With Leaps and Bounds, Parkour Athletes Turn Off the Lights in Paris


A number of instances a month, Mr. Ha and his compatriots could be discovered vaulting their manner round Paris, on the hunt for electrical promoting indicators perched above awnings or illuminated retailer names.

They get your hands on the small emergency switches put in exterior storefronts, often about 9 to 13 ft excessive. More often than not these switches management solely outside indicators, which means the group can not extinguish the window shows bathing a retailer’s inside in golden, if wasteful, mild.

Some fancy areas just like the Champs-Élysées are a super playground for the group. Strolling down the avenue, they turned off the indicators of luxurious outlets one after the other, hitting their targets like skilled snipers.

“Click on.” Louis Vuitton. “Click on.” Longchamp. “Click on.” Rolex.

Whereas scaling different individuals’s property to show off their lights might strike some as a type of trespassing, the Parkour athletes — or nonviolent vigilantes, to some — insist their actions are solely about implementing seldom-respected guidelines.

Greater than a decade in the past, Paris Metropolis Corridor issued orders requiring shops to show off all indicators and window shows from 1 a.m. to six a.m., however the ordinance is extensively ignored with little consequence.

“For 10 years there was no follow-up, no management, no sanction,” stated Anne-Marie Ducroux, the top of the Nationwide Affiliation for the Safety of the Sky and the Evening Surroundings, which has lengthy lobbied to extend efforts towards mild air pollution.