Movement with Purpose: Parkour & Stealth

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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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. 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

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, 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, 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 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, 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 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,

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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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? 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

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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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 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 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.