Thursday, February 5, 2009

Don't Mess With These Guys In Athens, Greece!



Fellow Dojo Rat Kostas Tountas sent us THIS LINK to the "Areos Park Kali Group", a group of fun-loving guys that likely scare the crap out of people visiting this park in Greece.
Kostas and I have been in touch a few times. We share similar long-time background in Tae Kwon Do and Jujitsu, and have evoloved into more exotic and internal arts. The link to his site has some great action photos of full-contact stickfighting in the park, as well as Links to pages with Kostas' Bio and training history.
-- If you have an "off-the-shelf" rag-tag group of Dojo Rats that gets together for training, send in a picture and a few words about your group.
-- Please, no Commercial Dojos, we see that in every strip-mall in America.
But if you have a solid group of Dojo Rats, send a picture and introduce yourself to everybody! Contact at dojorat@gmail.com

4 comments:

Sean C. Ledig said...

I'll see if I can dig up some old pics. I've done Yang Taiji at my sifu's yard and on two local college campuses.

I did various Chinese forms with Norm Burland at Horizon Park near my house in Tampa.

My instruction in Yau Kun Mun with Don Weiss has taken place at my house or his.

I learned Wing Chun from Hunter von Unschuld in his driveway with a few other hardcore Wing Chunners.

But mostly, I trained in Jeet Kune Do and Filipino Tribal Arts with Anthony Chan. We've practiced at his house with a wide assortment of fellow martial artists and members of a local film makers group who enlisted Tony to help with their fight choreography.

When Tony and I first got together, he showed me another use for his knives by jimmying the lock of the weight room at his old apartment complex. We used to practice there after it was closed.

Dojo Rat said...

Send some pictures!

Kostas Tountas said...

As is true of many photos, there is an untold story behind this one. When we train in the park, we also feed the stray cats. Sometimes they appear just as we are arriving; other times, when we are in the middle of a heated sparring session. So imagine you are out for an afternoon stroll with your kids in the park, and that you come across a group of grown men, heartily beating the crap out of one other with sticks. Then in the middle of all this grunting and groaning and whacking, one hears these meows; whereupon, sticks are dropped, cats are fed, and only then do the beatings continue.

Dojo Rat said...

KT;
Thanks for the link and photos, I think we might have a new Dojo Rat feature:
"Don't mess with these guys in (your town here)".

And if you go back to Canada for a visit, and happen to be stickfighting in a park, don't feed the bears!