HOST INTRO: The Renzo Gracie academy, also known as the blue basement, is home to a wide array of different martial artists with different goals. Some people are just getting started, trying to see what Jiu-Jitsu is all about, other people are trying to unwind after a hard day of work, and a small select few group of athletes are trying to see if they can take their skill in the sport to a competitive level.
AMBI: Sound of people training
TRACK: Renzo’s isn’t full of the same cookie cutter martial artist characters. Point to a random person and they might be a doctor, point at another and they might be an MMA fighter, point at someone else and they could be Kevin Salgado.
AMBI: More training sounds
TRACK: Kevin’s a graphic designer, he’s good at what he does. He’s worked for the likes of Viacom and is now currently working for Disney. To Kevin, becoming a graphic designer was a very practical decision.
ACT: “I chose graphic design from a sustainability standpoint. There’s not a business or company in the world that doesn’t have a use for a graphic designer in some way, shape, or form and so rather than try and be Picasso or somebody who’s trying to make money off of paintings and you know the odds of that are very slim, again the sustainability of graphic design, where you’re able to basically turn in any direction and there’s a demand for what you provide. It’s like a good balance of a career that lets you kinda live, if you do things right, lets you live comfortably. As opposed to gambling on just aspirations”
TRACK: Kevin’s decision to choose his career has a little rebellious flare to it. He’s not a fan of the way modern art is treated today with its broad subjectivity.
ACT: I’ve always had like a little bit for the word art, and that’s cause you can go to an art museum, and you can see something that a 2 year old drew it and its “a masterpiece”, which I don’t respect. And so basically art is entirely subjective where its totally up to interpretation and the value of it is only true if you believe it to be that way, but graphic design is totally objective.”
TRACK: These subjectivities aren’t the case in graphic design. Aspects of a design or emblem are objectively better than others, the use of colors is not squandered by emotion but rather by calculated thought.
ACT: “In graphic design, we would never pick a color just because we feel like it works. We would pick a color based on things like, say we were working at a business and we were going to give them a color, say like twitter, twitter has their blue. If we were helping twitter brand themselves, before we choose that blue, we would look at the market and say “what other companies will be competing with the company that we’re designing for, and how can we make this company stand out compared to its competition
TRACK: Color is no joke to Kevin. We stood and discussed the importance of color quite extensively. After the conversation I started to realize color could be hiding very calculated motivations for businesses.
ACT: “think of mcdonald’s, you know how mcdonald’s has that yellow and red? And those are both primary colors, and just like from a scientific standpoint mcdonald’s target audience is children. Their audience is like children, hence why they have happy meals and why they have toys and the reason they target the children is because the kids say “hey mom I wanna go to mcdonalds” once they go to mcdonalds the parent isn’t gonna not eat so you kill 2 birds with one stone”
TRACK: In fact, Kevin then goes into detail how children don’t see bright colors until they grow up a little. A fact businesses like toys r us know well and good. Once kids grow old enough to see the full spectrum colors fall into, they become attracted to the bright yellow and reds of the world.
ACT: “So its like drugs for your eyes. Yeah its crazy because they’ve never been exposed to it their eyes for the first time ever are able to process that data and are like “gimme more gimme more” and so naturally they’re just attracted to a place like toys r us which has a very similar color palette to a place like mcdonalds”
TRACK: So what’s a color expert doing in the basement filled with blue mats and sweaty martial artists? Kevin started to grapple fairly young, he wrestled in high school, and had friends that did Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. There’s a key trait within the sport that drew Kevin in, it’s a hallmark of the sport that draws people in from all over the world.
ACT: “in BJJ you can be on your back and that might be and depending on how you like to play that might be exactly where you wanna be, that might be the best place to be in some situations. That aspect fascinated me enough that once I got introduced to it and fucked around a little bit with my friends who did it I definitely knew it was something I wanted to do”
TRACK: Kevin’s been training at Renzo’s for a little over 3 years. He remains consistent with his attendance and tries his best to improve every day. Just wanting to be in a sport where a person on the floor is winning isn’t enough to keep somebody going for years to come, there’s perks that come with the monthly paid stress relief.
ACT: “It covers a lot of bases. It helps keep me mellow, if im not doing BJJ, or I don’t do BJJ its very easy for me to have a strong desire to rip people’s heads off. And then im like huge into staying in shape, and its obviously very physically demanding so its good exercise. I like the community aspect of it, there’s like a ton of friends”
TRACK: Some people eventually want to compete after training extensively enough. Some people are genuinely drawn to competition, and some people want to get their money’s worth. Kevin on the other hand doesn’t feel the need to compete too much. It might mess with his daily flow.
ACT: “I won’t compete unless I feel like im in the right shape to compete, and I don’t mean physically like im always in good shape, but just in my head. I need to be ready to go
TRACK: He’s not trying to mess his job up just because he loves his hobby, he needs to keep the 2 separate.
ACT: I know that I have to occupy space in my head for things like projects I have going on, recently my fucking uncle was sleeping on my couch for like 3 months, hes gone now fucking thank god, but you know when I have all this baggage in my mind its hard for me to focus on getting myself ready to try and kill someone basically
TRACK: Ever had those days where you just wanted to lie down and scream into a pillow? Your train was late, the cart was packed to the brim with people, you spilled your coffee. BJJ helps some people remedy those problems
ACT: “And the thing about doing BJJ casually is that when my head is occupied with all these extra curricular things the time I spend doing BJJ helps me like separate myself from it for the time being, and so Im hesitant to run the risk of taking the time that is supposed to be or at least helps with my relief and turning it into something like where if you’re not performing at least this good every night how do you expect to win this competition blah blah blah”