Here is something that might be interesting to check out if you make it to CA. - Alain

Original source:
http://www.the-signal.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=48587&format=html

Martial Arts Museum a Reality
By Kristopher Daams(C) Signal Staff Writer

After several years of traveling exhibits, numerous meetings and a lot of
planning, the Martial Arts History Museum is scheduled to open to the
public next Saturday. Valencia resident Michael Matsuda, a martial arts buff and the museum's president, had seen his hopes of opening the museum in Santa Clarita rise
and fall, and his search for a location led him to the eastern San Fernando
Valley. But there were no good locations over the hill. Then the city's community
center building in Newhall changed ownership, and now Matsuda is scheduled
to open his museum there on June 2.

"We've been a traveling exhibit so everything is ready, but it's just not
out here right now," Matsuda said in the empty building on Thursday
afternoon. For the past several years the museum has been of a traveling nature,
hitting locations in Las Vegas and numerous others in Southern California.
All the items, save for pieces of armor for a samurai outfit and a lion's
head, are all in storage, some of it at his home in Valencia.

"This is a history museum," Matsuda said of the project, "not just a punch
and kick museum." He tried to get the city's old community center in the past, but a previous owner didn't support Matsuda's museum idea.

Then the place changed owners, and the new one liked the idea. He previously announced that he was going to house the museum in the San Fernando Valley; specifically, in the Los Angeles Council District
represented by Councilman Richard Alarcon, a proponent of the museum.

"(Los Angeles) Council members have control over properties," Matsuda said.
"We went out every day looking for a property and unfortunately, there was
nothing." Efforts to house the museum in Los Angeles areas with a larger Asian
population also fell through. Matsuda cited a lack of vision by those
council members "Unfortunately, it's very hard to get them to see the vision of what this
could do," Matsuda said. "This is a huge market. We're not looking just to
the martial arts, we're looking toward the entire Asian culture."

Matsuda studied judo in 1968. He hated it, he said, so he tried ju-jitsu.
He didn't like that either. Then he witnessed a guy in an all-black suit
doing kung fu, and has been practicing it since 1974.

He said the Martial Arts History Museum would likely have 70 items,
excluding hundreds more pictures and photos. The scope of the museum is
more than just the physical attacks that people associate with martial
arts, but the music, dance, art and everything else that came with it as
the art integrated itself into the American popular culture via film and
television. Matsuda said the lease for the place is good for no more than two years. He
hopes that after that, newly developed buildings in the downtown Newhall
area would be available for the museum.

An argument can even be made for a connection between martial arts and
oldtime Santa Clarita, Matsuda said, as the Chinese immigrants that
immigrated to California in the 19th century helped lay the railroad tracks
throughout the state. "We have railroad tracks here in Santa Clarita," Matsuda said. "Those
workers brought with them kung fu."

A grand opening ceremony for the museum is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on June 2.