Well maybe only Megu cares about fanny packs, but sense this is one of the most recurrent Themes you'll find on parkour forums I thought i would dedicate a thread here, to sharing info about the best gear for PK. Lets us know what you use and how its working for you.

For those of you newer to the sport I'll offer the standard advice on what you need. Basically it comes down to a pair of good athletic trainers and some clothes that you are comfortable in allow lots of movement and don't get in your way. Personally I have spent allot of time trying to find the gear that would help my performance the most, probably to much time, I could have spent training .

For trainers you want a shoe that is good for running in (so no skate shoes), grips various surfaces well (many trail runners have a tread to aggressive for concrete), has descent shock absorption especially in the forefoot (lacking in many traditional road running shoes), and one would like it to be durable, toe bumpers are nice plus to cushion those cat leaps. The fit needs to be snug or your greatly increasing your risk of injury on landings. Plastic mid arches are a no no the will make you slip if you land on them.

The most recommended parkour shoes I have seen, are the Nike air Pegasus, the Merrell Slam, the Asics gel legato or gel 1100, and the Adidas Nova.

Besides shoes, pants are probably the most important, piece of equipment. Pants can limit your mobility or get in your way if you have the wrong ones and many pants that don’t inhibit your performance will just get ripped to shreds by parkour.
The most common things traceurs train in are jeans, cargo pants, sweats and track bottoms.

Jeans the good thing about them is the can handle allot of rough treatment, but even when they fit real well they’ll inhibit movement to some degree, and they become uncomfortable for running long periods of time in. I tend to tear the crotches out of my jeans, if I try to use them as running around pants.

Cargo pants: Never really used general cargo pants.

Track bottoms and Sweat pants: Awesome mobility, if you get a good pair they’ll perform well in various conditions too. Durability is usually not good. I tear the crotches out of these too.

I looked pretty hard into finding the best pants for parkour cause I have habit of destroying pants, and what I keep coming back to is climbing pants climbers have the closest to demands to traceurs in what the need from pants. Most climbing pants are made with gusseted crotch to allow more freedom of movement their designed to be durable, well fiting and not to get in your way. The most recommended pants I could find were the Prana stretch Zion pants. I just got a pair myself. Other highly recommended brands were, Arborwear, North Face, Ibexwear (way to expensive), Horny toad, and Gramacci.

Shirts are not a big issue but for some conditions its nice to have sweat wicking performance type top these can be found at a REI or a running shoe store.

Well enough with introduction here’s my reviews.

Salomon XA pro comp trail shoes:
I liked these shoes overall quite a bit, they fit perfect, were awesome for just running and looked pretty good, none the less I can’t recommend them for couple reasons. Which will be explained below
Style: 7 the looked good a little flashy for my taste but not bad.
Grip: 5 running over most surfaces was fine but tyring to go up or across hard vertical surfaces they tread was just to agressive for it to really grip.
Cushion: 7 not shoe designed for cushion I still never really negatively felt the ground in them, like most trail runners they had little extra forefoot cushion which is nice plus of traditional trainers.
Support: 7 like most trailer runners there wasn't allot of ankle support but my foot allways felt snug and supported.
Price: 90 dollars not unreasonable not great.
Durability: 4 after 5 months the tread started coming of and the laces started unraveling which stupidly there is no way to fix on these shoes.

Nike Air Pegasus 2005:
Very nice feel out of the box, good cushion super grippy, very nice ride.
Style: 2 ugly, I dislike white shoes and these are particular ugly.
Grip: 9 Best I have encountered as far as gripping surfaces, somewhat to cushioned though to feel surfaces easily
Cushion: When running perfect super soft, when jumping not as great, hard to feel rails some times and for drops the forefoot cushion felt lacking.
Support: 6 okay not as good as the salomons but not noticable bad either
Price: 80 bucks not cheap but not to bad
Durability: 2, 2 months and the toe is coming apart and the tread is peeling off
Recommendation part of the reason the fell apart so fast on me was because their not designed for runners my size so they might be good shoe for light framed traceur.

Montrail Masai:
Provisional reveiw, Just got these, highly recomended trailer runners
Style: 8 Nice looking the go well with my wardrobe not to attention grabbing
Grip: 7 nice and sticky on dry surfaces not as good on wet surfaces so far, I think it may get better with wear
Cushion: 7 feels okay to do drops on, the foam may be a little to thick though I want to feel closer to the ground.
Support: 9 Really good snug fit good support heel doesn't move.
Price: On sale at the rei outlet for 50 bucks.
Durability: We'll see.
Recommendation: We’ll see

Mad Squid board shorts:
Style: 9 I love my shorts they look nice
Durability: 10 I have been wearing these for ever
Mobility: 8 well there shorts so you expect good mobility and they never really inhibited my movement but they could have been better.
Price: Can’t remember

Gramacci orginal pant:
Style: 9 I loved the way these pants looked very subtle but cool looking.
Durability: 0 I ripped the crotch out of two pairs in a month. I know two other people who did the same thing, and they’re advertised as durable pants. The fabric took a beating everywere else but the crotch was just not designed right.
Mobility: 6 gusseted crotch but since the fabric was just denim.
Price: Around 40 bucks cheap for climbing pants.

REI Adventure pants:
Style: 4 ugly
Durability: 3 got torn at the first jam I used them for
Mobility: 9 basically no restrictions
Price: 30 something nice and cheap

Prana Strech Zion pants:
Style: 9 pretty sweet looking cuff is to wide in my opinion
Durability: Not sure yet, supposed to be good
Mobility: 10 absolutely no restriction
Price: 60 dollars fairly expensive

WearFirst Red shorts (cargo?):
Style: 10, I luvz em! I wear them as much as I can
Durability: 10 They have yet to rip or tear anywhere and I've been using them ever since i started parkour!
Mobility: 7-10 i don't really notice any restrictions, but i'm sure there's some somewhere
Price: 10-30 nice and cheap

These are those red shorts I wear everywhere! I've had these for almost 2 y ears now! And they still rule! The velcro in the one of the pockets ripped, but that's no biggie, because my cd player wouldn't fit in that pocket with the velcro in the way (but it ripped on it's own).

Adidas Men's Savage Running Shoe

these shoes pretty much fit the bill. nice toe coverage, and great grip. lots of little nubs that grab onto things that extend out to the side a bit. you can check em out when we meet. nice and light but durable and breatheable. good construction, yet light enough where you can "feel" what youre stepping on, ie rails etc. (unlike the Merrell Chameleon II Stretch) id recommend them to any PKer...

Corndog you might want to try a shoe with less agressive tread closer to the ground like the nike air pegasus you'll probably find the grip superior. In genereal trail running shoes are two agressive in tread to stick well to concrete. For surfaces like concrete and rock you want as much surface area as possible to stick to the surface look at climbing shoes.

blasphemy, my friend is sponsored by adidas and he would kick my @$$ if i wore nikes

actually though the air pegasus seem to be the shoe of choice, ive read all over that people like em so ill probably give them a shot after these wear out...

Check my reveiw of them above if you are over 170 I wouldn't recomend the pegasus. Personally I think the real running shoe brands are the way to go, New Balance, Asics, Saucony for traditional trainers and montrail, salomon and maybe merrell on the trail shoes end of it.

Found a shoe that might just fit the bill for a damn near perfect parkour shoe. Basically I have been thinking what an urban traceur needs is the bones of trail runner with climbing shoe sole, well Salomon Made just that
http://tinylink.com/?S0qCRa36it

Not sure I like the heel but I think I might have to order a pair and try these out sweet looking style too.

nice, i was thinking the same thing. my friend told me about this company - five.ten

http://www.fiveten.com/product.php?TYPE ... %20Running

they were originally a climbing company i think, so the shoes use that stealth rubber stuff which is really tacky/sticky. i havent figured out which of the models would be the best though, its a toss up between a few. not sure how heavy they are either, id need to try some on.

I'm not sure of the dreamers have such a good grip, they say sticky rubber, but it's not like the stealth stuff, and I wonder if the toe is too stiff, never trained with a stiff toe shoe before.

I do need new shoes though, might give those a try.

http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/2910645/c/31958.html
better views

Here a couple more shoes with similar designs, probably stickier rubber too.

The montrail CTC
http://www.campmor.com/webapp/wcs/store ... d=12500226

Like the merrels is somewhere between a trailer runner and light hiker in design.

And the la Sportiva Exum Ridge

http://www.zappos.com/n/p/p/7138232.html

just FYI again, the problem i had with the merrells i tried (and which may apply to some of the more heavy duty trail runners) is that the sole is too thick and stiff, and you dont get a good feel when balancing and doing precision jumps etc. just something to keep in mind for peeps...

A lot of people seem to love merrels but the pair I tried started peeling apart in the first day and their to heavy and stiff. I also had an REI rep just rip the company to threads when I brought my pair back he thought the company was total crap. It seems to me that Montrail, Salomon, La Sportiva, North Face and Vasque are higher quality companies who produce similar products.

I always like my Merrels cause they lasted a long time even with how much I put them through, they didn't start to peel for me till after a couple months, only tried the chameleon II stretch though and all the shoes I had bought before were total crap.

I think I'm going to order a pair of those dreamers, I'm iffy about the seams and if it's going to peel but it sounds like that store has a good return policy and there is a warranty as well for defects. I've heard very good things about Sportiva climbing shoes and I think those ones that Rafe posted look good, just expensive. Hopefully I can find a way to REI soon.

Edited to reflect more research
So started browsing shoes again today and talked to some reps from a couple climbing stores was able to find a bunch of shoes that fit the trail runner climbing shoe hybrids bill. The montrail CTC is the only I could find that anyone carries but I think this type of shoe may really work out perfect for traceurs. I am going to try the salomon dreamer shoe and La sportiva superfly here are some more worth looking into.

Five Ten access. See Corndogs reveiw
http://www.moosejaw.com/moosejaw/produc ... id=Froogle

La Sportiva Exum Ridge. http://www.zappos.com/n/p/p/7138232.html
This shoe is extremely highly rated by the adventure racing crowd and la sportivas in genereal are considered a super high quality brand. See Undaunted reveiw.

The La Sportiva Rajas: http://www.sportiva.com/products/prod/304
This shoe is my new desire, it has a hybrid rubber sole combinging a harder high traction climbing rubber with softer high traction trail running rubber. Should stick to everthing. Its got a lot of good design features for foot protection support and stability. They also sell a gore tex version called the neva.

The La sportiva Cardiff: http://www.sportiva.com/products/prod/305
Similar to the above but without a hybrid rubber sole.

La Sportiva Superfly and Slingshot: Very lightweight fast shoes the first with straight climbing sole, might be good for someone not looking for a allot of shock absorbtion.

The Montrail CTC: http://www.zappos.com/n/p/p/7213958.html
Sticky rubber sole with climbing tread in the front, traction heel in the back. Highly rated maybe a bit stiff and high of the ground for our purposes. I am going to go try this shoe out soon. Montrail are excellent shoes, they fit extremely well are known for durability.

The Montrail Kinabula: http://www.zappos.com/n/p/dp/4580379/c/7992.html
Carbon rubber traction sole designed for traction on wet surfaces as well as dry. Built on adapted version of montrail highly rated integrafit last. I would make sure to try this one out before buying it might really work for our purposes might not.

So what stores should I go to in order to try some of these one and see how they feel?