I heard the other night that these two new girls at my dojo used to go to the mcdojo down the street (West-Wind in Berkeley CA, has already been outed here on bullshido). So, today I asked them about it after class.
The girl that was there the longest, Michelle, didn’t even want to talk about it. I think she’s still embarrassed and burnt by it. The older woman, Jackie, let me know the low-down. Apparently, West-Wind in is a dying giant. From 5 schools in the chain, they are down to 2. Even their website is down. The owner of the school, Mr. Thompson, who used to never come around because he hates teaching, now has to show up all the time in order to teach because all of his old teachers up and left a while back after a tournament. Jackie didn’t have enough time to actually tell me what happened at said tournament, but according to her, hundreds of students up and walked out on West Wind because they finally had seen it for what it was–Utter crap.
Although Jackie had heard the “Ron Lee founded WW” line, that was all she knew (if you call West Wind and ask them, they will tell you that Ron Lee started the school and Bok Fu Do). This is in fact, not true, as there is no Ron Lee. Richard Lee, aka Richard Cuvelier (listed as Judan under Al Tracy on Tracy’s kenpo page), founded “modern Bok Fu Do”, and then black belts of his went off and started other schools. I’m still not sure how WW got into the hands of Thompson, but John Buckley, head instructor over at Lee’s East West school, assured me that Richard did not found WW.
Jackie left because no one would give her any answers. Students were discouraged from asking their instructors, and from talking to each other about these kinds of things. She would ask about lineage, and always get shut down. I doubt many of the black belt instructors at West Wind would even be able to give the proper history, that is, if they were willing to tell it. When Jackie first came to my school, she immediately asked the head instructor about his lineage and history, and was able to get straight-forward, non-deluded answers, which is something no student at WW is afforded. I think this was a major influence over her decision to join our school.
There is one instructor there, Sean, who is about 20 years old, and is working at WW every single day, from open to close. That’s 9am to 9pm, or later, because he has to clean up and everything. Jackie says they once promised him the school, once he gets to a certain level, of course, but it has yet to happen, and no one but this kid himself seems to think it will ever happen. He still isn’t ranked high enough to be driving the BMWs and Escalades like all the other instructors–he shows up every day in his Honda Civic. I have met him, and he seems pretty nice. I asked Jackie and Michelle about him, and they both started cooing and going “aww he’s so sweet!”. I would really like to believe that he is a good enough person, and that he should get out before the ticking West Wind time bomb blows up in his face. The trouble is that he has been there since he was 6 years old, and who would be willing to turn on something they have been so dedicated to for so long? When you’re so ingrained in something, it can be difficult to recognize the flaws.
Before Jackie left, she had a talk with Sean. She told him to get out of the WW school. She told him to go to school (he went to community college with my neighbor for a short while, but I don’t think he ever got very far in that), and to come back to martial arts when he has a degree, and something to fall back on when West Wind either turns on him, or just plain implodes (of course it’s possible to train and go to school, but I believe she meant the all-day everyday thing). He hemmed and hawed and explained that martial arts were his life, and that he couldn’t leave it. I think he believes he will be inheriting the school as promised. But Jackie insisted they were using him, and from what I have observed, it certainly seems that way.
I really don’t know why, but I have taking a liking to him. I see him all the time, and I talked with him once. Some creepy guy was following me up the street and I ducked into the school until he left, instead of going straight into my apartment building (I live on the same block as west wind). Sean was, as usual, the only one there, and he was friendly with me. I come off as a total weirdo when people first meet me, but he still smiles and waves at me when I walk past.
I want to help him get out. I just don’t know how. At least everyone else is slowly figuring it out…
On an even sadder note, some man has been walking up and down the block for over an hour now, yelling at every west wind person who walks out. The man was crying, and explaining that he hasn’t seen his son since he was five years old, and that his son was in there just then, during a class, and the instructors wouldn’t let him in to see his son. I don’t know if the man was just crazy, but he seemed pretty convinced.