It all starts in August of 2004 on the South Side, 47th Street, with a strange meeting with an old martial arts buddy. A rumor of a man we know being alive after supposedly being dead for 30 years and his gravesite with no headstone. John Keehan, PT Barnum of Martial Arts; hairdresser for Playboy; walker of pet lions down Rush St.; pimpdaddy to two, count them, two playboy bunnies; leader of the tragic dojo war which got his best friend John Konsevic killed.
We meet him at a 1964 tournament at the Coliseum, or was it Medinah Temple. I can’t remember which, I lived in the projects back then. Was this the one he had robbed of the reciepts? I have to check the record….hmmm I think it was in ’68 his tournament got robbed. I was definitely 11 years old when I met him.
My buddy Simmie Williams, at Playboy, was really enouraging me to pursue this film. He does have a sense of the popular. But seeing that empty spot on the ground where a man is suppoded to be buried, that moved me to action.
And thus, I have begun this blog.
