A Real-Life Jedi Academy

The New York Times has an interesting piece this weekend on Flynn Michael, who runs the New York Jedi Club.

Here’s a brief taste:

The New York Jedi club meets here weekly. To an outsider, it might seem like stage-fighting with battery-powered lightsabers, but to Mr. Michael, it is aspiring righteous warriors communing with the Force, that energy that gives the Jedi his power and binds the galaxy. So what if the place attracts, as Mr. Michael said, “a bunch of ‘Star Wars’ dorks.”

“They come in geeks and go out Jedi warriors,” said Mr. Michael, a founder of the group and a self-ordained Jedi grandmaster.

A sound engineer who lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and a self-proclaimed “sci-fi, heavy-metal, over-the-top geek,” he was born Michael Brown and grew up in Rhode Island, where, he said he watched the first “Star Wars” film 32 times in 1977, the year it was released. He recalls first seeing Luke Skywalker learn about the force from Obi-Wan Kenobi and saying to the screen, “I want to do that.”

Have a read through, it’s pretty damn interesting. The key question is: who’s up to create local clubs? You know it makes sense!

[Thanks to reader Phil for the heads-up!]