Richard Kenvin

Richard Ken­vin is a Cal­i­for­nia surfer/filmmaker and the cre­ator of the film Hydro­dy­nam­ica. Kenvin’s roots are steeped in San Diego surf­ing his­tory and he is a huge pro­po­nent of the Sim­mons’ school of board design. We were for­tu­nate to be able to speak with him about his life.

What was your life like grow­ing up?
We moved around a lot, but I had a good child­hood. I loved nature and music and books. My mother was a beau­ti­ful Eng­lish woman, and my dad was a math­e­mati­cian and musi­cian from Ohio.

I started surf­ing when I was nine years old. When I was a teenager, my dad started drink­ing heav­ily. My mom left, and the fam­ily fell apart. That was tough. My brother Peter and I moved out and lived on our own with some older surfers on Draper Street near Win­dansea. We were still going to high school. We were young—like 16. Lots of drugs around. It was 1978. My brother was a rock and roll prodigy and is an amaz­ing musi­cian. From that point on, it was the “School of Rock and Roll Win­dansea”. I took the pro­fi­ciency test and got out of high school.

I lived on the North Shore in the win­ter of 1979 and in Queensland/NSW in the spring
of 1980.

When did you get your first surf­board?
In 1970. It was a red 6’0” round tail sin­gle fin with a Fins Unlim­ited (I think) Greenough-style skinny flexie fin. It said “Atlantis” on it. It was made by Dan Bridge­man for my friend Colin Brown, who turned me on to surf­ing. Colin has lived in San Fran­cisco for years now and has been charg­ing Mavs for a long time.

What was the feel­ing you had when you first stood on a surf­board?
Best wave of my life. Stood in the white­wa­ter at the Shores and the wave hit a deep spot and reformed. I trimmed across this tiny wall on the red Atlantis. Unbe­liev­able. Pure stoke.

Who did you look up to and admire when you were a young man?
David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop.

San Diego surfers Skip Frye, Gary Keat­ing, Tim Lynch, the Bridge­man broth­ers, Chris O’Rourke, Rex Huff­man, Steve Lis, Jeff Ching, Henry Hes­ter, Butch Van Arts­daalen, the Orloff broth­ers and Tom Ortner.

Late 60’s/early 70’s surfers Reno Abel­lira, B.K., Gerry Lopez, Jose Angel, Larry Bertle­mann, But­tons, Stephen Cooney, Terry Fitzger­ald, Ben Aipa, Bunker Spreck­els, Jeff Craw­ford, Sam Hawk, Owl Chap­man, James Jones, Jimmy Lucas, Jeff Hak­man, Jock Suther­land, Michael Peter­son, George Gree­nough …all those guys. And, of course, Miki Dora.

Jay Adams and Tony Alva for 70’s skat­ing. Chris­t­ian Hosoi is some­one I look up to immensely and if you have not seen Ris­ing Son you should.

What is the great­est thing you have learned in your life?
To trust God. To love and be loved.

Do you have any regrets or wish you had done some­thing dif­fer­ently?
I have tons of things I would do dif­fer­ently … and plenty of regrets. But I can’t change the past. I have to live today as best I can. I regret being an ass­hole in the water many, many times. I wish I would have lived on Oahu from 1978 to 1983. Oh well, at least I got to visit.

What are you most proud of?
Any time I’ve helped some­one. Read­ing, writ­ing and learn­ing with­out a col­lege education.

What mean­ing does surf­ing hold for you and how has it changed your life?
In the film Char­i­ots of Fire, which is about a run­ner who goes to Oxford, there is a scene where he expresses how run­ning makes him feel. He says that when he runs, he some­how seems to feel God’s plea­sure and joy at His cre­ation. Surf­ing makes me feel that way. It’s hard to express—riding a wave puts me in the moment like noth­ing else. Just like Dora said… all that dry land shit just goes over the falls behind me—drugs and other crap took me away from surf­ing for a long time. Surfing is a huge pos­i­tive force that helps pull me out of that stuff. There was a sticker that said, “Skate­board­ing saved my life.” I can relate. Surf­ing is a pow­er­ful affir­ma­tion of the pos­i­tive side of life.

How do you think the world of surf­ing, espe­cially in terms of the surf­boards most peo­ple ride, would be dif­fer­ent had Bob Sim­mons not died in the 1950’s?
Well, Sim­mons was build­ing a boat and try­ing to bail to West­ern Aus­tralia and other zones to surf by him­self. That was his dream. So maybe he just would have gone unno­ticed in iso­la­tion, but he had already cre­ated major design break­throughs. They were mis­un­der­stood and rejected for a num­ber of rea­sons. The tim­ing of his death had a lot to do with it. He died right at the birth of surf media. Bud Brown’s first film was released in 1953.

Any­way, the short ver­sion is that three things—big wave Hawai­ian guns, sin­gle fins and noseriding—took cen­ter stage for design and per­for­mance after Sim­mons died. It stayed that way until Gree­nough came along and finally changed every­thing. Sim­mons had spent nine months on Oahu in 1953 and he did not like the board he had over there, surf­ing big Sun­set on a dual finned plan­ing hull and hav­ing the tradewinds get under the nose, etc. Sim­mons was plan­ning to go back to the North Shore with a new set of boards, based on all that expe­ri­ence he had in 1953 over there, but he got killed in 1954. I talked to Pat Cur­ren about this and Pat felt that Sim­mons prob­a­bly had some really good design con­cepts ready for his next trip to the Islands, but he got killed so it never happened.

Sim­mons kept his boards at Peter Parkin’s place near Win­dansea. Parkin was the first surfer/skater. Started skat­ing in 1947. Sim­mons always tried to improve every­thing from surf­boards to ping pong pad­dles to boomerangs. So, some­times I think had he lived, he would have improved skate wheels and trucks early on. Who knows? Sim­mons is still chang­ing the world of surf­ing today, and he’s still stok­ing peo­ple out with his boards. Plan­ing hulls are user-friendly and are really fun to ride, and fun is contagious.

What is your ulti­mate goal with respect to your film Hydro­dy­nam­ica?
Fin­ish­ing it is pretty high on the list. Beyond that, I think about a non-profit foun­da­tion ded­i­cated to pre­serv­ing the cul­tural her­itage of surf­ing and skat­ing. I hope the film puts some things into con­text. It’s one thing to make a bunch of cool boards and ride them and doc­u­ment them. It’s another to put Sim­mons and the rest of this story into its proper social and his­tor­i­cal con­text. This stuff had a pro­found effect on cul­ture world­wide, very sim­i­lar to effects of art and music.

The music of the 20th and 21st cen­tury has its roots in Africa; board rid­ing has its roots in Hawaii. I would like to help con­tribute some­how to help Hawai­ian surfers pre­serve their surf­ing tra­di­tions and to acknowl­edge their cul­tural con­tri­bu­tions to the world. The paipo and the alaia—those boards are the root of every­thing that became short­board surf­ing and mod­ern skat­ing. With­out Hawaii, there would be no surf­ing or skat­ing or snowboarding.

What brings you the most hap­pi­ness in the world?
Love.

When some­one steals your stoke, how does that hap­pen and what’s the best way to get it back?
Stoke bur­glars. I’m talk­ing about being betrayed by peo­ple I helped and trusted, being used by and dis­re­spected by peo­ple. Being spir­i­tu­ally beaten down by oppres­sive com­mu­nal neg­a­tiv­ity. Being hurt by peo­ple. Well, I have to for­give them to get my stoke back. I have to admit where I was wrong. What part did I play? What can I do to make things bet­ter? That’s hard. I’m a self­ish human and I need God’s help to be able to do that. Or, as my friend Geral­dine tells me, “Keep your eyes on the prize. All the rest is bullshit.”

Who are some of the peo­ple you feel are shap­ing the path for surf­ing today?
Tom Pohaku Stone, Valen­tine Ching, and Buf­falo Keaulana by nur­tur­ing and pre­serv­ing true Hawai­ian surf­ing cul­ture. Skip Frye, Larry Gephart, Steve Lis, the Pen­darvises (Steve and Cher) by cre­at­ing, refin­ing, pre­serv­ing and stay­ing true to San Diego design. Sec­ond gen­er­a­tion surfer/shapers like Eli Miran­don, Timmy Pat­ter­son, Akila Aipa, and Daniel Thom­son for bring­ing the past into the future and car­ry­ing on the legacy of their fathers. John Elwell for keep­ing the knowl­edge of the Sim­mons plan­ing hull alive.

Carl Ekstrom—the one and only, once and future futur­ist, schooled by Sim­mons as a kid. Anna Trent Moore for pre­serv­ing an oral his­tory from her father, Buzzy Trent, and his friends, includ­ing George Down­ing and many more. Today’s big wave pad­dle guys like Twiggy and the Long broth­ers, Lyle, Derek Dun­fee, Squir­rel, Shane Dorian… the gnarli­est of the gnarl those guys com­mand full and total respect for doing what most of us don’t have the balls to do. Derek Hynd… for blow­ing all our minds. Tony Alva… still surf­ing and skat­ing with full on stoke at 52 years old. Absolutely incred­i­ble. Jon Wegener has stoked me out a lot. Tom Henry Ciletti. Chris­t­ian Beamish. The Joske fam­ily for bridg­ing the gap that brought alaia-inspired boards to the rest of us. Scott Hulet at the Surfers Jour­nal for giv­ing a voice and venue for the many facets of surf­dom. Dave Ras­tovich… just thanks for surf­ing, Dave… insane. Andrew Kid­man. Alex Kopps. Ryan Thomas. Tyler War­ren. Danny Hess. Stretch and all the Santa Cruz guys.

All the shapers every­where who are exper­i­ment­ing and chang­ing things. All the kids in places like Indo, Brazil and Mex­ico who are gonna come up and blow minds in the future. Lucas Dirkse and Ryan Burch. All the open-minded peo­ple, men and women, boys and girls, who are reclaim­ing the her­itage and the cre­ative stoke of surf­ing. I gotta put most of the big cor­pos in the penalty box in this regard. Sorry guys, but you’ve been f’*cking surf­ing in the ass for way too long and you can’t keep us down for­ever. We’re infil­trat­ing and mak­ing some changes… like it or not.

Tell us about “Yard Pos­sums”.
The core Yard Pos­sums are Lucas Dirkse (age 15) and Ryan Burch (age 21). I film them a lot for Hydro­dy­nam­ica. Lucas and his mom, Geral­dine, are like fam­ily to me. Geral­dine is a sin­gle mom, and she works really hard to sup­port her kid and get him through school.

She’s the strongest per­son I know. His dad, Doug, is a com­mer­cial fish­er­man and he’s gone for months at a time. Lucas and Geral­dine live in a lit­tle apart­ment on an alley near Win­dansea. That to me is old school Win­dansea: a sin­gle, work­ing mom with a kid mak­ing sac­ri­fices to hang on to a lit­tle apart­ment on the blocks between Kol­mar and Nau­tilus, sur­rounded on all sides by unimag­in­able wealth that ain’t trick­ling down to Pos­sumville. These blocks used to have a lot of peo­ple like Geral­dine and Lucas, but not anymore.

Geral­dine has a beau­ti­ful gar­den there that attracts lots of pos­sums. Pos­sum cen­tral com­mand is the lit­tle garage next to the apart­ment where Lucas and Ryan make boards. I decided to call them the Yard Pos­sums because they are always scur­ry­ing about in that yard and garage mak­ing stuff—just like the pos­sums. The apart­ment where Lucas and Geral­dine live hap­pens to be sand­wiched between the apart­ment where Mike Dif­f­end­er­fer grew up on the east and the house where Carl Ekstrom grew up on the west. So there is some crazy design energy going on there and it bom­bards Lucas’ mind con­stantly. So Ryan, King Pos­sum, is the cre­ator of the “Lord Bord,” an unglassed piece of foam shaped like the plan­ing hull test mod­els used in Lind­say Lords’ Naval Archi­tec­ture of Plan­ing Hulls from 1946. Sim­mons used that book and those shapes to design the plan­ing hull. The shapes them­selves, from the book, appear to be derived from paipo boards. I inter­viewed Tom Morey in 2006, think­ing he must have seen the book, but he never had. The surf­ing Ryan does on his foam chunks is just insane. Spon­ta­neous fu*kin’ genius. Lucas is really, really good too. Those boards are called “Yard Pos­sum Lord Bords” and are dec­o­rated accord­ingly. We also call the Pos­sum gar­den and garage “Mutual of Foamaha’s Wild King­dom”. The whole Lord Bord thing is also referred to by Ryan and Lucas sim­ply as “FOAM”. Ala­ias and such are referred to sim­ply as “WOOD.”

What is your favorite board? Your favorite surf spot?
What­ever is under my feet and let­ting me have fun on a par­tic­u­lar day. I love body­surf­ing too. I just like surf­ing all the local nooks and cran­nies. No place like home.

If you were stuck on an island with a point break on one side and a beach break on the other, what one board would you want to have with you?
My lit­tle tri-finned plan­ing hull gets the job done no mat­ter what. But any kind of fin­less board or plan­ing hull is insane at a point­break. Uhhh … any­one seen Derek at J-Bay?

What’s your favorite post-surf ses­sion meal?
Black bean bur­rito with cheese.

What are you cur­rently lis­ten­ing to on your iPod?
No iPod, but “Hey Young World” by Slick Rick is next up on iTunes. Here it comes… music inspires every­thing I do. After Rick the Ruler comes “It’s Alright Now” by Eddie Harris.

What causes/organizations do you sup­port?
Hydro­dy­nam­ica. Wildcoast.

What are you most grate­ful for?
My friends and my health.

What’s next for Richard Ken­vin?
Break­fast and more cof­fee. And I gotta fin­ish this film. That takes time and money.

Find out more about Richard Ken­vin here. Pho­tog­ra­phy cred­its: 1. Anthony Ghiglia, 2. John Slavin, 3. Scott Sul­li­van, 4. Ryan Field, 5. Geral­dine, 6. Scott Sullivan.