Buffalo BULLshido!!

[yanta]

what kills me is how he stays in the mall like that. cant imagine what the price/square is on the rental.

Heh. He sells "got chi?" T-shirts, fantasy swords, and feng shui lanterns to teenage LARPers and yoga moms. Stores like that do fine even without the martial arts studio in the back :)

They have an open sparring session? That bodes well. Do you know anything about their kid's program?

~yanta

[IndoChinese]

Heh. He sells "got chi?" T-shirts, fantasy swords, and feng shui lanterns to teenage LARPers and yoga moms. Stores like that do fine even without the martial arts studio in the back :)

oh yes, he has a lovely 'pro shop'. i figured people had to be buying alot of that crap in order to keep him going there. i was actually going to look later today to see if he has a decent pair of sai. all ive seen in years are these crappy hollow aluminum ones.

They have an open sparring session? That bodes well. Do you know anything about their kid's program?

they did at that time. i am not really all that familiar with them and thier operations. never seen a class. ive been in the place looking at the toys. bout as far as i went with it.

the guys name is Gott btw.

if it is upheld, Master Wong's gungfu is reputable.

[Kaith Rustaz]

Someone asked about mall rent. I don't know what RD is paying, but the McKinley Mall usually charges somewhere in the $18-25 per square foot range, which would put their rent somewhere $5k-7k per month. The Sears wing is pretty dead with half the corridor taken up by a Worst Buy and a BedBath & Beyond, so it may be lower.

Lineage is on the lineage page, and is in order, AFAIK. Gott's a student of Norm Mandarino. I've no idea on his background other than some web pages. I know he (Gott) regularly goes to China for training and competition.

As to the school, it's the regional Yang center, and from what I've read Yang good. People I know who train taichi say the schools the best place in WNY to train it. YMMV.

Proshop is a combination of low end 'sword like objects' and gift items, with some serious quality stuff mixed in. There are/were a couple of antique blades available, and the full spectrum of Paul Chen, and similar level mid-range functional blades. A decent stock of collectibles is also on display, and sells at a decent clip. Lets be blunt, the cheap crap and cool toys move and in a mall, it's all about volume.

Your best bet is to stop in, observe some classes and make up your mind. The martial arts there is pretty tight, though I've only seen the afternoon classes, which seemed somewhat informal and small. Haven't seen any of the evening or weekend classes.

/back to lurking.