It may seem strange to start a story about my encounter with Anthony Bourdain with an anecdote about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but if it weren’t for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu — BJJ for short — I don’t think I’d ever have appreciated him in the way I do. Because of BJJ I met the man first, then discovered his art, and really the only way to make sense of this is to start from the beginning.
In late 2014 I joined a BJJ gym in Los Angeles under the Renzo Gracie banner. It was opened a few years earlier by one of Renzo Gracie’s first American black belts, Shawn Williams. I had dabbled in martial arts all my life, doing some karate as a kid, aikido, kung fu, boxing and old school jiu jitsu, and I was fully cognizant of my lack of skill, having never completed anything beyond orange belt. Years ago, like in 2000, I attended a BJJ school in Queens for about five months with some of the toughest dudes I can remember. I’d only gone on a whim since a roommate of mine was also going. Having always had an affinity for martial arts, and a totally delusional sense of my own fighting prowess, I thought I’d be able to handle myself with ease. Until I got my ass handed to me by some genuine baddasses. In a class comprised of cops, construction workers, a former gang banger and various other characters from the hard walks of life, I was the lightweight. The middle-class kid whose biggest obstacles in life had been of the…
