Night Duelists Parry Stares of Passers-by : Swordplay a Swashbuckling Tradition on Parkway Calabasas’ Grassy Median

The driver of the Mercedes hit his high beams. Then he hit his brakes.

In the darkened street ahead, he had glimpsed the flash of steel and the outline of two people struggling.

It was a sword fight. In the middle of Parkway Calabasas. At the entrance to one of the ritziest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley.

The motorist gave the fighters a wide berth. And a wide-eyed once-over.

On the grassy center divider, sword fighter Sondra Koslov lowered her saber and pulled off her wire-mesh face mask as the car turned toward Calabasas Golf and Country Club.

“People stop and look. We get screams,” said Koslov, 23, an Agoura travel agent. “People are surprised when they see us. They think it is kind of strange.”

Strangely, sword fights have become something of a weekly tradition at Parkway Calabasas. A handful of would-be swashbucklers has staged Wednesday night duels under center-divider street lights for 11 years.

Don’t Play by Rules

They fight with two-edged sabers and protect themselves with fencing masks and chest pads or heavy denim jackets. They do not play by fencing rules, though.

“We do sword fighting, not fencing,” said David Niemerow, an organizer of the duels.

“All the fencing rules don’t mean a darn thing here. What we’re doing is really trying to kill them--stick that sword through the heart or cut their wrist off or take their knee out. We practice to get in and hit our opponent and get out without being hit. If you hit me right before I hit you, we both die.”

The Calabasas duels are very unstructured. The fighters can punch, kick or wrestle their opponent to the ground if their saber rattling doesn’t do the job.

But Niemerow is quick to point out that no one has ever been hurt by the sword fighting. The sabers are kept purposefully dull and the most serious injuries have been welts and bruises, he said.

Niemerow, 29, is a Pasadena pharmacy manager who grew up in Calabasas Park. He recalls that a toy plastic sword given to him by his parents when he was 4 sparked his interest in sword fighting.

As soon as he turned 16 and got a driver’s license, he enrolled in a fencing class taught by Hollywood fencing master Ralph Faulkner. After that, he sharpened his skills by sparring with imaginary foes in the garage at his Calabasas home.

That’s where neighbor David Walling noticed him slashing and thrusting at lawn mowers and bicycles. Walling, who is a year younger than Niemerow, volunteered to become his sword-fight partner.

Move to Divider in 1975

By 1975, the dueling duo needed more elbow room. They found the grassy center strip on what was then a deserted section of Parkway Calabasas.

“This was about the only place you could come out and fence at 1 or 2 in the morning and no one would bother you,” Niemerow said.

“Back in those days, the golf course was here but there were only a few houses. We’d go up and fence in the dark on empty lots. The police would come by every once in a while and sit and watch us until they got a call.”

By 1980, however, the area around the golf course was rapidly filling with new $500,000 homes. Traffic along Parkway Calabasas began picking up.

‘Gang’ Fight Reported

“People stop and look,” Niemerow said. “But I think most people who live out here are pretty used to us now. They drive by without paying much attention to us.”

Not everyone is quite so blase, though.

Last Christmas night, a passer-by telephoned Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies to report that a gang rumble was taking place on the center divider.

“The sheriffs came out and pulled a gun on me and told me to drop my sword. I complied,” Niemerow said.

“They said they had gotten a call about ‘youths attacking each other with swords’ from somebody. They told us to leave the area.

“Another time, they came out and said we had to quit dueling in public. I guess it’s OK to duel in private, but not in public. I didn’t really understand that one,” he said.

Sword fighter John Walling, 29, said he was present one Wednesday night when sheriff’s deputies “screeched around the corner” and ordered the group to disperse.

“I wasn’t really scared,” said Walling, a salesman from Agoura Hills. “I knew we weren’t a threat to them.

“We told them we’d been coming out here for years, and they said they didn’t know anything about it, that they’d gotten a call about youths out fighting in the streets.

“We left that night,” Walling said. “We’re not out here to argue with them--just to enjoy what we’re doing. We don’t want to make any waves.”

Dueling May Violate Law

If the state Penal Code is to be taken literally, however, the swashbucklers are risking arrest every time they pick up a sword.

Several 114-year-old sections of the code specifically outlaw dueling. And one provision pointedly calls for punishment of police officers who do nothing to halt duels.

The code defines a duel as “any combat with deadly weapons fought between two or more persons by previous agreement or upon a previous quarrel.”

It states that “every person who fights a duel or sends or accepts a challenge to fight a duel is punishable by imprisonment in state prison or county jail of not more than one year.”

Those who serve as seconds in a duel lose their right to hold public office and to vote, states the code.

And “every judge, sheriff or other officer bound to preserve the public peace who has knowledge of the intention on the part of any person to fight a duel and does not exert his official authority to arrest and prevent a duel is punishable by a fine not exceeding $1,000,” the code states.

Meaning that sheriff’s deputies “don’t really have the discretion to let this go on,” said Stephen Kay, county deputy prosecutor.

Kay, who evaluates arrest reports and determines whether criminal charges are to be filed by the county district attorney’s office, said he has never heard of the anti-dueling law being enforced in the county.

“But those are deadly weapons. If they’re swinging them like in ‘Star Wars’ or something you can get badly hurt,” Kay said.

He said sword fighting isn’t a recognized sport like fencing--meaning it might take more than a Zorro or an Errol Flynn to rescue the Calabasas group if it is hauled into court on dueling charges.

Calabasas residents who observe the swordplay each week, however, say there is no need for authorities to be alarmed.

“They don’t seem to bother anyone,” said Robert A. Sacks, a nearby homeowner who helps run the neighborhood’s Vista Pointe Homeowners Assn.

“I’ve seen them down there. I thought they were students. If there were complaints here about them, I’d know about it.”

Andrea Forness, 16, said she has watched the sword fighters many times during the five years her family has lived in the neighborhood.

“Everyone out here likes them,” said the Calabasas High School junior. “The first time I saw them, I pulled over and sat for 30 minutes watching them. They stay in their own little area there on the street.”

Form Sword Group

As for the swashbucklers, they’ve formed an informal group they call the Preservation of Sword Fighting Arts. They estimate that about 100 persons have dueled on the street over the years, although weekly attendance ranges from about eight to 10.

“I’ve tried tennis and aerobics and everything, and there’s nothing purer than this,” said Jay Hasson, 30, a North Hollywood real estate agent. Hasson was preparing to duel Kevin Mitchell, 29, a banker from Thousand Oaks.

“It’s exhilarating. It’s the highlight of my week.”