That’s one of the few things I miss from being on the I-90 corridor. Found several very cool private places to study up there throughout the years. Took some aggressive actual combatish/street fighting style stuff up there for a while. No belts or names. Just a very talented dude who understood contact fighting. Learn a few moves. Put some head gear and bag gloves on and go about 80% figuring out how to add that in and what happens when you do it wrong
I thought I was tougher than I was for a while. Learned a ton but I am sure I did a lot of damage that I am paying for now. Also took Doce Pares for like 6 years. It was harder being tall and it has been mostly developed for 5 foot nothing tall people. But that forced good form. If you can find a real Doce Pares school I would highly recommend it to anyone. Its extremely practical and anyone under around 5’6” with a good understanding of it is flat out scary.
I want to get back into some sort of grappling but there is nothing in my area. Probably going to start rolling a bit with the boys so they can learn some basics from me while I can still move that way.