Black Belt Banks New York's Johnny Appleseed of karate is still kicking.

In 1958, a young record store clerk named Aaron Banks got his ass kicked up and down Broadway. A coworker had challenged him over the results of a sales contest, and with his East Bronx pride on the line, Banks agreed to take it outside. The brawl cleared sidewalks as it tumbled cinematically down the avenue, speckling the pavement and onlookers with blood. It was bare-knuckle brutality with neither rounds nor rules.

That night, while licking his wounds, Banks decided to learn how to fight. His face was still swollen when he opened the phone book and found a small ad for Sigward's Gym, where the word "karate" appeared in tiny type beneath a long list of gym services. Knowing only that karate involved kicking and screaming, Banks signed up for the class. This choice of an obscure martial art over boxing or judo changed more than the direction of his life. Aaron Banks was on his way to bringing karate out of the back alleys and into the cultural mainstream of postwar America.

In the four and a half decades since walking into a makeshift Eisenhower-era dojo, Banks, now a Grand Master, has done more to popularize the martial arts in the West than anybody but Bruce Lee. He was the first to use karate on the big screen (Jack O'Connell's The Greenwich Village Story, 1963) and the first to get martial arts on national television (Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, 1963). His Oriental World of Self-Defense, now in its 37th year, was called "The #1 Martial Arts Show in the World" in a 1974 Sports Illustrated profile. (The piece was slated for the April 15 cover but got bumped at the last minute when Hank Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th home run. It stands as the only martial arts feature in the magazine's history.)

This Saturday, Banks will host the 25th Grand National Open Martial Arts Championship in Bayside, adding to the hundreds of tournaments and demonstrations he's organized and emceed since the early 1960s. Over the years, Banks' promotions have held court at Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, Royal Albert Hall, Studio 54, the Ritz, Shea Stadium and the Apollo. He has appeared on all the major networks and is a living legend in the worlds of both martial arts and stadium event promotion.

In case anyone has forgotten, Banks isn't shy about reminding people of these facts.

"I made the martial arts into a form of entertainment. I took martial arts and I brought it into the living rooms of the American public-and the Europeans imitated everything I did. No getting away from that. No such thing ever existed in these countries before I came around."

Now 75, Banks looks like an older, meaner Harry Dean Stanton and can still smash plywood planks to pieces with an arthritic fist. During the course of his career, Banks claims to have publicly broken more than 50,000 bricks and boards, including 58 boards in 60 seconds during a 1982 spot on the Mike Douglas Show. He also pioneered a dramatic form of breaking known as "skeet shooting," whereby the board is tossed up with the left hand and exploded with the right. His knuckles look like they'd pass any lie detector test.

When he began studying karate in 1958, only morons with bad tempers punched bricks. The martial arts were virtually unknown in the U.S., and the few dozen black belts in the country were concentrated on the West Coast; they were mostly veterans of the Pacific theater in WWII with no profile in society. What Hunter Thompson did for the Hells Angels-California's other WWII vet subculture destined for fame-Banks did for the black belts.

"Back then it was all underground, especially on the East Coast," says Banks. "Even in Chinatown. There were maybe three small hole-in-the-wall places where people showed each other moves, but no [martial arts] economy. There was nothing around. People thought karate was a food."

One of the creatures lurking in the East Coast underground was Banks' sensei John Slocum, a thick-necked first-degree black belt with Popeye forearms who studied karate while stationed at the U.S. Army base in Okinawa, Japan. Six nights a week, Slocum trained a dozen dedicated students in Totoku-style karate at Sigward's Gym on 54th St.-and trained them hard. Slocum charged $20 a month and believed in full-contact, nonstop sparring. He didn't keep points, and his students fought for 15 to 20 minutes straight. They stopped only when he told them to.

"It was total brutality," remembers Banks. "You had blood on the floor every night, because that's the way it was in Okinawa. There was no protective equipment. None. The only protective gear was a cup-if you wanted it. If you blocked [punches and kicks], you blocked them bare armed. So we'd just be banging on each other. My teeth were all loosened. Every one of them."

Thus did Slocum produce New York's tough crop of second-generation black belts. When Slocum brought Banks and eight other students to a small local tournament in 1962, they were all disqualified and told never to come back. In 1963, Slocum moved his school to Flushing, and Banks committed treason by not following his teacher. ("Back then, schools ran on a feudal system.") Instead, Banks opened his own dojo-in an old dance studio directly across the street from Sigwald's Gym-and employed a kinder, gentler method of instruction.

Word spread fast. His New York Karate Academy offered lessons in a range of martial arts styles, and soon had students from every borough studying Chinese kung fu, Korean moo duk kwan, Japanese karate and judo. It was the first diverse dojo in the country, and Banks' peers in goju-ryu karate, his base system, were outraged that he would allow other styles to be taught under the same roof.

Banks persisted in offering an unorthodox range of martial arts. Even more radically, he took the multicultural show on the road. Before discovering karate, Banks worked part-time as a successful stage actor, and he employed both his Rolodex and innate show-business sense to promote himself, his dojo and the crafts. In 1963 he held demonstrations anywhere he could find a stage, including cultural centers that normally staged opera and ballet. It was the first time martial arts had ever been presented as either art or entertainment.

"I'd go to temples and YMCAs," he says. "I did a lot of board breaking, and people had never seen that before-breaking with the feet, front kicks, back kicks, side kicks. No one even knew what the hell that was. I started all that in demonstrations. I went over to this 41st St. theater, told the director what I did and he said it sounded interesting. So he booked me."

In 1966, Banks went big-time with his first-annual Oriental World of Self-Defense extravaganza at Town Hall. For funding, he tapped Sid Bernstein, the city's biggest music promoter, famous for bringing the Beatles over from England. Banks sold the show out-the martial arts were put before a large popular audience for the first time, leading to more bookings, more students and more cooperation between competing camps.

"Before that 1966 event, everybody hated everybody," says Banks. "They were into their own worlds. The Chinese didn't like the Japanese, the Japanese didn't like nobody. They had their own thing going. I said, 'Come on, forget about that, you can get publicity and let people know what you got and don't worry about what this guy's about, you just do what you have to do,' and they [eventually] said okay."

The late 60s continued to be good for Banks and his mission to popularize the martial arts. In 1967, the year after the first Oriental World of Self-Defense, prime-time television audiences were mesmerized by Bruce Lee's sidekick role in The Green Hornet. The show was canceled after one season, but Lee's bursts of kung-fu acrobatics dramatically heightened interest in "oriental boxing," and Banks both capitalized on and added to this interest by challenging the West Coast karate establishment to bring their best fighters and throw down against their East Coast counterparts. The challenge was answered, and 4000 people packed into the Manhattan Center for the 1967 competition, where a young karate champ from California named Chuck Norris learned to smile for the cameras.

"So many people tried to get in we had to call the police," says Banks. "There was a small riot because of the publicity. I was on the David Shushkin program and did a lot of other tv for it."

Then in 1968, Banks upped the ante by staging the America vs. the Orient Tournament, filling the ballroom at the Hilton. (The U.S. team won, leading to charges of favoritism by American judges.) Around this time Bruce Lee's Hong Kong films started getting U.S. distribution, and martial arts schools were mushrooming around the country. Banks knew and liked Lee, but he still resents the myth-like cult that has grown up around him, as well as the notion that Lee single-handedly brought the martial arts into American popular culture.

"It wasn't Bruce Lee," he says defiantly. "It was me. Everybody knows that. What Bruce did was glamorize it. But I went into the Japanese mills. I brought it out from the factories. Getting the traditionalists, the real people. I brought Goldie 'The Cat' Yamaguchi over from Japan, a tenth-degree red belt.

"Bruce Lee, he got out there for Bruce Lee. I wanted to help normal people understand what the martial arts were really about. My tournaments were on ABC's Wide World of Sports for eight years and they taught the public. It was never about the money. As long as I could make a living with my school and my students, that was fine. I wanted people to understand the transformative powers of martial arts and how they could change lives."

By any standard, Banks has succeeded. His resume boasts some 1500 tournaments, shows and demos, and his school has taught almost a quarter of a million people in four decades. How does New York's godfather of karate explain his destiny?

"I came from the Bronx," Banks shrugs. "How could I do all that stuff? I believe a samurai or some kind of spirit got into me."

Maybe. But it wasn't a spirit from the silent warriors of Shogunite Japan. The spirit that took over the body of Aaron Banks has a booming voice and likes to talk. And it knows how to work a crowd.

Aaron Banks will host the 25th Annual Grand National Open Martial Arts Championship this Saturday, June 14 at 11 a.m. at the Adria Hotel in Bayside. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children. For more information, call 718-897-4468.