[ By Steph in Urban Images, Urban Videos, Urbex & Parkour. ]

Anyone who’s already familiar with parkour – the jaw-dropping urban sport that involves astonishing acrobatics including gravity-defying jumps – probably stared in disbelief at a video showing a trio of parkour enthusiasts scaling buildings and bridges with the help of hooked ladders. Created as an ad for a sports drink, the video undoubtedly sparked many people to google the dubious new sport of ‘pomparkour’.

So what’s got people up in arms about it? As it turns out, pomparkour is the fictional creation of advertising agency BBDO for ‘V Energy‘, a guarana concoction from New Zealand. And conveniently left out of the video is the fact that these guys are professional stuntmen equipped with safety ropes which were edited out of the final video (check out proof below).

Around the same time the video debuted, a blog about the sport materialized, featuring a few photos and a small amount of info. A Wikipedia article on pomparkour also appeared, but was quickly flagged as a hoax or at the very least, mere self-serving advertisement.

So is it a fictional sport, or just a rad new form of parkour in its infancy? Time will tell whether serious practicers of parkour will embrace this offshoot and pull some ladder play into their movements. Even with safety ropes, the guys in the ad perform some breathtaking stunts, earning quite a bit of well-deserved attention.

[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Urban Images, Urban Videos, Urbex & Parkour. ]

The Gulf Oil Spill has inspired a lot of people to get creative with oil in a bid to raise awareness and funds for clean up efforts. Enter Kansas resident Steve Brooker who decided to use some of the spilled oil for t-shirt designs and in necklaces. The oil spill t-shirts feature a small amount of oil mixed in with the printing ink and the necklaces have tiny vials filled with oil and water.

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The Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid concept car is going into production as Porsche’s first plug-in hybrid vehicle. It accelerates from 0-60mph (0-96kph) in 3.2 seconds and has CO2 emissions of just 70 g/km, equivalent to a fuel consumption of 3.0 litre/100 km (78.3mpg US). The only drawback for mere mortals is the price at US$630,000 (€483,000) but it may be eligible for the US tax credit of US$7,500 for plug-in hybrid vehicles.

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More than 8 million farmed oysters have been wiped out by the herpes virus in Whitstable, England. Although not contagious to humans, but lethal to Pacific (rock) oysters, the OsHV-1 virus is believed to be spreading to wild oyster stocks in the area which will make the virus impossible to contain or eradicate. In the past, outbreaks also occurred in France, Jersey and Ireland.

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The question of what to do with your unwanted juice, milk and coffee Tetra Paks just got a bit easier. Germany-based artist Fabian Jochen Kanzler has created simple furniture items from the discarded packaging.

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The Blackbird wind driven car from Thin Air Designs attained a speed 2.86 times faster than the wind while it was being driven into the wind, which seems counter intuitive but there is a video to prove it.

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