Downtown Hollister business owners and police are concerned
about a recent trend involving groups of teenagers climbing on
buildings and loitering on them
– in what could be influenced by a growing interest in extreme,
YouTube-inspired activities such as parkour or freerunning.
Downtown Hollister business owners and police are concerned about a recent trend involving groups of teenagers climbing on buildings and loitering on them – in what could be influenced by a growing interest in extreme, YouTube-inspired activities such as parkour or freerunning.
Starting about three months ago, businesses in buildings owned by K&S Properties started noticing the presence of teens on the company’s structures, said K&S Chief Financial Officer Liz Smith. To this point, the related damage done on the buildings has been minor such as issues with tampering to gates or barbed wire, while there have been some empty beer cans up there as well.
K&S is largely concerned about potential liability issues if someone gets injured. Plus, there is another basic law the violators are breaking.
“They’re trespassing,” Smith noted.
It is unclear what motive the teens might have for the climbing – often up two- and three-story buildings – but the fad appears to fall in line with the French-born cultural phenomenon of parkour that surrounds the idea of overcoming obstacles through such motions as climbing, jumping and running. Those who partake are often driven to videotape and post their stunts on such websites as YouTube, which brings up 36,000 videos on a search for the word “parkour” and another 41,000 videos with a search for a similar activity, “freerunning.”
Smith from K&S and Jerry Muenzer, the county supervisor who owns the sporting goods store downtown under the same name, brought the issue to the Hollister Downtown Association at the organization’s Aug. 17 meeting, said HDA Executive Director Brenda Weatherly.
The HDA then approached the Hollister Police Department, which has assigned an officer to it with instructions to especially look out for the perpetrators at certain locations and during targeted hours, such as after school and on weekends, said Capt. David Westrick, adding that police officials have informed other beat officers to watch for the climbers as well.
“Initially, some of the things got reported, but we didn’t have a reporting party,” Westrick said. “To take action, you need a victim. Now that we have that set up with the HDA and business owners downtown, obviously, we have victims.”
One of the buildings of choice for the teens has been the three-story structure along San Benito Street starting at Sixth Street – the one housing Mars Hill coffee shop, She’s clothing store and others, Smith said.
“We’ve just had several different instances,” Smith said. “We don’t know their age. We haven’t really seen them face to face. We had tenants call us who saw them from their office suites.”
Free Lance reporters, who work out of an office on Sixth Street, also have seen the teenagers in recent months climbing and running on downtown buildings.
“Obviously, it’s dangerous from the standpoint of kids falling,” Westrick said. “It’s also an issue with some vandalism and broken property.”
Westrick said he hasn’t heard of the problem with other regional agencies. He has a meeting this week with other area commanders and said he will probably bring it up.
He said he did some research on the activity.
“It looks like kind of a challenge thing,” he said, on a possible motive.
If anyone sees people climbing on buildings or on top of them, call the Hollister Police Department at (831) 636-4330.
