Tuesday, January 21, 2014

656 1/2 King Street

656 1/2 by Seattle Daily Photo
Photo & Text © 2014 Seattle Daily Photo. All rights reserved.
Behind these double doors in the International District and up the stairs beyond them is The Kung Fu Club of Seattle, a dojo founded in the early 1960s that continues to teach traditional Kung Fu to serious students, male and female, young children to adults in their 70s. What attracted me to wonder about this place, besides the vintage bright red doors, was the painted address of 656 1/2 on the transom. I heard a tour guide on one of those passing van tours tell her passengers this studio with the red windows was Bruce Lee's, but I am sure she was mistaken. The world famous martial arts master's first studio, the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, was in Seattle's University District, but he moved it to a second location just two blocks east of here and around the corner on 8th (it also has a 1/2 in the address). He would for sure have gone past these doors frequently as he walked the streets of the International District.

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