Freerunning academy in LA

The Tempest Freerunning Academy is a new LA-based gym and training facility for freerunners; it's a kind of huge indoor obstacle course filled with whimsy and potential death: "No matter your age, skill, or athletic level, The Freerunning Academy is a place for you to explore the evolution of movement, increase your fitness level, pioneer an ever-growing sport and meet some amazing people in the process."

Tempest Freerunning Academy (via JWZ)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Meadslosh

So, they’re training people to become video game characters?
Anonymous

those guys have the SEXIEST websters I have ever seen.
kagemeister

I hope this place has excellent insurance and a good lawyer on its rolodex.
- Anonymous
  
  Uhh, ever heard of signing a waiver? I’m sure it’s the same deal as going to a climbing gym…
GreenJello

Wonder what the insurance bill looks like…. :)
ray9x

Man, Chatsworth/Northridge is totally not “LA”… This place may be the only reason why I wish I still lived in the Valley; it looks amazing.
Major Variola (ret)

Doing gymnastics indoors is gross, and soul-killing.

Go bushwacking offtrail, you will never go back.
- ikegently
  
  Yeah, that totally looks soul killing.
- EH
  
  Luckily I don’t have a soul, so I’m free to enjoy it! ;)
betatron

Looks like great fun! Many many years ago i was given to get all the fat guys through the physical fitness test in boot camp and ran the PT course many**3 times; i really liked it then (orlando in july). Now, due to the nature of high energy science gagetry, i “sort of” get to do some stuff like that at work, but its generally discouraged. Well, explicitly discouraged but i’m irrepressable.

The video is inspiring, and i learned a couple new Jackie Chan moves. I love the corner move. thx.
Anonymous

It turns out that “In L.A.” is a highly subjective phrase.
wolfiesma

That video was amazing! Killer moves, perfect soundtrack, and what a space! WTG! :) I hope this academy is very successful in its endeavors. We need more like this! In *any* area code! (And more indoor/outdoor skate parks would be cool too!)
Donald Petersen

Wow, where was this place when I was young and energetic? I’d have spent ALL FREAKING DAY at a place like this when I were a lad.

Now that I’m 137 years old, all I can do is shake my oxygen mask and wheeze my disapproval of those damned youngsters and their bouncing-off-the-walls energy.

But the waivers must be thick indeed. Skulls will be fractured and teeth will be lost. ‘Sokay with me, but let’s start a Date Of Closure pool, shall we? I do hope they make it, but my money’s on the next solstice.
sitar

this looks like so much fun.
that said, their poor, poor knees.
Teller

We’re not fond of those east coast no-socks-w/loafers people who think Santa Monica is hardcore LA.

- Hancock Park represents!
penguinchris

I can only assume that primarily they will offer workshops and carefully sectioned-off practice sessions… clearly having open free-roaming sessions with people in the “no matter what your age, skill, or athletic level” category would be disastrous. Even having open sessions with people as good as in the video would be a problem.

Don’t get me wrong, it looks awesome, and free running has been an interest of mine for years (though my attempts have been less than stellar) since seeing 80′s Jackie Chan movies, many of which are based on similar athletic acrobatics. I wish them success but I have a feeling it will turn into something of an elite club where it will be hard for beginners to learn anything while people who are good at it run circles around them (literally!)

When it comes to doing things like this that I’m not good at, I personally and I think most other people are very self-conscious. It’ll be interesting to see if they manage to get beginners to show up. I personally would have to do a lot of practice on my own before showing up someplace like this, despite the fact that this is the perfect place to get that beginning practice in!

I guess skate parks aren’t much different, and they’ve been quite successful, so who knows.
adamnvillani

As a Valley resident who works at L.A. City Hall, I can reassure you that this place is fully located within the City of Los Angeles and you can confidently say they are “LA-based” without any problem from me.

But what *is* weird is that they give their location as “19821 Nordhoff Place. #115, Los Angeles, CA 91311,” which is an invalid address. As much as Chatsworth may be in the City of Los Angeles, that’s not how the U.S. Postal Service sorts its mail. The only acceptable locator name for ZIP code 91311 is “Chatsworth.”

This causes a lot of confusion; there are people who will insist that they live in a mythical “City of Van Nuys” because that’s what their mail says.

The explanation is that the Post Office’s “city names” that it uses as locators is independent of the exact definitions of city jurisdictions. They don’t care where the exact boundaries are; they just want to be able to deliver the mail efficiently.

There are unincorporated areas outside the L.A. city limits that also carry a Chatsworth address, for example. And there’s a neighborhood of L.A. in the hills north of Beverly Hills referred to as “Beverly Hills Post Office,” because they use the Beverly Hills post office and have Beverly Hills addresses, even though they’re in the City of Los Angeles.
- GlenBlank
  
  By USPS naming rules, a single community name can’t overlap Sectional Center Facility boundaries, so only mail that routes trough SCF Los Angeles (ZIP Codes 900xx-904xx) can be “Los Angeles”.
  
  Most City of LA addresses in that area are simply designated “Los Angeles” – not neighborhood names like “Hollywood” or “Silver Lake” – though some, as you note, get other city names, even though they’re actually in LA.
  
  To the USPS, it’s all about routing. If your mail routes through the Beverly Hills PO, your mailing address is “Beverly Hills”, no matter what city you actually live in.
  
  Most of the San Fernando Valley – about half of the City of LA – routes through SCF Van Nuys (ZIPs 913xx-916xx), so those areas can’t be “Los Angeles”; instead, the ones in Los Angeles get individual neighborhood names.
  
  Of course, the reality is that if you get the ZIP code right, the USPS doesn’t really care what city name you use.
  
  The LADWP addresses all its bills to “Los Angeles” no matter what the ZIP code may be (because they’re a city-owned municipal utility that only serves residents of the City of LA) and the bills all get delivered.
  
  The only time the USPS even looks at the city name is if they can’t find the specified street address in the specified ZIP code area.
  
  (Can you tell I’m the son of a postal clerk? :-))
  - adamnvillani
    
    The LADWP addresses all its bills to “Los Angeles” no matter what the ZIP code may be
    
    I checked my own LADWP bill, and it’s addressed to Woodland Hills, CA 91367. It’s possible that in the past they might have addressed everything to Los Angeles.
    
    Thanks for the clarification about routing and SCFs; my knowledge of the subject was vague.
  - Teller
    
    “The LADWP addresses all its bills to “Los Angeles” no matter what the ZIP code may be (because they’re a city-owned municipal utility that only serves residents of the City of LA) and the bills all get delivered.”
    
    They ought to know, they built the Valley.
    - GlenBlank
      
      Yep, without the DWP, the Valley would probably still be wheat farms and peach and walnut orchards. (Our neighborhood still has many of its 120-year-old walnut trees, but only the squirrels eat the nuts these days.)
      
      Mission Hills/Sylmar might be a suburban town, though, since it had its own water supply. :-)
Sekino

The rookies probably ought to start their training in the big foamie bin (that’s where I’d be for sure) ;)
SamSam

Ok, I was all prepared to be a cynic about “free running” indoors, and the movement as a whole, but I just couldn’t after watching the video. That all looks too freeking fun. Damn I’d love to be able to do that.

I also noticed one of the guys in a Capoeira uniform. They are indeed quite similar. I shouldn’t have quit.

Mostly I want to play in that building. Great laser tag arena too! Holy shit — laser tag free running. Does that even exist?
weatherman

The video is quite entertaining. It makes me wish someone had told me in middle school that the end result of sticking with gymnastics is that I could be free-running. It really seemed like a dead-end activity before this came along.

@SamSam; I think you just invented (or at least expanded) a sport. And it’s perfectly in line with the origins of free-running, which apparently was inspired by French hooligans escaping from the police.
Anonymous

Looks like fun!

This freerunning fad reminds me a bit of the ninja fad of the 1980s. Damn I suddenly feel old…
Anonymous

that’s all fine and good, but after school, could you please go outside and play?
Antinous / Moderator

Chatsworth/Northridge is totally not “LA”…

OMG, Menegesha is totally not Addis Ababa!

Seriously, for people who don’t live in Southern California (and yes they do exist and some of them even still have their birth noses), “LA” is a general marker for the greater LA area. I don’t know why, but these A =/= B comments about suburbs almost always seem to come from Angelenos.
- Sekino
  
  Seriously, for people who don’t live in Southern California (and yes they do exist and some of them even still have their birth noses)
  
  Off-topic, but I spewed tea a bit: I was beginning to think I was the only one noticing the deviated septums epidemic…
- Donald Petersen
  
  Boy, you said it. I can say Pasadena is not L.A. because it really isn’t. Incorporated in 1886, with its own mayor and police force and area code and everything… not even part of the enormous Los Angeles Unified School District.
  
  But Chatsworth and Northridge are both part of El Pueblo de Nuestra SeÃ±ora la Reina de los Ãngeles del RÃo de PorciÃºncula. It’s a big-ass tent, since of all the little communities in the nearby area, only Burbank, Glendale, Pasadena, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and Culver City are their own incorporated municipalities. Still, it’s pretty easy to think of everything between Santa Barbara to the west, Valencia to the north, San Bernardino and Riverside to the east, and Anaheim to the south as just being all “L.A.” God knows as a San Diegan I was always glad for the presence of Camp Pendleton just south of San Clemente, which seemed to prevent L.A. from fully absorbing San Diego and reaching its tentacles all the way down to the Mexican border. Now that I’ve moved to Pasadena, to my out-of-state friends and relations, I live in L.A. And that’s perfectly understandable.
  
  Still and all, when it comes to “L.A.” as a (don’t laugh) State Of Mind, then yeah, the northwestern San Fernando Valley isn’t very “L.A.” But then, neither is Van Nuys, vital spleen of the city and home to its branch of the U.S. Census.
  
  It tickles me no end to hear Nouveau Angelenos (the actual natives don’t talk too much about it) discussing the profound distinctions between, say, Echo Park and Silverlake.
- Roger Wilco
  
  That sounds like it’s coming from someone with an 818 area code :P
  
  Not just an Angeleno thing though, I heard plenty of people bitch about the bridge and tunnel crowd in NYC. And really, Mid-Wilshire or Pasadena to Chatsworth is at least an hour one way on a good day.
  
  Sure feels like driving to another town.
  - Donald Petersen
    
    And really, Mid-Wilshire or Pasadena to Chatsworth is at least an hour one way on a good day.
    
    Can’t speak for Mid-Wilshire (“the REAL Los Angeles,” of course), but my wife commutes from Pasadena to this joint’s neighborhood every day in under 40 minutes. But then she drives like a banshee with a bladder infection. And of course “real” Angelenos know nothing of the 210 and 118 freeways.
    
    Come on, now, all ye proud denizens of the Basin. Chatsworth and Northridge aren’t just in L.A. County. They happen to lie within the City of Los Angeles. They have LAPD black and whites, not just Sheriff’s deputies. Much as you might hate to admit it, the world doesn’t quite revolve around the 323 and 310 area codes. It might only take you ten minutes to get over the Cahuenga Pass to knock on the gates at Warner Bros Studios… but it’s in Burbank, most definitely not Los Angeles, and yet would you deny Warner Bros (and Disney Studios and DreamWorks Animation, et al) its L.A.-ness, simply because it resides within the thrice-cursed 818?
    
    Get over your silly selves.
- Teller
  
  Now hang on. Vernon is in LA. El Monte is in LA. Mar Vista is in LA. But I’ll be damned if the Valley is in LA.
Jackasimov

OK, great. So I’m going to be the only asshole here that gonna stick a limb out and say fuck this hipster elitist aerobicise LA bullshit. Good god people. It looks fun like watching Bruce Lee kicking Chuck Norris’s ass looks like fun. It looks fun like getting an octopus tattooed on my testicles by Kat Von D looks like fun (if I could please see something like that). I just don’t even know where to go with this. The world has clearly just passed me while I shake my walking stick at the rollerbladers doing stupid human tricks in my apartment building’s parking lot.

Hey, if you want to do this I won’t hate on you, but do we really have to aspire to this level of Van Dammian fitness just to feel human or to make other people believe we feel human? Someone tell me, because as I sit here in this uncomfortable chair (being slowly consumed by rage), by this Nintendo Parkour on crank, I just see another Improv Everywhere in which I am the fool and they are innocent soul liberators in Jar Jar masks asking me repeatedly “LOL, Why U Mad Though?” while they poke me with sticks

Fuck this. Seriously though, have fun, I’ll be in my bunk reading a book trying to remember where I can still buy pot.

tl;dr: mad asshole is mad. again.
- Anonymous
  
  Nope, I already did, way wayyy up the thread — I was apparently just too subtle. Love your style!
Snig

There’s one of them in Alexandria, Virginia.

http://urbanevo.com/

Would be more into it if I healed as fast as when I was young.
Anonymous

The best part of this whole commentary is the LA geography debate! I grew up in LA, lived in and around Hollywood for over twenty five years (starting way back when 213 was the only area code), and as much as we central LA folks hated to admit it, the valley is part of LA. Even all the way out to Chatsworth…

Yeah, if you wanted to be more accurate, you could say it’s a suburb since it’s way out at the edge, but it is technically and absolutely part of Los Angeles. A simple Wikipedia search will prove it.
GlenBlank

I understand people bemoaning the ridiculousness of “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”, since Anaheim is not only not in the City of Los Angeles, it’s not even in Los Angeles *County*.

It’s been said that “everywhere in LA is 20 minutes from everywhere else” (not counting rush hour, of course), and, living as I do within mortar range of the geographical centroid of the City of Los Angeles, I can testify that’s pretty much true from where I sit (except for the shoestring gerrymander that connects to the harbor at San Pedro).

But Anaheim is a freaking *hour* from here.

Chatsworth and Northridge, OTOH, are very much in Los Angeles – both the County and the incorporated City proper. Have been since 1915.

Since before Bel Air and Brentwood and Westwood and Mar Vista and Venice were annexed.

And of course they feel like “different cities.” With over 400 square miles of territory in the city proper, there’s a lot of that going around on both sides of the hill.

The dread of ‘Valley cooties’ is just funny, though – an affliction mostly visited on fearfully status-conscious newcomers who think that ‘Hollywood’ is actually still in Hollywood. (It hasn’t been since the ’30s and the coming of the talkies.)

But hey, it helps keep nice houses 5 minutes from the studios affordable, so I suppose I shouldn’t bitch. :-)

“Chatsworth/Northridge is totally not ‘LA’”, OTOH, is both comically provincial and laughably wrong.
- Anonymous
  
  If you don’t live in LA (or any of those communities you listed) it is *all* LA. You can’t be too self-righteous when everyone who lives in LA thinks Santa Cruz is Northern California. It’s nearly 400 more miles to the Oregon border!
  
  In my experience, people from LA tend to be a bit provincial. Not even comically so.
  - GlenBlank
    
    You’re missing the point.
    
    This isn’t some outsider calling something in the Greater LA Area “LA” and being upbraided by a local because it’s not ‘technically’ LA.
    
    This is someone quite correctly referring to something in the city of Los Angeles as being “LA-based”, and having a commenter tell him it’s “totally not LA” – apparently because it doesn’t conform to that person’s peculiar personal notion of what’s ‘really LA.’
    
    And the rest of us Angelenos are trying to explain that he’s WRONG – that it IS in LA by any reasonable definition of ‘LA’ – whether you mean only the city proper, or any of the various definitions of “Greater Los Angeles.”
    
    There’s no need to even mention the “Well, it’s part of Greater LA” defense, because it actually IS in the ACTUAL CITY OF LOS ANGELES.
    
    No matter how you slice it.
  - GlenBlank
    
    Oh, and, BTW, you clearly don’t know what “everyone who lives in LA” thinks.
    
    Heck, some of us even secretly snicker at San Franciscans for thinking that they’re “Northern Calfornia.” :-)
    
    So we’re fairly clear that Santa Cruz isn’t, either – even though some Santa Cruzans tell us otherwise.
    - Brainspore
      
      My rule of thumb: if it takes you less time to drive to Oregon then you can call your location “Northern California” and if it takes you less time to drive to Mexico you can call it “Southern California.” I know this rule of thumb will piss off all seventeen people who think of themselves “Central Californians” but I’m prepared to live with that.
      - GlenBlank
        
        Not a bad rule, but, like many arbitrary binary divisions, it omits the possibility of some place being “neither” – the excluded middle.
        
        It would seem rather weird to call Big Sur “Southern California”, but it’s definitely not Northern California – thus “the Central Coast”.
        
        (There’s a similarly weird excluded-middle confusion here, where the fashionably well-to-do cluster on “the Westside”, while their trust-fund bohemian hipster children, who’ve moved to Echo Park and Silver Lake, northwest of downtown, assume that anything not on the Westside must be ‘Eastside,’ and, wanting to flaunt their rejection of parental values, have taken to calling their area “the Eastside” – which pisses off the mostly-Latino communities of Boyle Heights and East LA, east of downtown and the river, who’ve called themselves “the Eastside” since time out of mind.)
nonie

Oh man, that looks amazing. Definitely gonna check it out when I’m out on that side of the country next.
jjsaul

Amazing. I have to assume a good number those in the video are pro stunt artists.

In addition to the crazy youtube videos out there, it reminds me of the power-tumbling extras in Hellboy 2… I was impressed at how much of the prince’s moves were real and in-camera.
Anonymous

Wow, you guys are ridiculous. If it’s a suburb of a city, you can safely tell people unfamiliar with the area that it is, indeed, that city.

I don’t know the difference between LA and Chatsworth, nor do I care. What I do care about is understanding the article. And if labeling it “LA” does that for those of us that aren’t from LA (or, evidently, within driving distance of it from a place that is “so not LA”), then I think labeling it as such is justified.

But I guess I could be wrong. Maybe boingboing is written specifically for the LA region, and I just didn’t know it.
RobDubya

As someone who thoroughly f**ked his knees up in his teens by leaping off buildings and jumping whole flights of stairs on a lark (girls DO think scars are cool, you know), I would warn anyone planning to do this to take care of their cartilage while they still have it. The reason David Belle is still able to run after so many years is that he doesn’t go for the big bumps. You can still be cool without try to outdo some other guy’s 10m high jump to concrete.

As it is, I’m megadosing glucosamine, chondroitin and MSM as a holding action against a probable knee replacement in my 50s.
Anonymous

I’d rather see their bloopers reel.
alowishus

This is totally going to inspire me to break an ankle.
Anonymous

@ Antinous:

It doesn’t strike me as unreasonable to write it as, “The Tempest Freerunning Academy is a new gym, nestled in the suburbs of Los Angeles,” or something to that effect.

For the record, I’d be as nit-picky about geographical accuracy if they were pitching a new location in Schaumburg or Elk Grove Village as being in Chicago.
sylvar

This is a great OK Go video except for the total absence of OK Go.
- Baldhead
  
  “This is a great OK Go video except for the total absence of OK Go” So.. the best OK Go video ever?
willyboy

The missing link? What missing link?
GlenBlank

I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned Anaheim – I was just trying to point out that, while there are times it might be reasonable for an Angeleno to say “Hey, that’s not LA!”, this isn’t one of them.

(Funny story: the “Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim” came about because the then-owner of the Los Angeles Angels promised the city officials of Anaheim that if they would build him a stadium, he’d put “Anaheim” in the team name. They agreed, and built the stadium. – and then he called the team “The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim”. The city sued him for breach of contract, but lost. As the judge pointed out, he did what he had promised.)
- Donald Petersen
  
  As is noted in L.A.’s Wikipedia entry, “It is the only major city in the United States bisected by a mountain range.” That particular section of the Santa Monica Mountains forms a convenient barrier between the Basin and the Valley, leading those folks fortunate (I guess) enough to live south of the range to consider themselves residents of the “real” Los Angeles, since downtown L.A. happens to be on the same side of the hill as Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and so many other desirable and fashionable neighborhoods in the Basin. You might find a perfectly lovely house in the Valley (though it might have to be–ahem–”South of the Boulevard” in order to qualify), but apparently you’ll never ever be cool or fashionable there, and you’ll have a hell of a time convincing your 323- and 310-dwelling friends to visit you there.
  
  I seem to remember a bit in L.A. Story (that old Steve Martin movie) wherein a fairly rich guy mentions that he lives in the Valley, which causes a valet parking dude to burst out laughing.
  
  The reputation for shallowness is richly deserved in some L.A. quarters, no doubt.
  - GlenBlank
    
    LA Story is a lovely little movie, but it’s good to remember that it’s satire, not documentary. :-)
    
    In reality, the valet might sneer, but he’d never say anything out loud.
    
    And the rich guy doesn’t care – he likes the Valley because it’s close to the studios, blessedly free of tourists and papparazi, has much lighter traffic, and a much lower entitled-asshole factor.
    
    (In fact, I often suspect the whole “the Valley’s just not hip” meme is secretly spread by such happy folks, to help keep the nuisances out and the price of housing down.)
    - Donald Petersen
      
      L.A. Story’s satire is sharpest when it most closely approaches reality. IIRC, the valet wasn’t being spoken to at the time, and laughed when he overheard the Valley-dweller’s admission. Yeah, you wouldn’t hear an actual valet do that and risk losing a tip, but once one steps ever-so-slightly out of the service sector, one does indeed find a remarkable (and undeserved) contempt for the Valley on the part of many (not most) Basin-dwellers. I don’t personally know valets who have sneered at 818 people, but I do know many other folks who have, some of whom far from being millionaires themselves.
      
      And yes, many rich folk do hang their monocles and top hats in the Valley. You can find some fairly swank digs in Toluca Lake, for example (good enough for Bob Hope!), as you mentioned. But if you plot the locations of the $2,000,000+ homes (to offer an arbitrary delineation), you’ll find them concentrated in Toluca Lake (east of Ventura Boulevard), Studio City (south of the Boulevard), Sherman Oaks (still south of the Boulevard), and Encino (south once again). Once you start wandering up toward Magnolia and Burbank Boulevards you’re in tract homes and apartments, In-n-Outs and Tuneup Masters, and though there are certainly nice houses in decent neighborhoods elsewhere in the Valley, just as there are on the other side of the hill, there’s precious little cachet in a 91606 address. And one could avoid Pacoima for one’s entire life without fear of missing out on a hell of a lot. Danny Trejo hails from there, if that tells you anything.
      
      But it’s all L.A., I guess is our shared point. The claim that one of these neighborhoods is “so not L.A.” simply because it’s outside the central five-mile radius of the Thirty Mile Zone is pretentious as hell.
  - GlenBlank
    
    Oh, and you don’t have be “south of the Boulevard” to have a nice house in a good neighborhood – though it does help if you can tell the difference between Pacoima and Toluca Lake. :-)
    
    Like the Basin, the Valley’s not all one homogenous place. Not that fearfully status-conscious Westsiders would know, since they pride themselves on “never going to the Valley.”
    
    Indeed, many of them brag of “never going east of the 405″ – which is understandable, given the traffic. :-) They’d probably disown Hollywood and Downtown if they could – but even outsiders and newcomers could see how ridiculously pretentious that is. :-)
Suburbancowboy

Tempest is one of the competing teams on Jump City Seattle on G4TV. Pretty cool show.
Ryanwoofs

Damn that looks fun. I’d need to start out in a full-body inflatable suit to preserve my skeletal integrity until I got the hang of it, but do want!
quitterjunior

Vibrato and A-tune don’t mix. So many artifacts, I feel like this song ‘belongs in a museum!’
Also – I am naming my dog Indiana. I disclaim any IP in that ungodlily awesome name. Feel free to rip off my awesome idea. (You even get to nickname it “indie”). Maybe it will be like Aidan for dogs – because everyone here on the internet (that’s right, small case bitches. Genericide!) will read this not-first video response. My dog will be named after The Ring. But just you watch – Sex and the City Aidan, like another carpenter I know, will ruin his name for white dog parents everywhere. To clarify, my dog is not white.
obeyken

That looks like so much fun! I’m definitely going to learn how to do that when I get younger.
Anonymous

Which defeats the very idea of Parcours, freerunning.
wrecked_em

I’m not sure why people have so much trouble with this concept. You pay attention to the areas that are close to you, and generalize the ones farther away. The reason Angelinos make a distinction between the towns is because there *is* one, but it’s only important when you live there. Do you know the difference between east and west Rockford? Do you care?

If you don’t live near LA, then it’s all LA. If you do, then it’s not. Both answers are correct.

The strange thing is that the academy gives its street address as LA, which doesn’t seem correct. But it might be, I don’t know where the lines are.
- lenpict
  
  Yeah, the reason that I was dismayed to see that the academy is actually in the Valley was because I can totally see myself become a regular after work if I get into better shape.
  
  Since it’s an hour drive in the wrong direction for me, the odds of that are much slimmer.
  
  Basically, *any* post will have people who would take an active, practical interest in the subject (especially if it’s for an event or organization) and the generalization just makes the post less useful. Sure, people who are interested click through, but it’s still disappointing to find that the cool new thing boingboing brought to your attention is not as accessible as the headline suggests.
Tim

Never in my life have I ever wanted to live in or near LA.

That has now changed.

What’s the job market like there…?
- Roger Wilco
  
  yeah sorry, we’re all filled up. no jobs. no houses either. I hear Arizona is nice.
Radka

That looks like soo much fun. Although depending on the number of people, I’d be a bit worried about smashing faces…
- ubarch
  
  I wonder if they have to hire a guy to sweep up teeth from the gym floor after closing.
  
  Ooh! They could just hose the teeth down with a mild bleach solution each night, and let them pile up in the corners.
  
  Hardcore.
  
  Or they could save them up and use them to make a big mural, a la Locus Solus.
  
  Awesome?
Hanglyman

Not sure the “no matter what your age, skill, or athletic level” part comes across that well in the video, but still: awesome.