The NYC Dojo has moved! Just three blocks from our old location, our new dojo now occupies two floors at 767 Lexington Avenue at the corner of 60th Street and Lexington Ave.
With great excitement, Goju Karate is pleased to announce that our NYC metropolitan dojo has moved to 767 Lexington Avenue, located at the corner of 60th Street and Lexington Avenue. The dojo occupies the fifth and sixth floors in the building.
The first classes began on Friday, October 13th, 2023 at our new location – and the full regular class schedule is now underway. Livestream classes also have begun originating from our new space.
The Fifth Floor holds the main entrance to the dojo, the front desk, and the dojo floor. The Sixth Floor holds the student locker rooms and dojo storage.
Since the lockers are right next to the internal stairway, most students will first go to the Fifth Floor and then take the stairs up to the locker rooms; however, the building elevator can be used to access the sixth floor directly without having to visit the fifth floor first.
Building a New Dojo
While classes have begun at the new facility, it will take about a month to complete all the major renovations necessary. Some of the changes coming include:
a brand new wood dojo floor
brand new lockers (our old ones were past their useful life, especially the locks)
a new shinzen
new paint throughout
new heavy bag mounts (for endurance class)
and more
It will take some some time for all of these things to be built or changed – please be patient as they are implemented. It's a wonderful privilege to have the opportunity to see a new dojo space being transformed and very few karateka ever see the process!
Why the Move?
One of the best parts of our new location is that the dojo has been able to take advantage of the more realistic post-COVID real estate market. As a non-profit, our main expense is the cost of our space. By keeping that cost down, our tuition costs can be kept low and we can avert future increases more easily.
The dojo, and our dojo community (our kizuna) is all of our responsibility, including the responsibility to ensure its future and its continuity. This move supports that objective.
In addition, our old space, while very nice, wasn't optimized for our usage: a good part of our space, by square footage, was devoted to hallways, common areas, and locker rooms – rather than being devoted to the dojo floor itself, which of course, is the core part of our mission as a dojo.
And finally, our new location affords the possibility of expansion space for our dojo as our needs grow in the coming years.
Lockers Transported to the New Dojo
Any students who had items in lockers at the old dojo can claim them in the new locker room. Everything was removed, individually bagged in transparent bags, and will be transported to the new locker room the morning of Monday, October 16th, 2023.
Because lockers won't actually be arriving until later in the week, it's perfectly fine to leave the bagged items in the locker room until the new lockers arrive in order to wait for the new lockers to be installed.
The New Space
With classes now up and running at our Lexington Avenue space, everyone is excited to be training together at our new home.
Over the next few weeks, all of the familiar targets like Bob, Thumb King, Albert, and Oscar will reappear, but joined with some new equipment (brand-new kicking pads will be replacing the well-used ones).
Come to class soon, and begin training! (And as a bonus, while the new floor will be installed very soon, the current squishy soft floor certainly will make seiken pushups that much easier!)
