Chicago's Green Dragon society

[Royal Dragon]

These guys seem to have a unique curicculem, and collection of systems. Does anyone have any familiarity with thier art, and where it comes from? It does not seem to be common Chinese martial arts...at least not in form names, or system names.

Those who have seen it, what more well known styles does it resemble?

I am actually toying with the idea of getting some of thier videos, just to get a look'see at the system.

Are there any Green Dragon system teachers still teaching that curriculem in the Chicago area, or has this line died out here?

[7starstudent]

I met a guy that trained at the Green Dragon Society. I asked him about all of the styles, etc. He said that as a beginner you trained in all of the animal styles until your sifu chose an animal that best fit your spirit. Sounded like complete bullsh1t to me. He then mentioned that his sifu had chosen his style as badger or groundhog or something equally ridiculous.

I don't know what's going on with them now; they're web site is no longer working.

[rogue]

Count Dante!

[Royal Dragon]

The little bit I know about them is they were ard core fighters. I crossed hands with a female who trained there once, and she was tough as nails. She was a little out of controll though, and fully engaged me in my living room much to Theresa's dismay.

We ended up going full contact for a little bit there, untill Theresa started yelling at us and we stopped.

What I noticed is that she was very agressive offensively, but also open to counter attacks, especially stuff that would be easily exposed by a good Shui Chiao player.

[Black Jack II]

Yes, I have some background in the system, one of my old teachers was a student at the GDS during the 60's and 70's when the time of the dojo wars was in full swing.

From a style perspective, it seems to be related more to the animal systems of bando than anything specific chinese, a mix of material with a very hardcore mindset behind it.

Dean teaches Chi Tao Ch'uan out of a church in Crystal Lake, if you want to learn the system most GDS teachers make you go through a interview first, then are put on a temp basis.

[Royal Dragon]

I am not interested in learning it, just a bit about it. Green Dragon is a significant part of Chicago area martial history.

Is there more than just Dean teaching it? Do they exist s a society still, or has everyone gone thier own way?

[Black Jack II]

No,

They are still around, different private individuals, and a few underground halls/temples around the chicagoland area, the public downtown Leopard hall being one. I don't know if the main unit still functions as hardcore as they used to, at one time there was a big split because of certain outlooks in ritual, but if they are, man those cats are gung ho.

There were other connected temples as well, Red Dragon Society being one. In the future there is a Count Dante documentary coming out that will have a little bit of info on the Green Dragons in it from what I have read.

[Royal Dragon]

Interesting. When will the documentary come out?

[Black Jack II]

No idea, the guy is in fundraising soon.

google the term...count dante blog....and you will see the filmmakers blog and trailer website for the movie. The blog is excellent and I would recommend starting from the beginning and reading it over for some nice tidbits about the chicago martial arts scene and count dante.

[Royal Dragon]

Will do.
Question, Bando is Malaysian? Am I correct in that?

[Black Jack II]

Burmese.

There are about two lines which teach it in the united states, Dr. Gyi's group and the Kachin tribe style by Phil Dunlap who I think posts on this board once and awhile.

[Shaolindynasty]

I've seen their "secret" manual. It's only given to "members. It looks like ed parker kenpo. I know some members and have gotten the same intitiation story from them. They are taken into a completely dark room except for some candles burning with a guy standing on each side of them holding an axe while they pledge themselves to the school. They also have allot of that "to deadly to spar" talk in their manual. Mostly unimpressive as a martial art school. Their wildly entertaining past makes up for it though.

BTW, the documentary is called "The search for count dante" By Floyd Webb. You can read about it here www.thesearchforcountdante.com

I'm actually going to be in the recreation of the dojo wars where dante attacked the green dragons and someone ends up dead on the end of a sword. Wild stuff

[Royal Dragon]

What exactly is "Bando", and do they have a similar set of animal forms?

[Black Jack II]

Were do you get no sparring from??

They sparred all the time from what I understand. I have first hand accounts from different sources of some serious old school bare knuckle sessions including one were a gent got his cornea ripped by some nuts fingernail.

Unlike a lot of the kata schools of the time, sparring seemed to be a solid part of there program to try and get in touch with the animal spirit deal of there's.


Mostly unimpressive as a martial art school

I can not vouch either, its not my cup of tea but the aggressive mentality is often there.


What exactly is "Bando", and do they have a similar set of animal forms?

Try googling Bando and you won't get much for certain reasons, best bet is the www.thaing.net site which has some good information. They have animal forms and the same applied principle of animal spirit selection depending on body type and natural way of fighting.

[Shaolindynasty]

Were do you get no sparring from??


Former students AND their manual.

[Royal Dragon]

I have never gotten that impression. if anything, they over did it. I have heard they locked the door, went in the back room and bare knuckled it to the extreme. injuries were common, and blood was drawn every nite. Green dragon has, or had a rep as being one of the hardest, most insane fight schools Chicago had at the time.

Ur not thinking about green dragon *Studios* from Ohio are you?

[rogue]

I remember almost every martial arts school in the 70's as having a reputation for crazy training and drawing blood. Some old timers that I know say the same about the 60's. I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the reputation was based on bad training and more enthusiasm than technique. That's not to say that they weren't tough.

[Royal Dragon]

I'd bet there was plenty of technique too, just crazy levels of day to day fighting, no gear.

[rogue]

I'd bet there wasn't. Doing crazy levels of day to day fighting, with no gear would knock most out training for long lengths of time. I did some of this and it resulted in two things with most people, 1) sidelining injuries and 2) lots of dancing around without anybody making contact fearing to get injured. Neither good for developing good technique.

[Royal Dragon]

I allways hear injuries were common there.

[Black Jack II]

I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the reputation was based on bad training and more enthusiasm than technique

I can see this regarding a lot of old time schools. I think that is a good point.

As for the old time GDS, yeah they sparred, and yeah from what I have heard there were a bunch of unneeded injury. Two parts about there sparring, number one, it was along the lines of the standard chinese outlook, they did not jump in right away, basics were drilled first like in many schools for what could be a bit of time, but to determine your selected animal school and then develop it, you sparred a lot to figure that out.

I remeber stories of refs having to break up matches when the fighters got to "caught up" in there animal, by using a escrima type of baston they carried. It sounds crazy but its what those cats did.;)

[Faruq]

I'm only replying to this old thread because I didn't want to start a new one, and Tyrone Daremo's post on the Green Dragon Studios thread reminded me of this.

This was a weird school from my perspective, though I obviously never studied there. I called them back in the 80's when I was a teenager and there was so much secrecy they acted with. They were so creepy! They sent me a brochure about their art which they said was "Chi Tao Ch'uan" a temple art from Northern China that utilized the spirits of the animals to fight with, and herbal liniments that would make your bones as hard as steel and your skin as soft as that of a young maiden. Then when I went down to the school they had the storefront all draped up and some creepy guy came and cracked the door and asked what I wanted. I told him I was there for my interview (which by the way I no longer wanted because they were creeping the hell out of me), and he closed the door and had me wait a few minutes. Then he came back, cracked the door again and asked my name before closing the door and having me and my Mom wait out in front of the storefront another couple of minutes. Then he came back, cracked the door and asked for a drivers license or state ID which I have no idea what they did with for the next 10 minutes we waited outside. Then he came back and told me I wasn't accepted. I was relieved!

Then there was a girl at Steve Lee Swift's place that told me that she had been going to the Green Dragon Society, and I asked her what she thought of it. She said their kung fu was okay, but the master kept trying to intimidate her into sex and she wasn't impressed. That was the weirdest place....

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

What I find amazing is that I still cannot see this forum, nor can I post in it with my main username, but threads I started back when I could still show up just fine.

Whats the deal with that?

[bawang]

sounds like a bunch of crazy fa gots

[curenado]

sounds like a bunch of crazy fa gots

Reliable as Big Ben...:D

[MasterKiller]

What I find amazing is that I still cannot see this forum, nor can I post in it with my main username, but threads I started back when I could still show up just fine.

Whats the deal with that?

Same thing happened to 1bad65. He swears I banned him on purpose, though.

[David Jamieson]

I believe the issue is a pebkac.

:p

[Faruq]

I believe the issue is a pebkac.

:p

What is a pebkac?

[RD'S Alias - 1A]

Same thing happened to 1bad65. He swears I banned him on purpose, though.

Someone told Gene how to fix it once, but it never got done.

In the system there is a place where you can ban people by forum only. You have to enter thier name by hand into the field. Someone probably did this at some point.

It's not the main stream way of banning someone. If I am not mistaken the normal way is to check an option in thier file to restrict posting privileges.

I think if I could have access to the system I could probably figure it out pretty quick. My name is probably buried in a hundred or so, so it's going to be a labor intensive search once the right field is located.

The other possibility is something went wrong with one of the updates. I seem to remember some other sort of glitch concerning a software update occurring around that same time. I can't remember what it was though.

[mjw]

There used to be a guy from the "Black Dragon" briefly at my BJJ gym and I guess everything was secret and he couldn't even say where the school was but who knows.....

[Violent Designs]

There used to be a guy from the "Black Dragon" briefly at my BJJ gym and I guess everything was secret and he couldn't even say where the school was but who knows.....

Did he try to apply his qi powers to make you tap?

[cerebus]

The Green Dragon Society was an odd and interesting group. They claimed to teach the northern Chinese "Chi Tao Chuan" system, but their various manuals show something far different from a traditional Chinese system. There is alot of stuff much more reminiscent of Indonesian Silat, where one is possessed by the spirit of a chosen animal. Their Black Cobra manual includes meditational methods which could lead to various types of psychosis and mental imbalance.

There was alot of hard contact bare-knuckle sparring, or "blood-matches" as they called them, as well. Inevitably there was also alot of political infighting and abuse of power leading to much fracturing of the Society and now there are many different groups teaching the "Chi Tao Chuan" system.

[Faruq]

How effective was their system? How effective would you estimate in an actual streetfight against a reasonably skilled fighter, Cerebus? And have you traced their system to any actual place in Northern China? Or was that purely made up?

[Syn7]

yeah that was my question too... were they street kings or street clowns??? if they were effective, i guess it doesnt really matter where it came from, but lying about stuff like that is pretty dumb... especially if what youre doing is good...

people always go on about authentic this, authentic that... but there is tons of authentic crap... and there are lots of great new systems... i hate it when people assume something is great because its old... or that becausae it was once great, that it is now... and how people swear its the same as it always was... yadda yadda... why cant somebody create great styles now? new can be a good thing sometimes...

[cerebus]

Well, of course any system is only as good as the person training it. Having regular experience in full contact sparring goes a long way toward developing the mental toughness and skills which can work on the street.

There's quite a bit more about the GDS and their background in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Deadliest-Man-Alive-Strange-Fighting/dp/1451535422/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299772285&sr=1-2

[Faruq]

Yeah cool, but from your previous post it sounded like you were there. Would you give us an opinion from your own personal knowledge or perhaps of friends you know who went there?

[cerebus]

No, I wasn't there myself, though I've known people who were members back in the '70s & 80s. They mostly commented on the secrecy that was such a big part of the GDS, needing passwords to enter the training halls, etc. I suppose the best one can do is to learn everything they can and draw their own conclusions.

The former head instructor who seems to have been the head of the whole organization (or at least it's US branches), Douglas Nowakunski, passed away a year or two ago. He may have taken the answers to the grave with him...

[Faruq]

The U.S. branches? What other countries was the art taught in? How did this Nowalkunski fellow come across this art originally? Did he ever say where he learned or who his teacher was?

Oh, and the real question I should ask is since these guys who went there were your friends, did you ever see any of these friends in a real fight, and if so how did they do? What did it look like?

[cerebus]

The U.S. branches? What other countries was the art taught in? How did this Nowalkunski fellow come across this art originally? Did he ever say where he learned or who his teacher was?

Oh, and the real question I should ask is since these guys who went there were your friends, did you ever see any of these friends in a real fight, and if so how did they do? What did it look like?

They claimed affiliation with an association in Macao. Nowakunski never publicly said who his instructors were. The people I knew who were members back then were getting kinda old when I met them around 2004 and had become Tai Chi practitioners so they weren't doing any fighting.

The book I posted the link to includes a better description of the art and includes some photos from one of their training manuals.

[Faruq]

The most outrageous styles always seem to have untraceable roots, and no proof as to their effectiveness on the street....