A KQED feature published July 23 brought renewed attention to 4157 Broadway in Oakland — the site of Bruce Lee's Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute and the 1964 fight that reshaped his martial arts philosophy — now a parking lot for Downtown Toyota of Oakland.

Greglon Lee stood at the corner of Broadway and Garnet Street in Oakland earlier this month and peered through the gaps in a black, wrought-iron fence. On the other side: an empty lot. That corner — 4157 Broadway — is where his father, James Yimm Lee, and Bruce Lee co-founded the Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute in 1964. An Oakland City permit dated July 20 of that year places the school at that address, corroborated by the institute's own stationery from the period, according to LocalWiki Oakland.

The corner's significance, and Greglon's visit to it, is the subject of a KQED Bay Curious feature published July 23 by reporter Elize Manoukian — the piece that brought the site back into public view this week. The studio at 4157 Broadway was the venue for what became known as the Showdown in Oakland: a closed-door fight in December 1964 between Bruce Lee and Wong Jack-Man, a martial artist from San Francisco. The bout's outcome has been disputed for more than 60 years, but its effect on Bruce Lee is less contested.

"This is the school where Bruce fought Wong Jack-man," Greglon told KQED. "Bruce took it personally."

What he took personally pushed him, by most accounts, toward dismantling the rigid structures of traditional kung fu and developing what he would call Jeet Kune Do. Berkeley historian Jeff Chang, whose recent biography Water, Mirror, Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian-America traces that arc, told KQED the fight was the story of "how kung fu becomes American."

Bruce and James Yimm Lee were unrelated despite the shared surname. James, who grew up in Oakland, convinced Bruce to relocate from Seattle with his wife Linda — then eight months pregnant — to live at the Monticello Avenue house in East Oakland while the two trained together. Their time overlapped was brief: Bruce left for Los Angeles by early 1965. But that half-year on Auto Row produced the studio, the fight, and the philosophy.

The building is gone. The block has been dealership territory for decades; the parcel at 4157 Broadway is now part of the footprint of Downtown Toyota of Oakland, whose primary address is listed at 4145 Broadway. The original structure was demolished somewhere in the intervening years, replaced by parking lot.

Oakland formalized the site's place in the city's history in June 2024, when the City Council voted to rename the intersection of Broadway and Garnet Street as "Bruce Lee Way." Council Member Rebecca Kaplan framed the designation as reaching beyond one man: "By honoring and uplifting Bruce Lee, we also acknowledge and honor his contribution to uplifting the AAPI community, both in Oakland and beyond," she said, per the Oaklandside. The signs went up that September.

Recognition of Bruce Lee's Bay Area roots has been accelerating elsewhere, too. San Francisco this year designated May 17 — the date he returned to the city from Hong Kong as a teenager — as Bruce Lee Day, making him the first Chinese American honored with a namesake day in state history, per KQED.

Through the wrought-iron fence at the corner of what is now Bruce Lee Way, the lot offers no argument with any of it.