I was contemplating on whether or not to post this, but I feel it is relevant to what the TS asked. I am going to give my personal experiences from each of the places I have trained at.
John Machado's on Sepulveda- I trained there for about a month going strictly to the aftenoon classes as well as the Sunday takedown classes. The place had a real family type of atmosphere. There were absolutely no egomaniacs. The mat space is ample. From what I have heard though, the night classes can be quite full. As far as the price I promised Master Lima that I wouldn't tell anybody how much I paid nor ask anybody else how much they were paying. All I can say is that it is less than what is being advertised on Professor John's website. The main reason that I am not training there today is because Rey Diogo's school is much closer to my house.
Rey Diogo- This is where I currently train at. Like John Machado's I can not say enough good things about Rey and his students. Rey is a BB under the late Carlson Gracie and he's got a good mix of students who compete and just do it for fun. Not to sound too corny, but training there has almost a spiritual type of atmosphere. The price is pretty much the same I was paying at John Machado's. The matspace would probably be the biggest drawback along with the parking situation (it got to the point that I would just jog there from house). Don't get me wrong the matspace isn't tiny, but it is smaller than the other schools I have trained at/visited.
Gracie Barra Culver City- This is what I was contemplating on whether or not I should post this. I'll just say in advance that this opinion was based only on taking 1 class there. First off, I want to say that GBCC is the closest school to where I live and I felt that before even taking class that this is the place where I was going to train.
So, I take my free trial class. Gerson was there, but not instructing the class. So one of the first things we did was roll just for position and not to sub. Since this was my first bjj class ever they put me with one of the blackbelts. I really didn't know what I was doing and I can see that he's frustated. I'm thinking to myself why is he so pissed I'm not using strength or anything just pretty much lying there as he goes from side to mount and back to side. I told him that I'm sorry, but this is only my first class and he shot off a major attitude towards me (I'm not gonna say if it's Daniel or Jeremy.) I have to say I was not expecting that at all.
We then went into drills and Gerson nicely comes over to be my partner. I thought this was really cool since he had pretty much been chilling the whole class. It was weird though when he started to drill with me a bunch of the other students just gathered around us and watched. I had no problem with it, but I did have a problem with the fact that they were pretty much laughing and making fun of me. It was after that I decided to check out other schools, since my first impression was not so great. Let me say though that I know people that train there and absolutely love it. This was just my experience on that night, which was enough for me to not go back. In no way does it mean that you won't like it or the same things will happen to you.
Street Sports BJJ- The main instructor there is Renato Magno and the school is in Santa Monica. I checked out the website and the class times which seem to fit my schedule, so I decided to check it out. I seriously went there every other day during the afternoon class and nobody was ever there. I would call during the night class and nobody ever answered. I finally was able to talk to somebody there when I decided to roll by on a whim. Renato was doing privates with some guy, I asked him if he had been on vacation and he had told me that he was probably doing away with the afternoon class, so I decided to not even take my free trial. I will say though, that the mat space looked real good and he has some celebrity clientel including David Mamet and Rey Boom Boom Mancini.
