Foiled Club Gets Pointed in the Right Direction

To get right to the point, the Beverly Hills fencers were homeless.

So when they were foiled in their attempt to hold sword fights in their hometown, they shopped for a new home in an unlikely place: a retail mall.

That’s the thrust of how the Beverly Hills Fencers’ Club ended up in a storefront in West Los Angeles.

The 20-year-old club was squeezed out of its longtime headquarters at a Santa Monica Boulevard recreation center earlier this year when its practice space was cut in half.

The fencers were forced to tote their blades between borrowed workout spaces as they grappled with the high cost of Westside rents.

“We have members from Fullerton to Westlake Village. We were looking for a place that would be convenient to all,” Kevin Walker, the club’s secretary, who is a graphics company executive and lives in Santa Clarita, said of the unexpected displacement.

“For months we were moving from one temporary space to another, sometimes on a daily basis.”

One practice stop was a meeting room at the Westside Pavilion at Pico and Westwood boulevards. Shopping center operators rent the space for community group engagements.

Roomy and close to a freeway, the site seemed perfect to the swordsmen. So they advanced the idea of renting it long term and establishing the club headquarters there.

Mall operators parried that the space was often booked by local organizations and was unavailable for full-time use by any one group.

Reluctant to disengage, club members asked about the availability of empty storefronts at the open-air western end of the mall. They wouldn’t mind practicing in the display windows in front of shoppers, the fencers pledged.

Even though fencing is hardly the mall’s forte, officials there agreed to take a chance. They offered a 2,000-square-foot former shoe store to the nonprofit club for a cut rate of less than $4,000 a month.

The swordsmen lunged at the deal. They installed a bouncy, 3/4-inch plywood covering over the shop’s tile floor to protect their knees, hung retractable wiring harnesses from its ceiling to electrically tally points scored when their epees touch opponents’ metallic vests, and moved in four months ago.

Since then, prices haven’t been the only things slashed at the mall.

The flashing blades draw a steady stream of shoppers who stop to peer through the display windows at club members and fencing students spending hours honing their croise and prise de fer skills.

The fencers play it to the hilt for their audience.

“We sometimes feel like fish in a bowl, but it doesn’t bother us,” said Allison Brain, a competitor from Pasadena. “Sometimes there are dozens of people watching us. Not many people have seen fencing, so it’s good for them to see what the sport is.”

This week, former Russian five-time world champion fencer Alexander Romankov and countryman Boris Koretski, an Olympic gold medalist, are helping teach at the club. They are working with club coach Misha Itkin--a Brentwood resident who was their coach in 1988 when they made headlines by running doubles around their competition.

“They were surprised by the setting,” Itkin said as youngsters in the class noisily leaped across the storefront practicing their ballestra attack movements.

Along with pounding feet, the session was punctuated with whoops and the cracking sound of swords being whacked on the floor.

Downstairs neighbor Veronica Padilla, assistant manager of Shapes, a women’s boutique, said she has learned to live with the noise from the salle, or fencing clubhouse. “We just turn up our music,” she said.

Some fencers have become customers.

“If I get here early, Shapes is where I go,” said 15-year-old student Tara Chang of Santa Monica--who was attired in a less-than-stylish mesh foil mask and metallic lame scoring jacket for her lesson with Romankov and Koretski.

The location has turned into a hit with parents too. Christopher Kim drives 75 miles to deliver daughter Samantha, 12, and son Isaac, 14, to and from three-hour practice sessions four days a week.

“Because we spend so much time here, we do most of our shopping here,” said Kim, owner of a Westlake Village plumbing company.

The biggest advantage of a shopping mall piste, or fencing field of play, is the educational value it has for passersby, club members say.

“I’m from India, so, culturally, seeing this is a big surprise,” said one shopper, Narayan Khanna, a filmmaker who stopped to watch club member Lauren Walker whack her opponent’s blade with a grazing froissement movement.

“But I guess you can find anything in a mall in America.”

Touche.