Out In The Cold

On the last Tuesday of April I found out that the weekly class I’d been teaching Wednesday nights for the past two years was getting cancelled at the end of the month. In other words, the next day was my last class there. I’d had a feeling this was coming through a series of increasingly clear hints, but still, that was abrupt. Heck, even the husband of the site’s owner didn’t know this was coming, and he’s been taking my class.

It isn’t easy finding a new location. I jumped on the internet last week, spending a couple of days looking up schools and community centers, making calls and leaving messages. Out of perhaps a dozen places where I left messages (sometimes more than one) I got two return calls. One place is pretty far from where we’ve been training, an inconvenience for my steady students though possibly better for one or two occasional ones. The other guy expressed a lukewarm interest and hasn’t returned any subsequent attempts to contact him.

Considering the high cost of renting a place here in the Bay Area, I’d think there’d be more interest in utilizing down time for facilities. Then again, prime times are limited. A few places I reached were happy to let me use Saturday afternoons, but how many people are willing to commit the heart of their weekend to taking classes? The failure of so many quality seminars gives me that answer. As for bigger community centers, I don’t know why they don’t answer messages, unless it’s the “We already have Tai Chi” mentality that I’ve encountered a few times at those places.

It’s difficult enough to sustain a class even with a stable environment. I figured at least we’re heading into nice spring weather following a dry winter, but lo and behold, this first Wednesday of May is supposed to rain. Some people would perhaps shrug this off as minor adversity, but I’m just not excited about holding class outdoors when it’s cold, wet and dark. Until this gets resolved, I guess I’ll be trying to get by just my private lessons and we’ll see who’s still around when a new group location becomes available.