The Martial Arts Slum
I have been a regular visitor to the Florida area throughout the years, the first time I ever went there was when I took a team from the UK to compete in Orlando. Instead of checking into a hotel we thought it would be fun to have our own place, so like many tourists we rented a holiday home. A 'Villa' was the description in the travel agents brochure, yes, we used travel agents as there was no such thing as the internet in the early 90’s. The villa was actually a good description as these homes were incredible, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. Just the garage alone was bigger than the average British living room. This place had 5 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms/showers and a kitchen a master chef would kill for, but our favourite was the swimming pool. We were there to compete however, so although lying by the pool was a daily event, so was pounding the road in the 90 degree heat. A four mile jog around streets that all look like something from a movie set was pretty awesome I can tell you and to say that I had fallen in love with this country was an understatement, this was a lifestyle I was born to live.
I have been living in Indianapolis, Indiana for the past 15 years now but as I said, I visit Florida regularly. On one such visit I thought it would be cool to go back to where we stayed on that very first trip, to take a trip down memory lane and even find the very house we stayed in. What a shock... It was like the scene from Back To The Future, when Marty and Doc come back to the alternate 1985 where Biff was a billionaire and owned Hill Valley. The house that we stayed in looked like a run down, beaten up, weather battered old council house. The former beautiful white vertical blinds had been replaced by what looked like dirty bed sheets as window coverings, the Greek villa-style brick work was now dirty and cracked and a car that was resting on bricks was parked on the three foot of grass that used to be the front lawn.
The entire street was the same, it had been hijacked by people who choose to live like this. But how did it get like this? In exactly the same way as every area can become rundown if the people in the area don’t demand something different! It only takes one household to makes their neighbour feel uncomfortable enough to leave and then it begins. Poor maintenance of one house brings down the value of the street, some people decide to move on selling their homes at reduced prices to people who are happy living in a less than desirable standard and so it continues until you have Shitsville.
This is exactly what has happened to British martial arts, the high standards of yesteryear have been replaced by pretenders and wannabe's. All of the talent have moved on and relocated leaving the rundown martial artists to build their own community. A community just like the people in Florida who can’t even see that they are in a slum because everyone around them look exactly the same.
To be continued
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