Bruce Lee Podcast

This week we sit down with journalist Charles Russo, author of “Striking Distance: Bruce Lee & the Dawn of Martial Arts in America.” His book covers Bruce Lee’s early years as a young martial artist in San Francisco and his polarizing effect as a brash upstart in the Bay Area martial arts scene of the 1960’s. Charles Russo’s interest in Bruce Lee started with his fascination of the history of the Bay Area (San Francisco, CA.) Russo was sitting in his photojournalist class and another student was sharing images of Chinatown, including a picture of the Chinese Hospital stating that that was the hospital where Bruce Lee was born. Russo says, “It blew my mind…how come no one had every told me that Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco?” It instantly made San Francisco that much cooler and interesting, but he was indignant that no one was celebrating that fact. So he decided to look into that story. Once Charles started looking into the story of Bruce Lee and San Francisco, he found a treasure trove of forgotten