MTV Unfiltered — Highschool students explain "Freestyle Walking"

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Originally published at: MTV Unfiltered — Highschool students explain "Freestyle Walking" | Boing Boing

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What’s really nineties about this is the way most of the teachers are obviously in on the joke, which felt hip and ironic at the time, but now looks like a culture so digested by capitalism that even the concept of rebellion is just another niche in the marketplace

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Really nothing new.

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I remember an article my high school newspaper about freestyle walking written as a joke, but when parkour become popular later, I was wondering why people used a weird name for it. They were the same thing as far as we were concerned in the 90s, joke or not.

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I was in highschool in the late 90s (class of 00) and my friends and I did freestyle walking during lunch in a particular stairwell. I had a signature move where I would put my hand on the railing and walk across the entryway over a second set of stairs. A friend of mine was very into video editing and filmed us and made a short film that made us look extremely cool for how dorky we were. He eventually moved to LA and became a video editor and even ended up randomly editing a movie I was a featured extra in.

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They’re bored teen-age boys, maybe some girls, doing what teenage kids are supposed to do. Act goofy test limits, break a few bones, laugh at themselves and others, short-out some adults. It’s all normal. Life often goes to hell after those brief few years, more power to them, Not nearly enough goofy behavior now.

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I talk about this all the time. A joke video that somehow spawned an actual thing. Remember Soap shoes?

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This connects a dot from my history. I think I was in middle school or early high school when this aired, but I didn’t see it. A kid I knew, who was just walking around and on things funny, mentioned that freestyle walking was a thing. He wasn’t the only one taken in by the concept. I fully admit to walking out of my way to hop up on a bench or whatever obstacle I could find after that.

Youth is wasted on the young, but it was pretty fun at the time.

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