For twenty years, I made my way several times a week to the 72nd Street subway stop on Manhattan's Upper West Side, then up the slow, crowded elevator to the fourth-floor dojo that Mori Sensei ran above the Fairway supermarket. A lot changed during those two decades, between 1986 and 2006. I went from being a punching-bag shodan to one of the instructors. The space changed, when the dojo had to give back part of the room to cope with rising rent. But the environment was always the same: hot, airless, and intense.
I dedicated many years to that room. Late one evening, some December between Christmas and New Year's, Mori Sensei and I refinished the floor together—and I took his abuse when I nearly painted myself into a corner with the polyurethane finish. I helped redesign the space, when it shrank, and put in some hours painting the new walls that went up. I swept and cleaned and, most of all, poured a lot of sweat (and a fair amount of blood) onto the floor.
Now that's all over. Some months ago, the dojo had to move out of its longtime home. It has no dedicated space any longer; classes are held in a couple of different locations. Of course, instruction is instruction, and training is training, and students are students, no matter what the space, but I'm saddened by the abandonment of this place that was my karate home for so much of my life. I devoted more years of my life to it than to any other location, or institution, that I've ever known.
Here's hoping Mori Sensei and his students find a new home.
