West Side Taekwondo

Written by Master Whang

This article by Master Whang (Sr. and/or Jr.) was originally written for and posted on www.CarbonEcho.com, a martial arts website dedicated to educating the public about all martial arts. While the site enjoyed tremendous popularity, it ceased operations several years ago.

I am a Yellow Pages Junkie

Am I the only one who does this?

Whenever I travel to a different city, and I travel a lot, and I am staying in a hotel, one of the first things I do after I unpack my bags, hang my clothes, set up my toiletry kit, and change into something comfortable, is check out the Yellow Pages. I start at “M”, looking for an entry for “Martial Arts”. In the bigger cities, this is indeed where I find my treasure trove: the listing of local martial arts schools. Unfortunately, in smaller towns across America, you have to go to “K”, under “Karate - and Martial Arts” in order to find your listing of Taekwondo, Kung Fu, Jiujitsu, etc. schools. I am always a little disheartened to have to go to “K”. I’m appalled that in the year 2000 major businesses like the Yellow Pages still have no clue that “Karate” is not a generic word for the martial arts. Don’t they realize that it’s like listing your local Burger King and Balthazar’s under the singular heading Food”? (Alright, call me a snobbish, name-dropping New Yorker. By the way, I’ve noticed a marked difference in the way people treat New Yorkers these day, just because we have 2 teams in the World Series. Sheesh!)

Anyways, one of my interests in looking at the Yellow Pages ads is just to see what kinds of martial arts are offered in the area. My interest as a martial artist is piqued. How many Taekwondo schools? ITF? WTF? Do I know the instructors personally? Have I heard of them? How many styles of Karate, and how many of Kung Fu? Kempo? American or Japanese? Tangsoodo? Hwarangdo? Hapkido? Jeet Kune Do? Any Jiujitsu schools? Japanese or Brazilian style? Gracie? Machado? If Gracie, is it “Gracie-style” or is it really a school owned and operated and taught by a Gracie?

I’m also a dojang owner, so I also like to see what kinds of ads are out there, maybe I can learn something and use it for my own school. How big are the ads? Is it something that appeals to me, or is it, to steal from Carbonecho’s own famous movie critics, smack of a major cheese factor? A big clue: if they use faux “Oriental” (excuse the word) style English characters … in my opinion, you might as well write you ad in broken English and say “We Namba Wan Orientar Mashar Ahts School and Grosseri”.

How much do they pay for these Yellow Pages ads? If they pay anything close to what we pay for our ads in Manhattan, they make the rents charged on Madison Avenue seem like peanuts. I mean, $600.00 a month for 6 square inches is the equivalent of … $170,000 per square foot per year!!! Talk about extortion.

Questions that have gone through my mind as I recall my finger walking travels are many. Is it really possible for someone not only to be a Grand Master of Karate, Judo, Taekwondo, Kickboxing, Kung Fu, Brazilian Jiujitsu, and Arnis simultaneously, but to pass on all that knowledge to one’s students? What must it have been like to train with Elvis, at that Taekwondo dojang in Memphis? How cool would that have been, if only to be able to say that you trained with Elvis?! I’m serious! Would I want to learn Taekwondo from someone who advertises his school with a picture of himself balancing on one leg, with the other leg hoisted above and behind his head? Could he possibly have a rational martial reason for doing this? Why is it that in my travels through Great Britain, Ireland, and France, I never see the same breadth of martial arts offerings in their Yellow Pages counterparts?

I don’t mean to belittle anyone with my observations of these Yellow Pages ads. Ultimately what I draw from this is a reflection about myself. I am obsessed with the martial arts. I am, and have been, obsessed with Taekwondo for thirty years, and to prove it, I have this obsession with the “Martial Arts” section of the Yellow Pages.

When I was about to test for my Black Belt many years ago, the late Grand Master Pong Ki Kim, told me, “When you are getting ready to test for your Black Belt, you should be obsessed with the desire to become a Black Belt. You have to live it, dream it, it has to become an overwhelming desire.” His words were true then, but I don’t think he could have predicted how true his own words would have rung so many years after his passing, because this is exactly what I tell my own students.