Neighborly Neighbors: Preston the Martial Arts Instructor

Neighborly Neighbors is a series of posts in which we stop random people, ask them a few random questions, take their picture and posts the results here.

Preston Riddick
70 years old
Preston has lived in Fort Greene for nearly 50 years. We caught up with him as he was teaching martial arts to a pupil on the raised surface of the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park.

Are you from the neighborhood?

Yes I’ve been here for years.

How long have you lived in Fort Greene, or in New York?

I’ve been in this neighborhood since 1970 and have lived in New York since around ’67 or ’68.

What do you love about Fort Greene? What is it that has kept you here so long?

I just love, you see, there have been so many different changes. The one thing about Fort Greene, when I first moved here, it was a very artistic community and has always had that great artistic energy to it. There has always been a good mix of people, you know, a diverse group of people. Fort Greene to me, at one time, had a kind of southern flair, because I’m a southerner, and it had a kind of southern flavor to it. Basically it’s, after moving, I came up here in ’68 stayed in Harlem for two years and moved right up here in one of the Clinton Hill apartments when the rent was $130 a month and most of the brownstones, that you pay much for now, you could get for … like $35 to $40 thousand. I have a friend who has one right over here that’s almost four stories and she paid about $22,000 for it. I think she could get close to $2.7 almost $3 [million] for that now. As far as food is concerned, it’s always had a variety of different restaurants now with the new input of a lot more people and cultures you have a bunch more restaurants. You can find basically, within the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill community, you can find any kind of food you want.

Where in the south are you from?

Virginia, born and raised, but have been up here now more years. I still consider that home.

What is your favorite food in the neighborhood?

Oh man, that’s hard to say. Cause I like a lot of food. I really love okra, so I get that from the Indian restaurants. But I support the local restaurants. I go all the way down DeKalb to Vanderbilt, to the Caribbean restaurants, the Italian restaurants, Graziellas to name one, really all of them. It’s hard for me to say that cause I like good food.

What is it that you were doing over on the Fort Greene monument?

We were practicing. I have been teaching martial arts in this community since the early ’70s. Right now I am working with one of my students that has been working with me for about four years now. I’m training him to become an instructor. I might be going back to Virginia, not to live, but to open up there too and come back and forth. I just want to make sure I have somebody to lead it here.

What form of martial arts do you teach?

I teach a blend of, when I was in the marine core I learned shotokon and then when I came out I studied kung fu with Alan Lee for years. Then what I did after that was I blended the best elements I could into what I am teaching now.

So you are teaching your own form of martial arts, which blends others?

What I did was, I didn’t take any other forms from any other school. The kicks and the strikes and all that kind of stuff, naturally, but as far as the choreography, I put that together because it was a requirement for an initiation I was going through so I had to create the 12 rituals or forms, which is what my student is doing now. We have the dhal form which is broken down into fire, earth, air and water. Its almost a blend of dance and yoga and other things but I use it as a prerequisite to actually getting into the system.

When did you serve in the Marines?

From ’60 to ’62 active duty and four years active reserve which I followed with college at Norfolk State University.