The Creation of "Bad Boy for Life"

IMP-Style: Bad Boy for Life


Saying that this video is my favorite yet is somewhat redundant; I fall in love with each as I make them, and thankfully, each is supplanted by the next. "Bad Boy", however, had a lot of special appeal for me, not the least of which was the name of the song. Is it just coincidence that the shirt I chose to wear with this song happens to read: "Catholic Schools?"

Nothing to do with my beliefs or how I was raised, by the way. Just a nice colorful t-shirt I bought at the thrift shop to wear at Burning Man.

I've been drooling over the thought of climbing a crane, for some time, but they're so high-profile, potentially dangerous, and usually on guarded construction sites, that I have, thus far, only dreamed from a distance. In this case, however, events came together perfectly. I had just finished playing on the concrete features at the stairs leading up the 1st St. bridge. The sun had already gone down, and my motorcycle was blocks away, so if I was going to take advantage of the twilight hour, I needed to find a new obstacle nearby, and it had to be one that worked well in silhouette. On the far side of the bridge, I could just see the top of the crane. It seemed unlikely that it would be unguarded, but I knew that I had to try.

The construction was part of work being done on the bridge, in order to ready it to hold a light rail line, running parallel to traffic (the tracks lead to the entrance of the subway tunnel that I trespassed through and explored earlier - video still to come). From the bridge, I could see workers loading up semis on the far side of the construction site, which was otherwise empty. If I were to take the pedestrian route into the site, I'd have to make my way through the workers, so instead, I scaled down through scaffolding that butted up against the bridge. Even that was an adventure, as I had to squeeze through gaps too narrow to contain me and my backpack (which has the camera inside, and tripod and motorcycle helmet, strapped to the back). So I had to dangle the pack through, and loop the arm straps onto some rebar, and then skinny through after it, pausing, mid-climb, to sling the pack back on.

The crane itself was a lot less scary than it looked from a distance. The rails that make up the crane arm are easy to grasp, and it was unlikely that I'd slip off of it (unless I hit a patch of axle grease, the curse of climbing construction equipment). But there was still a psychological hobgoblin I needed to tame, since I was going over 40 feet up on an unfamiliar structure, without any safety gear, nor anyone to help me out, if I should fall. Apprehension about being caught just heightened the fear. I climbed the first time, on the inside of the arm, figuring I would be more likely to be able to catch myself, if I slipped. But after I started feeling more comfortable with the structure, I made a second climb on the outside, and then tried dancing on it, in the closer shot. At one point, I noticed the workers at the semis had noticed me, so I hastily climbed down, but then no one came to throw me out, so I got back on.

Since no one had evicted me after my most obvious stunt, I figured it was safe to explore the rest of the site. This included the enormous girder, which was supported by the crane, and rested on three pillars in what was otherwise just a big hole in the ground. This also included a giant drill machine (the enormous bit was nearby, planted in the soil). On this machine, I did run into crazy axle grease, a stain on my jeans' knee which will show up in many videos to come.

Not all the obstacles I faced for "Bad Boy" were new, but even the ones I knew reflected the fears I've had to face in learning parkour in my late 30's.

The wheelchair ramp (and adjoining stairs) were actually my training ground for learning to land on rails. When I first started making parkour a near-daily priority, I was working in Glendale, and was able to jet out to the ritzy Bunker Hill part of downtown (where I shot Grand Avenue ). The wheelchair ramp allowed me to slowly work my way toward leaping and landing on rails, which is pretty scary to begin with, because of the fear of slipping. One moment (which seems so minor in context of "Bad Boy") was actually terrifying to get started: a jump from the wall onto the rail next to the stairs, because of the complexity of the rail, and even more, the apparent threat of the fall on the other side, with all kinds of edges and ledges to get tripped up on. An overactive and paranoid imagination is the death of parkour, and I had to train a lot of worst case scenarios out of my head.

And then there was the phone. I'm extra geeked about playing with props, because they are my less explored half of discovering how to dance with the physical world. I chose the location for the rails there, and because dancing in front of a church had a nice "bad boy" quality to it. But I was immediately drawn to the pay phone, and the yellow receiver just made it that much more interesting to play with. I had goofed with a pay phone once before, in a Stick's Riffs that I shot but never cut, my play at Mariachi Plaza, in East L.A. Here is a bit of that footage, my first phone foray:


On a different day of shooting, primarily focused on "Gimme Sum", the twilight hour offered me a cluster of nice locations on the south-west side of downtown (near the Staples Center), where I hadn't played before.

The vaults from the freeway to the onramp, like many acts in these videos, were scarier in real life than on tape. What you can't see in the video is that the small concrete bridge between the two roads is above a 30' drop to asphalt. My top-rocking dance in the alleyway wasn't very scary, but, as it happened to be right behind a strip club, and I was dancing just at the beginning of happy hour, the heavy traffic through there ended up shutting me down. And no, no one at the strip club offered me a job.

I love taking advantage of sunset to get silhouette shots, because dance often works better when it's just the outline of the body (like the fountain scenes in Grand Avenue ). Thus, I took advantage of a rooftop parking garage to place my tripod, as I danced at the crest of the adjoining roof. I've been kicked out of a lot of places while making these videos, so for a video called "Bad Boy for Life", it would have been shameful, if I didn't get evicted, at least once.

The Felix Cadillac shots in the passersby video were from the last set-up I shot for "Bad Boy". However, when I got to editing, I realized I had plenty of footage without that shot, and it was such a cool set-up, that I realized I'd rather save that location for my "Ragga Jungle" IMP-Style, which is coming soon. So I'll have to sneak back and shoot some more, now that I know that they're not offended, only amused, by my dancing.

As always, I am proud to present my trips, stumbles, and near-falls, because they are evidence that I am constantly going beyond my previous experience, exploring a wider range of what's possible for me (and what's safe)!

The Creation of "Shorty, Put it on the Floor"

I just wanted to try something new: creating notes as I go along, while generating the footage for the video. That way I can remember the little interesting stories, that often happen long before I finish the cut. Especially now; I've got three videos entirely shot, but unedited, and another three underway. I'm cutting a pilot for Sony (yes, I do paying gigs, as well), so it's hard to move forward on any cutting, but a free afternoon, and a warm spell, made room for a productive time shooting and playing downtown.

I started with a very productive alleyway today. I was looking for direct light to take advantage of, but the alleyway had plenty of very attractive bounce light, from the opposite wall being all lit up, and I stumbled upon it first, so I decided to start my day there.

At first, the big pile of cardboard boxes looked like something to work around, but I got to realize a dream today: of piling the boxes, and using them as a landing pad. I started with a little trepidation; I don't usually launch into something with this many unknowns. Every leap is just a guess, or even a hope; there's no way of knowing how much resistance the pile is going to give me. But I've been preparing myself, learning to fall, learning not to take offense at impact, and even accepting blows to the face, which is the first place I got hit, on my first jump. But after that, I started to relax and, despite the flimsy support the boxes (sometimes) gave in slowing me down, I began finding new ways of releasing into the pile, and just surrendered to whatever landing and impact came my way.

After enough boxes were crushed, I started laying out the flattened ones as my safety net, underneath, so if I fell through, I wouldn't land directly on asphalt. The one bruise of the day (on my left elbow), happened when I missed the safety net. It was a big loud alarm when it happened, but I remembered not to take it too seriously, and it faded fast, only reminding me later when I'd bump it again (or now, as I have to type with my elbows off the desk).

After the majority of the boxes were crushed, and there was no structure to slow my fall, I started exploring what was left of the boxes as props and dance partners, finding how they wanted to move around and with me.

It was at the end of this play that a homeless guy came up and asked if I needed help putting the boxes away. I was very clear that I didn't have money to offer him, and that I was going to do the work myself, but he involved himself anyway, and put a bunch of the flattened boxes away. Maybe he's just a very helpful guy.

I knew of a homeless dude in Richmond, VA, like that: a very helpful guy. All day, most days, he'd stand at an intersection of Shockoe Slip, and direct traffic from the side of the road. The drivers, of course, would just follow the lights, but the guy was always there to help make sure everyone knew what was going on.

The tire took some getting used to. I played with a truck tire in "Elephunk", but the idea of standing up on a truck tire raised lots of red flags and worst-case scenario stories. But (as I figured it would be) it was quite easy and calm. I'm sure that time and opportunity will bring more truck tires for me to play and learn from. Unfortunately, it was also very messy, filled with rainwater that stunk of beer (and maybe urine?).

I found more props in the form of a long cardboard tube and a roll of stiff black paper that had been rolled around the tube. I jousted with the tube on the back of Z, and used the paper as a flag.

I also destroyed a wooden shelving unit that had been thrown out. It was a nice way to explore attacking something, primarily with my feet, and breaking apart something that was very robust to begin with. My iPod had already crapped out, so I wasn't really dancing, just kicking the hoo-ha out of it, but hopefully it'll fit into the larger video.

The Creation of "Badder Badder Schwing"

"Badder Badder Schwing"

The first moments of the making of the video were characterized by stumbles, but sometimes stumbles turn around and become the brightest moments.

On my 40th birthday, the day I started to shoot "Jook Gal" , I suffered a little heartbreak. I found a beautiful location near USC/County Medical, a brilliantly orange construction scaffolding, with lots of diagonal support beams, and had an excellent dance on it. Only when I got home did I realize that my camera had been in the wrong setting, and the entire take was out of focus, unusable. It's the risk of being my own cameraman; I don't always know what I've got until too late.

So, on my first day with "Badder Badder Schwing", I decided to head straight for that structure, take advantage of it, before it disappeared. Sadly, it was already gone, a victim of over-productivity.

I looked around for something else to shoot, and saw some train cars nearby, sitting idle on the tracks. By chance, they were identical to the black tanker cars that ended up in the video, but I never got to climb on these ones. I had just set up my camera, when a train engine drove up, hooked up to the black tankers, and started pushing them away. Well, I could take losing the tankers, but I could not possibly miss the opportunity that was suddenly presented to me, and so, as they rode off, I rolled camera, and leapt onto the back of the engine car, the last shot in the video. No one even saw me, and I leapt off shortly after we moved into shadow.

Thankfully, the trestles were also there, and served as my first dance partner of the shoot. The sun was setting as I played on them, so I had to move progressively upward to stay out of shadow. I had thought to wear the brown jacket, because I thought it fit the Fat Boy Slim song, but dark clothing disappears in the dark, which is why I'm always wearing colorful shirts, otherwise.

I did get spooked on the trestles, I admit. There's a psychology to getting spooked. I had played all over them, with no rush, no trying, but as I climbed toward the very summit (featured in the next-to-last shot), I began to imagine what I was going to do. And that's a mistake; if I think ahead, instead of focusing on where I'm at, then I lose the reality of the now, and get out of my own awareness. That's the same problem I had had with the tree jump from "Grand Avenue". I first imagined the jump while walking along the hand-rail, and that leads to vertigo, and getting spooked, and that lead me to weeks before I could attempt the jump.

In this case, it wasn't weeks, but literally an entire length of the song went by, without me doing more than inching my way up to the top of the trestles, standing, and slowly allowing myself to get back to the frame of mind in which I can dance. It's a good lesson in not getting ahead of myself.

The Hollywood sign I went to on Thanksgiving, because I wanted to take advantage of the holiday, and do something that normally wouldn't be allowed. I figured that there had to be fewer park rangers in the Hollywood hills that day. I was most interested in actually getting on the letters, themselves, but the difficulty of reaching them without being spotted was pretty daunting, and posted signs warned of a pretty big fine (and I'm pretty broke). In the following passersby video, I had a first conversation in which I was informing someone else that he was trespassing, cuz usually someone's pretty eager to tell me.

The same guy I was talking to actually ended up joining me on camera, dancing in front of the sunset, my first guest appearance. But that's footage for "Ah Ndiya", which I'm still editing.

So much of my shooting has been around the industrial corridor and railroad tracks that line the L.A. River, on the east side of downtown, that I was happy to take advantage of being out of that neighborhood, and drove around Hollywood at night, looking for well-lit places to shoot. I saw a Ralph's supermarket with a rooftop parking lot, and figured it was a good place to play, and it was, but it wasn't until I decided to enlist the shopping cart that I realized my true purpose there.


I had another heartbreak at the truck repair yard, specifically for an opportunity lost for this blog. I snuck in, danced, and then this big guy appeared around the corner, and asked me gruffly what the hell I was doing. I swear to God, I thought: oh, this is gonna be great for the blog! I told him I was shooting a dance video for youtube; he looked at me like I was crazy, and then he walked away. Didn't say I could stay, but he didn't say I had to go. When I was done with the song, I went back to the camera, but alas! It wasn't rolling at all! (My only excuse is that I was very tired from shooting). I considered leaving, having obviously overstayed my welcome, but I couldn't stand the thought of walking away from that beautiful set-up, when I hadn't even been asked to go, so I snuck back in, and did the whole dance again!

As always, I am eager to share my falls and stumbles, because it's well-earned footage. No hard crashes, but some nice near splats!

The Creation of "Jook Gal"

IMP-Style: "Jook Gal"


One thing that stands out for me about "Jook Gal" is that my first day shooting it was on my 40th birthday. That's right; I'm a bit of a late bloomer. I've loved dance for a long time, but I only started making it a big part of my life in my 30's. I started handstands at 30, floorwork at 35, parkour at 37, and of course, IMP-Style this year.

I used to have a really bad back; I literally first went to see the doctor about it when I was 10. My muscles would spasm easily, my hands were tight and cold, and the doctor called it "childhood arthritis." In my 20's, I found myself getting injured often and with little provocation, muscle pulls in shoulders, neck, back and rear. The circulation in my feet got so bad by 27, that I took the elevator down from my apartment, rather than the stairs, and I had to rub the pain out of my feet every night in order to go to sleep.

When I was 32, my back went out for about 3 months. Couldn't work; I could barely look for work. I remember getting out of my car, with resume and reel to give to production companies, and having to cling to the car door while I waited for my back to calm down enough to stand straight. I had just fallen back in love with dancing, and I despaired that by 40, I would be utterly incapable of continuing with dance.

But the injury turned out to be godsend; it forced me to start paying attention to my body. I took a great class by a gifted teacher who led exercises based on Continuum and Body/Mind Centering. In short, what she taught was paying attention to sensation, and learning about my body from the inside.

I now speculate that my original tendency toward tension and injury was born precisely from my inattention to my body. I grew up with a blood phobia; I was the guy who would pass out in the back of health class when they showed the surgery movie. So I learned to experience my body as gross; even feeling my pulse (e.g. when getting my blood pressure checked) could make me feel woozy.

Added to that were life habits that led me astray: the guy habits of sucking in my gut and sticking out my chest, of trying to walk straight. All those years of trying had ossified muscle habits, so I had a permanently stiff and sore body.

The class I took reversed the trend of shutting down, and the pattern has been one of opening, of becoming youthful, ever since. I have literally stretched and danced my way back to health, and then to a level of health that I've never experienced before. The biggest thing is paying attention to all sensation, including pain, not trying to exclude anything. The next most important part is learning not to fear injury, which of course has led me to parkour and motorcycle riding. Also, letting go of social fear is a huge part of learning; I practice break-dancing at a venue filled with amazing B-Boys in their 20's, most of whom started before they were 10. If I worry at all about looking foolish, then I learn nothing there, but if I can just explore, and see what is currently available to my body, then it unwinds and learns new skills, entirely without me trying. This is all very Zen, of course, and in that same vein, I grow best when I just accept the way things are, rather than trying to force something on them. This is the key to learning props, just play with them without trying, and let them show how they want to interact with me. This is also where IMP-Style brings everything together: I get on my obstacles, without intent of dancing a certain way or attempt at making something happen, and I just pay attention to how the obstacle feels, and trust that the dance will emerge.

Speaking of props, "Jook Gal" gave me the chance to explore a bunch of different kinds of props, especially bent rebar. Not many of them showed up in the final cut, however, because I didn't spend enough time getting to know most of them, and some just weren't very promising visually. My favorite, of course, was the coiled red hose that showed up a few times. I still don't know what it was for, as I just found it in some debris, but I liked its bounce. The following is a montage of some of the prop play that didn't make the cut.


My locations were wide-spread for "Jook Gal", reflecting mostly how soon the sun goes down these days. With standard time, it gets dark about 4:30 right now, so many of my outings were short-lived.

One of the most productive days was when I took advantage of a temporary site, close to home. There was street work being done, including a 50-foot pit in the middle of Beverly Blvd. This was definitely one of the situations in which I needed to just let go of the self-consciousness of being visible, because I was right in the middle of a busy street, dancing on construction gear.

Since it was a temporary site, there was no construction when Google Earth snapped the satellite photo, so you'll just have to imagine the gear there.

I find a lot of great locations near my motorcycle shop, which suggests the unfortunate truth that my bike is in the shop WAY too often (don't buy Chinese motorcycles)! That area is full of railroad tracks, shipping and packing companies, and in this case, a few abandoned buildings with easily accessible roofs.


As always, I'm happy to share my tumbles, because at least then I know they counted for something. The most gnarly-looking one, at the end, was shot on the first set-up on my 40th birthday. I am happy to announce that it didn't hurt at all.