, outdoor training with them,
which can be free. Um, but if you if you
do really want like a like a gym environment, there
is there's ways of making classes, not the most expensive things.
There's online groups that schedule meetups every now and then,
(24:43):
so if you can find an online group in your area,
you can go to one of their meetups and ask
for advice. Not everyone's going to give the best advice.
There are some people in the park or community who
are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be in an cast
half of the time. Um, the more advanced people, yeah,
(25:05):
they generally, so always take advice with a grain of salt.
Not everyone knows everything, and no one knows your body
as well as you do. So you've got to keep
yourself safe above everything else. You can't get better at
park or if you break both of your legs. Yeah,
that's always So a couple of questions here. Number one
(25:25):
would be obviously, I don't expect, you know, like somebody's
in Michigan or whatever. I don't expect you to know
the best parkour instructor there. But if somebody is looking
at going the gym route, are there kind of some
hard and fast rules for determining whether or not these
folks know what they're doing? Like, is there any kind
of advice you have in terms of picking a gym
or is it just kind of like go into Google
(25:46):
maps and see see where the parkouri be. That's a
little bit tough because especially since COVID, there's not many
options for park or gins out here. Um, my best
advice would be go and if they let you just
watch a class and see what's going on. Um, see
how many people have casts? Yeah, yeah, back when I
(26:12):
was learning Parker, originally we would have basically two people
in a cast all the time, just for the class. Yeah.
I didn't know that the guy that I was trying
to keep up with the whole times span three stints
in a cast. Yeah, just funny because I've never got
a serious injury ever. I was. I was always more
careful in my training, but like, the most I've gotten
(26:35):
is like is like you know, like bruises and stuff.
I've I've I've and I got to a relatively high
level of Parker, like if years ago only took classes
for me, but focus was always on breaking things down
and making them accessible and safe. True true, yeah, yeah,
but there as there's definitely people who are more who
(26:57):
are more carefree with their body and okay with themselves
to do something cool. Yeah, and some people will get
away with that. So for folks who are there don't
have the financial means to go to a gym where
there's just nothing in their area because as you said,
there's a plague. Um, if people are gonna you've given
some advice and like how to start trying yourself. Are
there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks
(27:18):
who are you know, looking to get on unless on
their own dip their toes in? Um, you know YouTube
channels or or people who you know do good like
writing breakdowns, anything that you would, uh, you would push
folks towards. I haven't been up to date on it recently. UM.
A lot of the videos out there are garbage. UM.
(27:38):
What I recommend you look for is you look for
first of all, explanation. UM. Second of all, if you
can find videos of someone who's training something and they
failed to do the move that they're trying to do
correctly and they fail to do the move that they're
trying to do correctly. They fail and fail and fail
and fail and then succeed. M hm. That's an honest idea.
(28:00):
That's one that I would listen to more because they
understand the process. The other videos out there are sort
of greatest hits compilations and you don't get to see
the whole process that goes into that. So I don't
have a sense. I don't have any specific person or
(28:20):
channel to recommend, but when you're going out there and
looking for resources, just make sure that the person is
being some understanding into the fact that this is the
process of training and it's not just this is how
it's done. Do it now, you can do it. There
is there is a there's like a parkore wiki which
(28:41):
was like you know, parkour dot fandom dot com that
you can you can find like just like lists of
all of the moves and they give you very like
simple explanations of them and they and they link to
some videos um and generally like if if you just
want to learn more about it, then that's then that
can be a good resource, just so you're familiar with
all the different types of movement. But yeah, like make
sure you take every video with a grain of salt,
and you know, watch other watch other people's explanations and
(29:02):
be like, Okay, I kind of like the way this
person describes it versus this person, because you know, everyone
teaches differently. Everyone teaches for kind of you know, different
differently body types for different like you know, body like
performance models. Um. So you know, because you can't just
apply the same thing to everyone because everyone's everyone is different.
But you know, the parkar WICKI is a decent resource. Um.
(29:24):
And then you know there's YouTube is especially since since
the two thousand's there's been a plethora of content, most
of most of it bad, but you know there's lots
to at least look for. Alright, Um, anything else you
(29:46):
wanted to get into, Yeah, I wanted to kind of
branch off of like the parkour discussion into kind of like, uh,
the more kind of stealth based discussion of of kind
of being aware of your presence in relation to other
people and recond I know you were talking about like
the different levels of stealthy. So you've got the combat
(30:07):
training which prevents you from getting killed or captured in uh,
the worst of scenarios, and then we have Parker that
you can use to prevent the combat in the first place,
and stealth is what you use to prevent the chase
from happening in the first place. It's kind of a
(30:29):
tree of I really don't want to have to fight someone,
so I'm going to run away instead. I really don't
want to have to run away from someone, so I'm
just going to try and not to be noticed by
them instead. And that's been a lot of what my
training in Parker has been focused around, is just staying
(30:50):
de escalated as possible with everything. Yeah, because we me
and Rick have focused most of our Parker training on
on stealth UM as opposed to being you know, super
strong or super powerful UM. And Stealth's always a really
hard concept to talk about because it's kind of like
nebulous in nature, because stealth isn't being invisible, right, It's
(31:13):
it's not it's not being totally unnoticed. It's want It's
it's it's wanting to craft the way you're seen in
a specific way. Yeah. Um, it's always been very difficult
for me to explain what stealth is. The most recent
definition that I've given for it is that everything that
(31:34):
you do, everything that you are, gives off a certain
amount of noise and a certain type of noise. So
the way that you dress. You can dress in a
very loud way with the hive is vest day glow, colors, um,
something that makes you really easy to notice. But if
(31:57):
you're in the right environment, that might be the right
type of noise to be making to blend into a crowd.
Like a three piece suit is also a very loud
outfit to wear, but if you're on the streets of
New York, that's normal. If you come into a park
origin wearing a three piece suit, it's very abnormal. So
(32:19):
that's not the right type of noise if you're trying
to blend in there. Yeah, a lot of it's about
kind of constructing the way people see you based on
what environment you're in and who you're trying to remain
undetected from, right, because I mean they're like not even
necessarily undetected, but just detected in a specific way because
(32:39):
people eyes. People's eyes can glaze over a lot of
a lot of stuff. If if just that the right
puzzle pieces are put into their brain, that it's like
nothing nothing to see here. Every everything is normal, nothing
not nothing to be alerted, right, because what you're trying
to do is prevent someone from being like alerted to
your presence. That is kind of the main thing. So
you can be than someone's sitelines, but the way that
(33:02):
you're dressed, the way that you're moving, the way that
you hold yourself fails to get their attention. They're subconscious
registers that you're there, but it doesn't register consciously to
them that you're there. It's the gray Man stuff that
we were talking about with Chelsea, which again there's very
frustrating chutty dimension to it. But the the original idea,
(33:23):
before it got taken over as an entire fashion aesthetic,
was if you're prepared, if you're if you're going to
make yourself prepared for badge situations, you don't want to
wear a bunch of tactical gear. You don't want to
be dressed in like five combat pants. You don't want
to be carrying like military backpacks and like the cargo
pants with the you know, clearly bulging with weaponry. You
(33:44):
don't want to be open carrying a gun. You want
to be dressed, however, is going to least to least
set you apart from the crowd. And that is, as
you said, got a very no, it's not a matter
of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. Um,
you're in downtown Salt Lakes, you know, a black hoodie
and jeans might stand out more than it does if
you're in downtown San Francisco, in which case you're gonna
(34:06):
look like a million other people. I mean, and and generally,
if you're trying to avoid being seen, I recommend against
wearing black basically at at all times, especially if you're
trying to remain like actually invisible at night. You don't
want to wear black because black is usually too dark. Um,
you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens. Um. Yeah,
(34:27):
generally black is should be avoided. Um. Of course, like
black block is a whole separate thing because black block
are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context. But
you know, in a lot of cases, you don't want
to be in black block at protests, or you want
to be able to switch from black block to what
we call like normy block very quickly. So like you know,
quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um
(34:49):
that you can like practice like you can you can
just practice doing quick changes like in your apartment, be
like how fast can I get from this outfit to
this outfit? Um in like a small space, right, you can?
You can? You can back to these even like side
but specifically for like black block, changing both in and
out of is a skill that needs to be practiced. Um.
But overall, I think like there's a lot of other
ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block, Like,
(35:12):
there's a lot of other kind of methods. Like black
blocks are very specific tactic, but it's not a tactic
that needs to get applied all the time. It's it's
it's very you should be mindful that it has a
lot of downsides. Um And based on what you're trying
to do, there's a lot of other ways to dress
that would maybe be better. Um yeah, yeah, it's this
um yeah, it's a little bit like angles of it
(35:33):
are kind of what we talked about even in like
the last week when we were talking about like storing,
you know, food and canning food and like the value
of paying attention to the cycle of like what is
in stock and what is not stocked in stock during
what seasons. It's kind of the same thing at the
value of paying attention to how people dress and how
people move and like what is a normal way to
move about and wherever you live as opposed to like
(35:55):
what stands out like it, there's a lot of value
and a lot of self defense value and just kind
of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting
an eye for what will stand out and what won't
stand out. If you're if you, if you are someone
for whom being able to blend in is something you
see value in, you know, Yeah, Rick, do do Do
you have any things kind of on that side of
(36:16):
things or any like exercises people can do to improve
their own personal stealth. Yeah, it's very very situational. You
have to sort of study many different environments. The biggest
advice that I give people for stealth all the time is, um,
pay attention. You have to pay attention to the smallest
(36:36):
details when I'm even just moving around my house, like
the bathroom door lock. Um, when you twist the lock,
the button pops out and makes a huge noise. I
actually place my thumb over it and deaden the sound
as I'm doing it, and I pay attention to the
kind of noise that I make in every situation and
(36:58):
try to minimize that as much as possible. I pay
attention to which parts of my house make noise when
you step on them and avoid those places. Um I UM. Basically,
just pay attention to every noise that my body makes,
that my environment makes as I'm moving through it. Also,
(37:19):
you have to pay attention and study other people in
different environments. You can go to a grocery store and
watch the body language of the moms who are shopping
with their kids, so that the people that normally you
wouldn't pay attention to pay attention to them because they're
doing a good job of blending in if you're not
(37:40):
normally paying attention to them, and then try to start
mimicking their body language. What I'll do when I go
out is I don't directly look at anyone, but I'm
paying attention to if I'm being paid attention to give
myself that own that conscious feedback and say, hey, I
wasn't all that stealthy this time, I kind of stuck out. Yeah,
(38:02):
practicing your peripheral vision is definitely useful for that. I
mean in terms of like exercises. Yeah, just going to
like parks or other places where there's a lot of
people and like people watching and trying to figure out
who does your eyes glaze over the most and what
what are they doing to cause that. I think one
one thing that me and Rick have talked about before
is like every part of your body points somewhere, like
(38:23):
whether that be your eyes, your nose, your chin, your arms,
your hips, your chest, your hands, all of these things
point in a direction. And if you can figure out
which direction you can point them to make people pay
less attention to you. That's kind of one of the
easier models of understanding how to like walk and move
in a stealthy manner that I think like out of
(38:44):
all the different ways of thinking about and I think
that's the way that's helped me the most. Um it's
being like, you know, if if my head is pointed
up and my nose is pointed out and I'm moving
my arms around a lot, that's people are gonna like
like look at me more. You know, people if if
if if I can't act is made that is like
a failure. So you know, if your head's pointed down,
your arms are more slouched, they kind of move with
(39:06):
your body, but that's not super exaggerated and it's not
super stiff. These are different kind of ways of pointing
your body to make you seem more like UM introspective
UM and less external. Also walking around with UM ear
plugs or like like like uh earbuds, ear phones, those
are ways people will pay attention class to you looking
at your smartphone. Yeah, one of the back when we
(39:26):
back when I took classes with you and taught classes,
we we would would we would have like a weekly
a weekly games class um where we'd have different you
know games and related to park Ore and you know,
stealth would always kind of be something I would try
to do. And you could survive so long in stealth
games by just like looking like pretending that you're looking
at your phone, like not even actually doing it. Just
(39:47):
like walking in like a circle around like walking in
a circle around the arena as people are trying to
like tag and stuff. And if you can just like
walk with your head down kind of slowly, you can
strive a ridiculously long time because people are looking for
people that are like around and being like and being
super energy energetic, and if you're not, people aren't detecting
you as much. Another thing to practice would be quiet walking,
(40:09):
which is we kind of mentioned before. It's like learning
how to move your foot and interact with different surfaces
that makes your walking basically silent, which is very fun
because you can use this to scare your friends. It's it's,
it's it's it's very exciting to to to to to
like to try to figure out what's what's ways I
can hide in my friend's house to like jump scare them,
or like how close can I get behind someone with
(40:30):
with with without them noticing that. There'd be times I
can just like walk up behind someone and wait, like
I kid you, not like ten minutes before they noticed
I was there. It's hilarious. UM. I feel even better
when I can do that to their pets because generally
the animals are paying more attention to everything. So if
you can successfully sneak up on someone's cat, you're doing
it right. Yeah. Oh man, I do really enjoy stealth,
(40:53):
and I'll be happy to practice it more regularly once
the plug is over. Um. If it's over um. Any
other kind of stealth notes that you would want to
kind of bring up for if someone's trying to like
get into stealth and start to start thinking about detection,
you know, more often in their everyday life. It's very
important that you engage in indirect observations. You you were
(41:16):
talking about how everything points and one of the things
that we subconsciously notice the most is people's eyes were
kind of programmed to notice eyes. So if you're looking
directly at someone, they're probably gonna notice that you've noticed them.
But if you're using your peripheral vision, or if instead
(41:37):
of watching them, you're watching a reflection of them, or
if you're watching their shadow um, or you're not even
looking in their direction instead you're tracking them by sound,
it makes it so that you have a big one
up on everyone around you. In Indirect observation is one
of the best tools that you can use UM if
(41:58):
you get really clever it Now this this, this, this
is harder because it actually if if you if you
if you do this wrong, people people, people will pay
more attention to you. But you can get good at it.
Start using like your phone camera or even just your
phone screen, because like your black phone screen is pretty,
is pretty, is pretty reflective in nature, so you can
(42:20):
use this as like a mirror um But like yeah,
using like phone cameras and phone screens as a reflective
surface or or just as like a camera can be
used in indirect observation. But you do have to be
careful because if if if it looks like you're filming somebody,
they're gonna pay so much more attention to you. So yeah,
you have, you have. You have to be very careful
with this method, but it is possible. This is how
I kind of this is how I um, this is
(42:41):
how it's like documented different like um not sees that rallies.
If I don't want to be like super obvious that
that I'm taking a picture of them, there's ways of
doing indirect observation with my phone that I can like
get pictures of them from certain angles to be like okay,
now now I can put you, I can add you
to my to my folder of Nazis that have showed
up UM that method. You have to be super careful
(43:02):
if you're surrounded by potentially hostile people. Anyone who's behind
you is going to see that your phone camera is on.
So it's something that you only want to use if
people are on one side of you, or you know,
you keep you you you use your body as a
shield for certain for certain like angles be tricky the
(43:24):
hoodie and uh increase your odds of success with that.
But but but most often I would recommend against this method,
especially if you're just starting out, because it is it
is a lot more risky. Um. But when it does work,
it can come in very handy. But but more often
than not, using using like reflections like windows, mirrors, you know,
like a car, windows, puddles on the ground, shadows, sound,
(43:46):
all of these different methods of observing someone without looking
directly at them are generally much much safer um and
they can be very useful for for trying to track
someone or to be aware of what they're looking at
without looking directly at them. Um. Kind of more similar
to like what I talked about in like the fictional
opening we did for stealth is very dependent on what
(44:10):
you know is trying to watch you righte Like like
how you need to be aware of the ways people
are trying to detect you. Of course, this canine units.
It's very very different than just being being yeah, than
being like chased down on foot um or you know,
like security cameras of course, like online tracking, which we're
not we're not really getting into today. But you know,
(44:31):
like being aware of where security cameras are mapped out,
um can be can be very useful. Learning to learning
to figure out where they are without looking directly at
them can be useful. There's a lot of cities have
websites that like map out where where all the cameras are. Um.
I know there's one from Portland that you can like
map out all of the cameras in downtown and then
(44:52):
you can like plan like a route through downtown that
has no cameras watching right. There's there's only there there's
only very few routes that that actually have that, but
but they do exist. Um. So learning to move in
ways that make cameras less able to spot you, um
those that's definitely another kind of method of learning about
stealth and learning about like how surveillance works looking directly
(45:16):
at the camera. But that's that's that's definitely useful. Which
intention where they are, yeah, which plays into which plays
into indirect observation. Um. But I mean this gets more tricky.
We know when police are using like thermal drones. Uh,
this is its whole whole whole other side of things
that it's very hard too. Sex side of thing is
(45:37):
hard to combat and it's yeah, yeah, there will be
a point in time in which it becomes effectively impossible
to the editor for cameras. Yeah, there's like there's there's
like a hierarchy of worry because yeah, if because if,
like the n s A wants to find you, they will,
but most often they're not, Like most often people are
dealing with their local law enforcement unit. Most often people
(45:57):
are not dealing with the FBI. Most people people usually
dealing with the FBI, CIA or an s A. If
if they want to find you, they will. But if
you can learn to only interact with your surroundings in
a way that would only concern your local police department,
that's much easier too. That's much easier to kind of
combat against uma because it's it's way easier to hide
from you know, your local department than it is from
(46:19):
the n s A. All right, um, anything else? I
think that pretty much covers everything. Yeah, I think that's
a good that's a SDE. Great, it's a cast that
we have potted. Um all right, Um, we got any
any plugables here to plug at the end before we
before we roll out me. Yeah, no, you don't find
(46:41):
me alone. Don't don't find him. This is the most
visible you've ever been. Yeah, so is there any um,
I don't know a fundraise or charity for someone else
that you want to highlight. Not currently now you are?
You do try to be uh? You do? Try to
be a virtual ninja? All right? Well, all plug something.
(47:04):
One of our fans is putting together a graphic novel
about the famed anarchist militant of the Spanish Civil War
when even showed a Druty. So if you just go
to type Druty and too Kickstarter, you'll find the graphic
novel Kickstarter. UM check it out. It's cool. Yeah, and
I guess other things I'll close with his learned to
(47:24):
walk quietly, learn to observe, learn to observe your surroundings. Um,
keep these things, practice, practice, practice with other people. Don't
don't don't do this alone. It's really useful to have
stealth be a collaborative process, because stealth isn't Stealth isn't
by itself, isn't just about you. It's about you and
your whole environment. Um, collaborate with the CVS clerk. When
(47:46):
you robbed the CVS stealthily, that is that is a
different podcast I'm working on, is that How to Shop
the Shoplifting Cast. I mean, yeah, that is something I
will pitch very soon. Anyway, had trouble getting sponsors for
the shoplifting podcast, I will tell you that. And it's difficult.
(48:06):
If you could actually get CVS to sponsor that big shoplifting,
I mean, we are giving them a lot of free
advertising if if if it does, if it does happen. Anyway,
most people who shoplift also spend. That's true. That is
one of the best ways to shoplift is to buy
other things. In this story I'm seeing, I'm I'm already
giving out advice. Um, yeah, that that is how I
(48:28):
always shoplifted back when I shoplifted, Yeah, back when I
did that twenty years ago. That's what That's how I
did it as well. I feel like if Sophie were here,
she'd be trying to back pedal right now and stop
you guys, So, if you support shoplifting, this is a
very pro shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast. It could
(48:51):
happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. Well
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com. Or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts, you can find sources for It could Happen here,
Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
You suddenly wake up to the loud growling of a
tactical vehicle. Must have left your window open. A few
streets away, you can hear the troopers doing their morning patrols.
This is closing in on week four of the all
day curfew. Cops and state troopers have put checkpoints at
every bridge and on all major streets for about every
ten blocks. Your friends and the city's local liberal majority
(00:27):
are now calling this what it is. Your city is
functioning as a full on police date. National establishment media
has been more hesitants to use that term, but your
Fox watching conservative family from out of state has been
texting you about how good it is that someone is
finally establishing law and order and taking back the town.
(00:48):
After months of senseless looting and destructive riots, You've been
mostly stuck in your downtown apartment. You quit your job
when the recent amount of protests started up, which now
means you don't qualify for the working hours exemption of
the curfew. You've got enough money saved up for another month,
but you're looking to get a grocery delivery job, which
(01:09):
would have the added benefit of allowing you to go
outside during the day. Luckily, you've been able to sneak
out at night to do rooftopping and surveil the police's
checkpoints and patrol routes in your neighborhood. You've noticed that
the cops rarely look up. You've been feeding your intail
into a surveillance database shared on a telegram channel ran
(01:30):
by some various activists. After lying in bed gathering your
thoughts for a few minutes, you finally roll out and
pick out your clothes, dark loose pants, a plane shirt, beanie,
and a high vis jacket. Ordinarily, you'd break into your
red bull stache from morning caffeine, but you've already got
plenty of energy. Today it's your boyfriend's birthday, and for
(01:53):
the past week you've been planning to surprise him. You
think there's finally enough information into surveillance database US to
plan a trip across town with little to no law
enforcement interaction. Between the in person reconnaissance and hacking into
the city's traffic cams, which was surprisingly easy, you've been
able to figure out a route using city buses and
(02:14):
on foot that should be able to avoid checkpoints and
the regular patrol routes from what you've seen online. Bus
drivers won't ask for your work authorization card, and you're
hoping the high his jacket will make it look like
you belong. Lastly, before you leave, you grab your small
yellow messenger bag and jam in a water bottle plus
a ten of a half a dozen cupcakes. Deep breaths, slowly,
(02:38):
twist the handle of your door, and stare down in
your apartment hallway. You're on your way. You keep telling yourself,
just act like you belong. After taking the stairs down
to ground level, you make your way street side. This
part you feel more confident about. You've been able to
study the patrol patterns around your media area more carefully.
(02:59):
The bust you're going to is just four blocks away.
You can zig zig through two streets and to avoid
the main drags. As you walk through the sidewalks, you
keep your head down, but your eyes are darting side
to side to get a lay of the land. Don't
walk too fast or too slow. Match the people around you. Obviously,
not many people are out right now, but there are
(03:20):
enough to mirror their movement and pace. It feels like
it took forever, but you get to the bus stop
without incident or seeing a single cop waiting at bus
stops always feels like an eternity, but today it's worse.
Within a few minutes, the blue metro bus does pull up.
The bus driver gestures you want the electronic ticketing system
(03:41):
isn't turned on. You peek up to the driver. The
look in her eyes is telling you just a head
on back. At least you know she's probably on your side.
You picked this bus not because it's the most direct
route to your boyfriend's place. It's not, but because he
gets you close enough while avoiding the checkpoints you and
your internet buddy have mapped out. It's a slower, more
(04:02):
jagged route, but at least you get to relax for
a while and enjoy the ride. And hey, you can
get an in person look at the rest of the
city under the curfew and police occupation. The ride is
now closing in on a little over half an hour,
about ten more minutes until you get off. Your heart's racing,
you might actually do this. In your flash of nervous excitement,
you look up ahead on the road and your face drops.
(04:25):
About half a mile up ahead, you spot a checkpoint.
Fuck no, this, this is wrong. This wasn't on the map.
The checkpoint on this street was supposed to be further
up the road. After you get off, your mind flashes
through different possibilities. Did the cops change the checkpoint this morning? Wait?
Did the police find the database map on telegram and
(04:45):
are getting a false info? You stop yourself from thinking
because you realize you need to act now and think later.
You jump out of your seat and sprint up the
bus towards the driver. You blurt out, I need to
get off this right now. Please. The driver looks ahead,
looks at you, and tilts her head down and pulls
over quick. That's all she says to you. You dart
(05:09):
out of the bus and into the half residential, half
retail labyrinth, and as you're running, you hear sirens. Fuck
they saw you. Your head swivels around to catch a glance.
One car from the checkpoint is headed your way. You
hope the bus driver doesn't get in trouble. But right
now that's not your problem, you think. First thing you
(05:30):
need to do is prevent the vehicle from pursuing you.
So off the big streets. You take a second to
tighten the messenger bag around your body. And here we
go to You're right. You see a walled courtyard for
a small two story apartment. Estimate The wall is eight
feet tall, doable. You turn out the street and run
towards the wall, slowly gaining speed, jump up and planch
(05:52):
your from the side. Then your arms reach up and
grab the top. It's a bit of a struggle to
pull yourself up. You've got some stuff weighing you down
and you're a bit out of proctics, but you get up.
You hop down onto the other side and keep going
for now. You battle through some dense bushes and vault
a few small railings as you traverse the side streets.
Soon enough you're far enough away from the car, with
(06:12):
plenty of obstacles in between you and it that you
feel like you can catch a quick breather. Now you
have a choice hide it out here for a bit,
or figure out a way to your boyfriends. You still
got a decent sense of where you are. The destination
should be only about ten blocks away now in a
diagonal direction, you'll get plenty of time to rest your
(06:33):
boyfriend's place, so you figure you should continue on. As
you're about to head on your way to armored state
troopers turned the corner on foot, you remember you're still
pretty close to the checkpoint. One look at you with
your hands on your knees. As you pant. The cops
know you're out of place. Stop, yells the cop. You're
(06:54):
being detained. Fuck, time to book it. Gonna have to
think as you run. Goods is is that they're in armor?
Bad news is is that you're tired and your outfit
is blown. You can change clothes once you get to
your boyfriends, So you decide the best course of action
now is to make it hard for two people in
armor to follow you. Time to put some obstacles between
you and them. You're already mostly out of the retail area,
(07:17):
which means it's time to hop some backyard fences Ferrerius
Bueller's day off Shit. You make a sharp left turn
behind the car and into someone's yard and up and
over their fence. One hand grabs on top, one hand
goes to the far side, and you flip your body over.
Next few fences are shorter, regular speed vaults will do.
The sound of the clinky tactle boots chasing you gets
quieter as you traverse through the yards and zig zigging
(07:39):
around blocks. Before you know it, you're on the back
street of your partner's place. Only a few more steps
and you can see their backyard in the distance. You
quick in your head and look around. From what you
can see, you've lost the State troopers. You scurry through
four more yards before you reach your target. You let
it a sigh of relief. You jogged past the side
(08:00):
towards the front. You probably should use the front door
before you knock. You take a look inside your messenger bag.
You unclipped the latch, and inside lies a smushed pile
of cupcake crumbs with pink frosting coating the insides of
your bag. Well, at least I made it in one piece,
you say out loud. After an exhausting trek, you finally
(08:22):
knock on the door. It could happen here. Podcast Robert Evans.
Sophie is not here today, so I get to open
the episode with a tonal grunting um because she was
unable to stop me. Welcome to the podcast that this
is talking about things falling apart? How to you know
(08:46):
make it not? Maybe? Uh? My guest today, well, my
my co host today first is Garrison Davis. Garrison, how
are you doing today? I'm doing good. Good. We have
a little bit of A fun update, This actually happened
last week, but this will be the first eisode we're
recording since it happened. UM. Last week we put up
some links to ago fund me in a couple of
different episodes of Bastards and of it could happen here
(09:08):
to try to help a woman named Ruba who lives
in Portland, UM and is a community activists save her house. UM.
When we started the fundraiser, she'd raised about twenty eight
grand to to you know, get basically keep her home. UM,
and it's up to the fifty grand she needed. Y'all
did that in about three days. UM. So you've you've
(09:31):
you've kept a woman in her home UM and allowed
her and her family to stay where they are. And
I'm just extremely grateful to everybody who donated, who shared, UM,
it's just awesome. UM. You know this comes after earlier
in this year you all funded the Portland Diaper Bank. UM.
I just continue to be very impressed with with how
(09:51):
how much people who listen to these shows are willing
to throw down to help people out. So thank you all, UH,
and now I'm going to hand it off to Garrison. Garrison,
what are we? What are we what are we? What
are we? What are we? What are we talking about? Today?
So today we're gonna be talking about and discussing two
of kind of my favorite practical skill sets. They been
(10:14):
training for I don't know seven eight, I think almost
eight years now. UM, and it's what, Yeah, one of
one of my favorite interests. It's useful very practically. It's
also useful for fun. We're talking about parkour, which people
may have heard me discussed before, but also just kind
of like stealth in general, UM, and how to become
(10:36):
mindful of your presence among other people. UM. As a big,
clumsy guy who's worked extensively with you in aggressive situations,
I can confirm that your parkour is very very effective
because you are a fast, little set of a bit
very good at getting away from the cops and getting
to where you need to be to film things. It
(10:57):
was always, um, kind of a amazing as frustrating as
it was sometimes when you would when you would start
out ahead of everybody, but yeah, I can't argue with
the results. So and to help us kind of talk
about parkorn stealth, I have brought on a friend of
mine who is the person who mostly taught me um,
(11:19):
Parker and stealth. My friend Rick, who has been teaching
Parker for a long time, UM, say hi Rick, that
that that's right. Rick is very not super social, so
it's I think it's amazing that I was able to
convince him to come in a podcast. Pretty funny. Um.
First off, Rick, do you want to kind of just
like give your definition of like park or in general,
(11:42):
because I know whenever we say Parker, everyone just thinks
to the office, um, which I know you find frustrating,
but yeah, for people who maybe aren't as into it
as us, do you want to give the kind of
a brief overview of of Parker as like a concept? Uh,
Parker is really annoying concept to actually pin down. UM,
(12:04):
But basically speaking, its movement with purpose. You are somewhere,
you want to get somewhere, and you're trying to find
the best way of doing that. When we're training, we
kind of focus on efficiency, safety, speed, and the reason
behind the movement. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's thinking of
(12:27):
it more as like the movement with purpose or like
like intentional movement UM is much better than thinking of
it's like Parkour isn't like flips like flips, and that
kind of stuff is more of what we call like
UM free running. It's it's more of like a creative expression.
It's more of like a kind of kind of like
a sport, whereas like Parker is more usually I mean,
(12:47):
there's always gonna people that are going to fight you
on this in the park, in the Parker community, but
it's generally Parker is kind of more based on utility.
So like last last summer at the protests, I I
used you know, park Or in a lot of different ways,
both to like you know, get somewhere specifically or park
Or is grade is like a recovery tool, like if
you get pushed over by cops. UM, park Work would
(13:08):
be very useful for like getting up very fast. You know.
It's like all that kind of more practical side of things.
And I've used Parker you know before I was doing
filming at different kind of activism related type things. It's
just just it's a super useful skill to have. UM
And today I wanted to talk talk a bit about
like Parker's practical application in you know, conflict ish scenarios,
(13:29):
but also wanted to touch on stealth um as you know,
sometimes you don't need Parker and if you can avoid
a scenario where you have to use it would be
kind of great. So I've asked Rick to kind of
prepare a few things on stealth, which then we'll kind of,
you know, bounce off each other and talk kind of
a general general discussion of Parker and stealth in general
(13:51):
and how it relates to kind of conflict scenarios. Um, So, Rick,
where would you like to start for you know, stealth overview? Well,
in conflict with other people, there's like three different levels
of the conflict um and all of these get trained
in different places. Usually there's the actual um like conflict.
(14:17):
The combat, which is more of a martial arts or
gun training or weapon training of any kind as well,
compares you for that Beneath that is the Parker level,
where you can avoid getting into the conflict in the
first place. If you can get away from the situation. Yeah,
if you're more of an arm's length of way, then
you can create more distance between you and someone it's
(14:38):
trying to hurt you. And in nine percent of conflict situations,
that's going to be a better self defense option than
literally any weapon you could carry. Getting the hell away
is always the preferred there's there's there's a really good comic.
Um it's it's like it's it's like a it's like
a like like a comedy comic of like someone someone
trying to get into a knife fight and you're just like, nope,
(15:01):
I'm running away because there's no there's no winner in
a knife fight. The only way to win a knife
fight is to be oh far away from someone with
a knife. Yeah, I mean literally, Again, the only justified
situation I can think of to physically getting into a
knife fight is like what happened on the Portland Max
train when someone else can't get away. Yeah, you're stuck,
(15:21):
gonna stick to them. And the two guys who did
that died. They died. Yeah yeah, um, not that they
did the wrong thing. They did the only thing they could.
But that's what a knife fight is. So yeah, it's
being able to get the funk away is the best
self defense. Yeah. I carry weapons with me wherever I go,
but I don't want to ever use them. My first
(15:42):
response is always going to be look for an escape path.
Yeah yeah, yeah. A weapon is only for if you
can't get away or if someone else can't get away.
So pretty much like yeah, well, yeah, I've always been
interested because again I've watched you know, Garrison hop away
from cops over fences where I had to like, you know,
(16:03):
fall over the fence essentially because I'm not nearly as good.
I'm someone who exercises. But like number one, is it
even possible to like learn this stuff without fucking your
thirty three year old body up a bunch in the process.
That's a lot of scared of is like over sixty,
and he's good, very good. He's actually like one of
(16:25):
my high intermediate, low advanced students, honestly, and he started
when he was like fifty. How do you uh, I
mean like it? It just seems like injury, I guess
because my my my stereotypical view of it is like
a bunch of jumping up on buildings and leaping over stuff, like, um,
(16:46):
it seems like injuries would be a pretty common fact. Um,
So I guess that's kind of like always been my
first concern there, like how do you how do you
how do you train people to do this stuff with
a minimum of risk? Well, that's kind of always the
focus of my teaching. There certainly are other instructors out there,
like the guy who taught me Parker was basically, this
(17:08):
is a con vault. This is what it looks like.
Do it my training, Like, I sucked at Parker when
I started, So my teaching method has been coming at
this as a sort of Okay, I'm gonna try to
break this down into as many pieces as I can,
and I'm going to try to keep you completely safe. Um,
(17:29):
Bumps and bruises do happen when you're training Parker. That's
just unavoidable. It's learning how to do walking but fancy.
So you get bruised when you're learning how to walk.
You get bruised when you're learning every technique in Parker.
But I've been doing it for fourteen years now and
I've never broken any of my bones. If you do
(17:49):
it right, you should be able to stay safe when
training you. Definitely, if you can get someone who's more experienced,
getting them to break down steps for you was very useful.
Either that be like a park Ord gym in your
area or just like a friend that that's that's been
that's been messing around trying to like train with somebody
is probably one of the most important things, um, is
(18:09):
to have someone else there both if you like want
like get hurt, you need help, but to to kind
of prevent to help prevent that from even happening in
the first place, because there's a lot of like very
simple moves that can be introduced in very safe environments.
I've I've I've been wanting to get Roberts down to
the gym for like over a year now, just to
go over like a few basic kind of stuff that's
just really really useful, pretty and like pretty easy. Like
(18:32):
we're not we're not jumping to like you know, doing
like roof topping right where we're like jumping from one
roof to another. We're starting by we're starting by being like,
here's like a concrete barricade. What's the safest way of
getting over this if you're under pressure? Right? It's it's
it's it's that kind of stuff that's specifically useful and
like conflict scenarios, right, because like when we're when we're
facing in a riot line, I'm not gonna be doing
like flips and cart wheels to like get over fences.
(18:53):
I'm trying to be like, what's the safest, fastest way
I can get over this thing? Well, making sure I'm
not going to get like shot with the of a bullet. Right,
that's kind of it's it's it's it's it's very different
from like what you see on like YouTube. Right, YouTube
is very like showy people are like trying to like
basically when what you see on YouTube is people are
doing people are doing like a choreographic performance, whereas Parker
from a utility standpoint is very different from what you
(19:16):
see online. Yeah, And that's one of the things that
we try to train to when we're training Parker is
we just give ourselves an environment and say, okay, I'm
going now, yeah, and like do it over and over
again and try to figure out what's the best way
of getting over this specific path. Right, if you can
like make a designed path, be like, you know, even
(19:37):
doing this at like a playground or like any any
place with like logs, you know, you can do Parker
in the forest and stuff, be like I'm just like
setting this path and experiment with how many ways can
I move through this kind of set set of obstacles, um,
And you can kind of figure out Parker on your
own in in in that kind of way, because because
your body knows what it's gonna do, like, you know,
people have been moving like this for thousands and thousands
(19:58):
of years. It's only in the past few hundred years
where we've like kind of lost this ability, or it's
like become it's become less necessary. So like we we
know how to interact with our environment in creative ways,
like we we we know how to do this, but
just that, you know, we the past, the past few centuries,
it's been less important. And I think Parker is really
(20:19):
fun because you can kind of rediscover interacting with your
environment in these, you know, kind of more wild ways.
It's something that we all do as children, just like
evolutionarily for some reason, as children we do this as play.
We climb trees and we try to go over fences.
It's just that something in our society has made a
(20:42):
shift so that when we become adults, it's suddenly not
acceptable for us to do this anymore. Yeah, I mean,
I can remember when I was a little kid growing
up on the farm. We had a bullpen because we
kept the bowl away from the cows, and my my
cousin I would hop over the fence and we would
throw stuff at the bowl and then when it started
to charge, we would back over the fence. I mean,
(21:02):
obviously I'd never do that today because it's mean to
throw things at a bowl. I was six. But also
I couldn't physically hop over the fence that way today.
But I'm guessing within like, I don't know, even just
like a few hours of practice, you could figure out
a lot of ways together. I could be back to
fucking with bowls. Is what exactly? You don't need to
kiss kiss the bull fucking goodbye? You can? We can?
(21:25):
We can go back to this. We could go I could,
I could return to tradition, Yes, exactly. What is the
degree of this that can be done without? Again, like
you know, we have we have a wide variety of
(21:46):
income levels that listen to this show. Um, what is
the degree this can be done without like paying for training?
You know that? Like, like, how is it even possible
to like start on this kind of thing if you're
in reasonable shape, you know, on your own without paying someone?
Because that that seems like a recipe for breaking something
to me, But again, I don't know. I don't know
she yet. It is very much about knowing yourself and
(22:11):
knowing what you're ready for. Uh, this was something I
mean I say that I never broke a bone in
my training, But there were a couple of times I
started pushing myself further than I should have, and it
would have been really good to have someone there to say, hey,
you're probably not ready for this yet. Let's break this
down into little pieces. But if you come at it
(22:33):
methodically and you don't endanger yourself too much. What I
started out with in parkour is I would just put
a piece of tape on the ground and another piece
of tape and jump from one piece of tape to
the other. And went out to parking lots and jumped
from just an arbitrary pebble to the curb on the
(22:55):
parking lot and found some just railings and learned how
to go over those railings safely. Gradually just started building
up to higher and higher things. You always want to
start at ground level when you're training park corps. Don't
go up to high places for your first thing. Yeah.
I think there there's a lot of like instructional videos
(23:16):
on YouTube to that that are not just like showing off.
It's actually people trying to break down movements. So you
can like get find a specific video and be like, Okay,
I want to, you know, bring this on my phone,
go out into like a playground, a parking lot, like
like a wooded area, and be like, okay, this is
this is this one vault. I'm gonna watch the video
and I'm gonna try to replicate it myself. That's really
the the kind of easiest, cheapest way to kind of
(23:38):
break that down without having to you know, pay someone
tons of money. Um. You know, if parker classes aren't
the most expensive thing. Um so that's if you do
have a little bit of disposable income. I I like
park work classes. I did them for a long time,
but there was a certain point actually that like I
couldn't afford classes anymore. And luckily I've been doing park
(24:00):
whore enough at that point that I was able to
become an assistant instructor, which means I've got like a
free I got like a free membership in exchange for
you know, helping out in classes, like a few hours
a week. So that's what that's what I did for
years when I couldn't afford classes. Is it's just helps
help teach, which I mean eventually I got leveled up
to being like a full time instructor. Um. So that
(24:22):
is kind of the other way is, you know, once
you get enough stuff, there are you know, there's there's
ways you can make friends who know more park or
than you. You can do you know, outdoor training with them,
which can be free. Um, but if you if you
do really want like a like a gym environment, there
is there's ways of making classes, not the most expensive things.
There's online groups that schedule meetups every now and then,
(24:43):
so if you can find an online group in your area,
you can go to one of their meetups and ask
for advice. Not everyone's going to give the best advice.
There are some people in the park or community who
are always pushing their boundaries. They'll be in an cast
half of the time. Um, the more advanced people, yeah,
(25:05):
they generally, so always take advice with a grain of salt.
Not everyone knows everything, and no one knows your body
as well as you do. So you've got to keep
yourself safe above everything else. You can't get better at
park or if you break both of your legs. Yeah,
that's always So a couple of questions here. Number one
(25:25):
would be obviously, I don't expect, you know, like somebody's
in Michigan or whatever. I don't expect you to know
the best parkour instructor there. But if somebody is looking
at going the gym route, are there kind of some
hard and fast rules for determining whether or not these
folks know what they're doing? Like, is there any kind
of advice you have in terms of picking a gym
or is it just kind of like go into Google
(25:46):
maps and see see where the parkouri be. That's a
little bit tough because especially since COVID, there's not many
options for park or gins out here. Um, my best
advice would be go and if they let you just
watch a class and see what's going on. Um, see
how many people have casts? Yeah, yeah, back when I
(26:12):
was learning Parker, originally we would have basically two people
in a cast all the time, just for the class. Yeah.
I didn't know that the guy that I was trying
to keep up with the whole times span three stints
in a cast. Yeah, just funny because I've never got
a serious injury ever. I was. I was always more
careful in my training, but like, the most I've gotten
(26:35):
is like is like you know, like bruises and stuff.
I've I've I've and I got to a relatively high
level of Parker, like if years ago only took classes
for me, but focus was always on breaking things down
and making them accessible and safe. True true, yeah, yeah,
but there as there's definitely people who are more who
(26:57):
are more carefree with their body and okay with themselves
to do something cool. Yeah, and some people will get
away with that. So for folks who are there don't
have the financial means to go to a gym where
there's just nothing in their area because as you said,
there's a plague. Um, if people are gonna you've given
some advice and like how to start trying yourself. Are
there any specific online resources you would recommend to folks
(27:18):
who are you know, looking to get on unless on
their own dip their toes in? Um, you know YouTube
channels or or people who you know do good like
writing breakdowns, anything that you would, uh, you would push
folks towards. I haven't been up to date on it recently. UM.
A lot of the videos out there are garbage. UM.
(27:38):
What I recommend you look for is you look for
first of all, explanation. UM. Second of all, if you
can find videos of someone who's training something and they
failed to do the move that they're trying to do
correctly and they fail to do the move that they're
trying to do correctly. They fail and fail and fail
and fail and then succeed. M hm. That's an honest idea.
(28:00):
That's one that I would listen to more because they
understand the process. The other videos out there are sort
of greatest hits compilations and you don't get to see
the whole process that goes into that. So I don't
have a sense. I don't have any specific person or
(28:20):
channel to recommend, but when you're going out there and
looking for resources, just make sure that the person is
being some understanding into the fact that this is the
process of training and it's not just this is how
it's done. Do it now, you can do it. There
is there is a there's like a parkore wiki which
(28:41):
was like you know, parkour dot fandom dot com that
you can you can find like just like lists of
all of the moves and they give you very like
simple explanations of them and they and they link to
some videos um and generally like if if you just
want to learn more about it, then that's then that
can be a good resource, just so you're familiar with
all the different types of movement. But yeah, like make
sure you take every video with a grain of salt,
and you know, watch other watch other people's explanations and
(29:02):
be like, Okay, I kind of like the way this
person describes it versus this person, because you know, everyone
teaches differently. Everyone teaches for kind of you know, different
differently body types for different like you know, body like
performance models. Um. So you know, because you can't just
apply the same thing to everyone because everyone's everyone is different.
But you know, the parkar WICKI is a decent resource. Um.
(29:24):
And then you know there's YouTube is especially since since
the two thousand's there's been a plethora of content, most
of most of it bad, but you know there's lots
to at least look for. Alright, Um, anything else you
(29:46):
wanted to get into, Yeah, I wanted to kind of
branch off of like the parkour discussion into kind of like, uh,
the more kind of stealth based discussion of of kind
of being aware of your presence in relation to other
people and recond I know you were talking about like
the different levels of stealthy. So you've got the combat
(30:07):
training which prevents you from getting killed or captured in uh,
the worst of scenarios, and then we have Parker that
you can use to prevent the combat in the first place,
and stealth is what you use to prevent the chase
from happening in the first place. It's kind of a
(30:29):
tree of I really don't want to have to fight someone,
so I'm going to run away instead. I really don't
want to have to run away from someone, so I'm
just going to try and not to be noticed by
them instead. And that's been a lot of what my
training in Parker has been focused around, is just staying
(30:50):
de escalated as possible with everything. Yeah, because we me
and Rick have focused most of our Parker training on
on stealth UM as opposed to being you know, super
strong or super powerful UM. And Stealth's always a really
hard concept to talk about because it's kind of like
nebulous in nature, because stealth isn't being invisible, right, It's
(31:13):
it's not it's not being totally unnoticed. It's want It's
it's it's wanting to craft the way you're seen in
a specific way. Yeah. Um, it's always been very difficult
for me to explain what stealth is. The most recent
definition that I've given for it is that everything that
(31:34):
you do, everything that you are, gives off a certain
amount of noise and a certain type of noise. So
the way that you dress. You can dress in a
very loud way with the hive is vest day glow, colors, um,
something that makes you really easy to notice. But if
(31:57):
you're in the right environment, that might be the right
type of noise to be making to blend into a crowd.
Like a three piece suit is also a very loud
outfit to wear, but if you're on the streets of
New York, that's normal. If you come into a park
origin wearing a three piece suit, it's very abnormal. So
(32:19):
that's not the right type of noise if you're trying
to blend in there. Yeah, a lot of it's about
kind of constructing the way people see you based on
what environment you're in and who you're trying to remain
undetected from, right, because I mean they're like not even
necessarily undetected, but just detected in a specific way because
(32:39):
people eyes. People's eyes can glaze over a lot of
a lot of stuff. If if just that the right
puzzle pieces are put into their brain, that it's like
nothing nothing to see here. Every everything is normal, nothing
not nothing to be alerted, right, because what you're trying
to do is prevent someone from being like alerted to
your presence. That is kind of the main thing. So
you can be than someone's sitelines, but the way that
(33:02):
you're dressed, the way that you're moving, the way that
you hold yourself fails to get their attention. They're subconscious
registers that you're there, but it doesn't register consciously to
them that you're there. It's the gray Man stuff that
we were talking about with Chelsea, which again there's very
frustrating chutty dimension to it. But the the original idea,
(33:23):
before it got taken over as an entire fashion aesthetic,
was if you're prepared, if you're if you're going to
make yourself prepared for badge situations, you don't want to
wear a bunch of tactical gear. You don't want to
be dressed in like five combat pants. You don't want
to be carrying like military backpacks and like the cargo
pants with the you know, clearly bulging with weaponry. You
(33:44):
don't want to be open carrying a gun. You want
to be dressed, however, is going to least to least
set you apart from the crowd. And that is, as
you said, got a very no, it's not a matter
of like wearing all gray or wearing all black. Um,
you're in downtown Salt Lakes, you know, a black hoodie
and jeans might stand out more than it does if
you're in downtown San Francisco, in which case you're gonna
(34:06):
look like a million other people. I mean, and and generally,
if you're trying to avoid being seen, I recommend against
wearing black basically at at all times, especially if you're
trying to remain like actually invisible at night. You don't
want to wear black because black is usually too dark. Um,
you you want to wear like darker blues or darker greens. Um. Yeah,
(34:27):
generally black is should be avoided. Um. Of course, like
black block is a whole separate thing because black block
are trying to remain anonymous within a crowd context. But
you know, in a lot of cases, you don't want
to be in black block at protests, or you want
to be able to switch from black block to what
we call like normy block very quickly. So like you know,
quick changes are another kind of form of stealth um
(34:49):
that you can like practice like you can you can
just practice doing quick changes like in your apartment, be
like how fast can I get from this outfit to
this outfit? Um in like a small space, right, you can?
You can? You can back to these even like side
but specifically for like black block, changing both in and
out of is a skill that needs to be practiced. Um.
But overall, I think like there's a lot of other
ways of being anonymous at a protest besides actually black block, Like,
(35:12):
there's a lot of other kind of methods. Like black
blocks are very specific tactic, but it's not a tactic
that needs to get applied all the time. It's it's
it's very you should be mindful that it has a
lot of downsides. Um And based on what you're trying
to do, there's a lot of other ways to dress
that would maybe be better. Um yeah, yeah, it's this
um yeah, it's a little bit like angles of it
(35:33):
are kind of what we talked about even in like
the last week when we were talking about like storing,
you know, food and canning food and like the value
of paying attention to the cycle of like what is
in stock and what is not stocked in stock during
what seasons. It's kind of the same thing at the
value of paying attention to how people dress and how
people move and like what is a normal way to
move about and wherever you live as opposed to like
(35:55):
what stands out like it, there's a lot of value
and a lot of self defense value and just kind
of paying attention to people wherever you live and getting
an eye for what will stand out and what won't
stand out. If you're if you, if you are someone
for whom being able to blend in is something you
see value in, you know, Yeah, Rick, do do Do
you have any things kind of on that side of
(36:16):
things or any like exercises people can do to improve
their own personal stealth. Yeah, it's very very situational. You
have to sort of study many different environments. The biggest
advice that I give people for stealth all the time is, um,
pay attention. You have to pay attention to the smallest
(36:36):
details when I'm even just moving around my house, like
the bathroom door lock. Um, when you twist the lock,
the button pops out and makes a huge noise. I
actually place my thumb over it and deaden the sound
as I'm doing it, and I pay attention to the
kind of noise that I make in every situation and
(36:58):
try to minimize that as much as possible. I pay
attention to which parts of my house make noise when
you step on them and avoid those places. Um I UM. Basically,
just pay attention to every noise that my body makes,
that my environment makes as I'm moving through it. Also,
(37:19):
you have to pay attention and study other people in
different environments. You can go to a grocery store and
watch the body language of the moms who are shopping
with their kids, so that the people that normally you
wouldn't pay attention to pay attention to them because they're
doing a good job of blending in if you're not
(37:40):
normally paying attention to them, and then try to start
mimicking their body language. What I'll do when I go
out is I don't directly look at anyone, but I'm
paying attention to if I'm being paid attention to give
myself that own that conscious feedback and say, hey, I
wasn't all that stealthy this time, I kind of stuck out. Yeah,
(38:02):
practicing your peripheral vision is definitely useful for that. I
mean in terms of like exercises. Yeah, just going to
like parks or other places where there's a lot of
people and like people watching and trying to figure out
who does your eyes glaze over the most and what
what are they doing to cause that. I think one
one thing that me and Rick have talked about before
is like every part of your body points somewhere, like
(38:23):
whether that be your eyes, your nose, your chin, your arms,
your hips, your chest, your hands, all of these things
point in a direction. And if you can figure out
which direction you can point them to make people pay
less attention to you. That's kind of one of the
easier models of understanding how to like walk and move
in a stealthy manner that I think like out of
(38:44):
all the different ways of thinking about and I think
that's the way that's helped me the most. Um it's
being like, you know, if if my head is pointed
up and my nose is pointed out and I'm moving
my arms around a lot, that's people are gonna like
like look at me more. You know, people if if
if if I can't act is made that is like
a failure. So you know, if your head's pointed down,
your arms are more slouched, they kind of move with
(39:06):
your body, but that's not super exaggerated and it's not
super stiff. These are different kind of ways of pointing
your body to make you seem more like UM introspective
UM and less external. Also walking around with UM ear
plugs or like like like uh earbuds, ear phones, those
are ways people will pay attention class to you looking
at your smartphone. Yeah, one of the back when we
(39:26):
back when I took classes with you and taught classes,
we we would would we would have like a weekly
a weekly games class um where we'd have different you
know games and related to park Ore and you know,
stealth would always kind of be something I would try
to do. And you could survive so long in stealth
games by just like looking like pretending that you're looking
at your phone, like not even actually doing it. Just
(39:47):
like walking in like a circle around like walking in
a circle around the arena as people are trying to
like tag and stuff. And if you can just like
walk with your head down kind of slowly, you can
strive a ridiculously long time because people are looking for
people that are like around and being like and being
super energy energetic, and if you're not, people aren't detecting
you as much. Another thing to practice would be quiet walking,
(40:09):
which is we kind of mentioned before. It's like learning
how to move your foot and interact with different surfaces
that makes your walking basically silent, which is very fun
because you can use this to scare your friends. It's it's,
it's it's it's very exciting to to to to to
like to try to figure out what's what's ways I
can hide in my friend's house to like jump scare them,
or like how close can I get behind someone with
(40:30):
with with without them noticing that. There'd be times I
can just like walk up behind someone and wait, like
I kid you, not like ten minutes before they noticed
I was there. It's hilarious. UM. I feel even better
when I can do that to their pets because generally
the animals are paying more attention to everything. So if
you can successfully sneak up on someone's cat, you're doing
it right. Yeah. Oh man, I do really enjoy stealth,
(40:53):
and I'll be happy to practice it more regularly once
the plug is over. Um. If it's over um. Any
other kind of stealth notes that you would want to
kind of bring up for if someone's trying to like
get into stealth and start to start thinking about detection,
you know, more often in their everyday life. It's very
important that you engage in indirect observations. You you were
(41:16):
talking about how everything points and one of the things
that we subconsciously notice the most is people's eyes were
kind of programmed to notice eyes. So if you're looking
directly at someone, they're probably gonna notice that you've noticed them.
But if you're using your peripheral vision, or if instead
(41:37):
of watching them, you're watching a reflection of them, or
if you're watching their shadow um, or you're not even
looking in their direction instead you're tracking them by sound,
it makes it so that you have a big one
up on everyone around you. In Indirect observation is one
of the best tools that you can use UM if
(41:58):
you get really clever it Now this this, this, this
is harder because it actually if if you if you
if you do this wrong, people people, people will pay
more attention to you. But you can get good at it.
Start using like your phone camera or even just your
phone screen, because like your black phone screen is pretty,
is pretty, is pretty reflective in nature, so you can
(42:20):
use this as like a mirror um But like yeah,
using like phone cameras and phone screens as a reflective
surface or or just as like a camera can be
used in indirect observation. But you do have to be
careful because if if if it looks like you're filming somebody,
they're gonna pay so much more attention to you. So yeah,
you have, you have. You have to be very careful
with this method, but it is possible. This is how
I kind of this is how I um, this is
(42:41):
how it's like documented different like um not sees that rallies.
If I don't want to be like super obvious that
that I'm taking a picture of them, there's ways of
doing indirect observation with my phone that I can like
get pictures of them from certain angles to be like okay,
now now I can put you, I can add you
to my to my folder of Nazis that have showed
up UM that method. You have to be super careful
(43:02):
if you're surrounded by potentially hostile people. Anyone who's behind
you is going to see that your phone camera is on.
So it's something that you only want to use if
people are on one side of you, or you know,
you keep you you you use your body as a
shield for certain for certain like angles be tricky the
(43:24):
hoodie and uh increase your odds of success with that.
But but but most often I would recommend against this method,
especially if you're just starting out, because it is it
is a lot more risky. Um. But when it does work,
it can come in very handy. But but more often
than not, using using like reflections like windows, mirrors, you know,
like a car, windows, puddles on the ground, shadows, sound,
(43:46):
all of these different methods of observing someone without looking
directly at them are generally much much safer um and
they can be very useful for for trying to track
someone or to be aware of what they're looking at
without looking directly at them. Um. Kind of more similar
to like what I talked about in like the fictional
opening we did for stealth is very dependent on what
(44:10):
you know is trying to watch you righte Like like
how you need to be aware of the ways people
are trying to detect you. Of course, this canine units.
It's very very different than just being being yeah, than
being like chased down on foot um or you know,
like security cameras of course, like online tracking, which we're
not we're not really getting into today. But you know,
(44:31):
like being aware of where security cameras are mapped out,
um can be can be very useful. Learning to learning
to figure out where they are without looking directly at
them can be useful. There's a lot of cities have
websites that like map out where where all the cameras are. Um.
I know there's one from Portland that you can like
map out all of the cameras in downtown and then
(44:52):
you can like plan like a route through downtown that
has no cameras watching right. There's there's only there there's
only very few routes that that actually have that, but
but they do exist. Um. So learning to move in
ways that make cameras less able to spot you, um
those that's definitely another kind of method of learning about
stealth and learning about like how surveillance works looking directly
(45:16):
at the camera. But that's that's that's definitely useful. Which
intention where they are, yeah, which plays into which plays
into indirect observation. Um. But I mean this gets more tricky.
We know when police are using like thermal drones. Uh,
this is its whole whole whole other side of things
that it's very hard too. Sex side of thing is
(45:37):
hard to combat and it's yeah, yeah, there will be
a point in time in which it becomes effectively impossible
to the editor for cameras. Yeah, there's like there's there's
like a hierarchy of worry because yeah, if because if,
like the n s A wants to find you, they will,
but most often they're not, Like most often people are
dealing with their local law enforcement unit. Most often people
(45:57):
are not dealing with the FBI. Most people people usually
dealing with the FBI, CIA or an s A. If
if they want to find you, they will. But if
you can learn to only interact with your surroundings in
a way that would only concern your local police department,
that's much easier too. That's much easier to kind of
combat against uma because it's it's way easier to hide
from you know, your local department than it is from
(46:19):
the n s A. All right, um, anything else? I
think that pretty much covers everything. Yeah, I think that's
a good that's a SDE. Great, it's a cast that
we have potted. Um all right, Um, we got any
any plugables here to plug at the end before we
before we roll out me. Yeah, no, you don't find
(46:41):
me alone. Don't don't find him. This is the most
visible you've ever been. Yeah, so is there any um,
I don't know a fundraise or charity for someone else
that you want to highlight. Not currently now you are?
You do try to be uh? You do? Try to
be a virtual ninja? All right? Well, all plug something.
(47:04):
One of our fans is putting together a graphic novel
about the famed anarchist militant of the Spanish Civil War
when even showed a Druty. So if you just go
to type Druty and too Kickstarter, you'll find the graphic
novel Kickstarter. UM check it out. It's cool. Yeah, and
I guess other things I'll close with his learned to
(47:24):
walk quietly, learn to observe, learn to observe your surroundings. Um,
keep these things, practice, practice, practice with other people. Don't
don't don't do this alone. It's really useful to have
stealth be a collaborative process, because stealth isn't Stealth isn't
by itself, isn't just about you. It's about you and
your whole environment. Um, collaborate with the CVS clerk. When
(47:46):
you robbed the CVS stealthily, that is that is a
different podcast I'm working on, is that How to Shop
the Shoplifting Cast. I mean, yeah, that is something I
will pitch very soon. Anyway, had trouble getting sponsors for
the shoplifting podcast, I will tell you that. And it's difficult.
(48:06):
If you could actually get CVS to sponsor that big shoplifting,
I mean, we are giving them a lot of free
advertising if if if it does, if it does happen. Anyway,
most people who shoplift also spend. That's true. That is
one of the best ways to shoplift is to buy
other things. In this story I'm seeing, I'm I'm already
giving out advice. Um, yeah, that that is how I
(48:28):
always shoplifted back when I shoplifted, Yeah, back when I
did that twenty years ago. That's what That's how I
did it as well. I feel like if Sophie were here,
she'd be trying to back pedal right now and stop
you guys, So, if you support shoplifting, this is a
very pro shoplifting podcast. Anyway, that's the podcast. It could
(48:51):
happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. Well
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com. Or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to podcasts, you can find sources for It could Happen here,
Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash sources.
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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