Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Mike Howard talking ....
Unpacked In Santa Cruz
Episode 50: Steve Schwinn: From 14 Schools to 1 Coastal Haven: A Furniture Man's Tale
When Steve Schwinn first visited Santa Cruz as a child, surfing at Four Mile Beach with his older brother, something clicked. Despite moving fourteen times throughout his youth—from Texas to the Netherlands to Minneapolis, through various California cities, back to Texas, then to Cleveland and Rhode Island—Santa Cruz exerted a magnetic pull that would eventually make it his permanent home.
In this deeply personal conversation, Schwinn shares the winding path that led him to establish Iron Horse Furniture in Santa Cruz, continuing a family business that began in 2002 in a small East Bay storefront. What makes his story particularly remarkable is how the business not only survived the 2008 recession but emerged stronger, setting the foundation for his eventual move to Santa Cruz.
The furniture world serves as a fascinating lens through which to view both design evolution and community dynamics. Schwinn discusses the shift toward "quiet modern"—a blend of Japanese-influenced natural elements with contemporary lines—and how Santa Cruz, with its appreciation for quality craftsmanship, has embraced this aesthetic. His observations about modern furniture reveal deeper insights about home, comfort, and the spaces we create for ourselves.
Perhaps most compelling is Schwinn's candid reflection on what it means to belong in Santa Cruz—a place that requires commitment and where leaving often means not being able to return due to prohibitive housing costs and the tight-knit community structure. "I just remember treading lightly," he says about his early days here, "I've never wanted to act like anything was owed to me." This sentiment resonates with anyone who has tried to establish themselves in a close-knit coastal community.
As Santa Cruz undergoes significant changes, with wealthy remote workers buying second homes and shifting neighborhood dynamics, Schwinn offers a perspective grounded in optimism and community connection. His expanding business now creates more local jobs while maintaining the values that made it successful. For anyone who loves Santa Cruz or wonders what makes this coastal town so special despite its challenges, this conversation offers illuminating insights from someone who chose to make it home.
Welcome to the Unpacked in Santa Cruz podcast. I'm your host, michael Howard. This is my feckless attempt to celebrate normalcy for the people who choose to live in Santa Cruz County, so I have the privilege of sitting with some pretty wonderful people to celebrate the goodness that is around us. This podcast is brought to you by Santa Cruz Vibes Magazine. It is your quarterly to-go-to to find out some of the comings and goings here in Santa Cruz County. You can also visit their website, of which you will find a lot more content, a lot more contact, and you can also find my podcast. But you've already found my podcast if you're listening to me, so that's a little bit redundant. The show's also brought to you by Pointside Beach Shack. It is your spot to go to when you have an event of 50 people or less, right in the heart of Pleasure Point. It's a really great spot, and today, today, I actually get to sit with a long friend of mine, someone that we have worked next to for a while. How many years was it, steve?
Speaker 2:Five years.
Speaker 1:Five years. So I got Steve Schwinn here from the proprietor of Iron Horse Furniture. Steve, welcome to the program.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on. Yeah, why don't you go?
Speaker 1:ahead and lean in just a little bit there.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Hey, hey, you're here.
Speaker 2:I'm here, you are totally here.
Speaker 1:Definitely a different environment than we usually chat. But we're here. No, we have our little chats over coffee in what is now oddly our favorite space, our favorite little corporate space, which is so strange.
Speaker 2:Never thought I'd say that, but it's how the cookies crumbled.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is how the cookies crumbled, the cookie's crumbled. Yes, it is how the cookie's crumbled. So, Steve, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? You know where are you from. Who are you? Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I can jump into this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:I know a little bit about it. So yeah, first off, I own and run a family business with my family. My brother and I we got together on that when I was young and he was a little bit older than me but kind of moved around. My entire life went to 14 different schools, Wow. And when I was about 19, I figured out where I wanted to live and that was Santa Cruz. Okay, what brought you here? We'd lived, my brother was living out in the East Bay and since I'd been about, I think, 12, I'd been coming out here with him and surfing and doing all sorts of different fun things, and friends of mine that I actually went to kindergarten with went to UCSC and I moved out here to reconnect with all of them and it just kind of felt like home when I got here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it has that touch, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:It really does. So I spent three, four years kind of like in and out of Santa Cruz and trying to figure out how can I make it here and realized I wasn't in a place to be able to do that yet realized I wasn't in a place to be able to do that yet. So I moved back to Oakland and kind of started my business up with my brother there and ran a store in San Francisco and did some things and then timing brought me back to Santa Cruz.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean maybe it's too early to kind of jump into this. Yeah, I mean with what you do. Maybe it's too early to kind of jump into this. Yeah, I mean with what you do. I was really surprised to see the store open. You know, and and uh, you know, as you know, this audience here in Santa Cruz is a complicated audience, especially for the kind of store that that you have, which is really just a pretty magical furniture store with a lot of high-end furniture, and you know, what you provide here as a space is very, very unique. You know, I have not seen a store like that, like the one that you have here, in my lifetime. You know, when Jill was there at Modern Life, before Modern Life, before she even owned, it was an attempt at some of what you're doing. I mean, I bought my first bed stand from Modern Life when I first got married.
Speaker 2:It was a staple. They were here before the earthquake in their space downtown and it's amazing how many people we talk to that have shopped you know kind of them before us and then now have transitioned into being part of our family yeah, yeah, I know it's well.
Speaker 1:And again in in the old days, again pre-chill, you know, I had this wavy uh beach, you know uh uh uh headboard. It was just so unique, you know. But it was my marital bed. So that was the first headboard that my wife and I bought. But we just loved modern furniture and you know it's. You know, modern is a very unique space, so you know it was. I've never, I was never really quite sure whether a modern store would succeed here and and it's certainly something that you've made work which has been crazy to watch, you know, because I know this customer is so finicky here in town but you certainly captured something. So it has been more than intriguing. It has been more than intriguing, you know the.
Speaker 2:East Bay and San Francisco customer is not easily found in this county. Yeah, the one thing I do find here which is really nice is there's a want for quality and it comes down to all sorts of different aspects of you know the builders in this town build beautiful homes. People like to support their local shapers. You know there's something to buying a quality piece and I think that does resonate. There's a reason we see a lot of people driving around in 20, 30-year-old vehicles here because they buy smart.
Speaker 1:You know, I hadn't thought of that. A lot of Toyotas, a lot of Toyotas, a lot of Toyota trucks. I don't think we have San Diego County beat on Toyota, but I think we might be second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's got to be. I don't think I've ever seen a larger per capita.
Speaker 1:That's pretty hilarious Anyhow. So you had friends that that had moved here, went to ucse excuse me, went to ucse and you spent some time here. You know what? What ended up bringing you back once you went away for a little bit you know it's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:I think my instagram handle was I hate traffic and, um, driving from oakland to the beach was my profile. Like description, when you know, when I first built that and it became just like a want to be a part of live, work, play, neighbors, everything all being like within a stone's throw, where I felt really scattered and I kind of thought Santa Cruz could be that for me.
Speaker 1:It's kind of organized the things that were in your heart and just be somewhere Exactly, yeah, so you didn't have to be in your car all the time yeah, you know, we're wasting so much of our life sitting in four wheels driving around to things.
Speaker 2:That being here, I don't have to leave. Yeah, there's pretty much everything I need here, and then, when I do leave, I want to come, come back, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So you have a furniture store. And what year did you guys open originally, and was it in the East Bay first or San Francisco first?
Speaker 2:It was in the East Bay I was in one or 2002 that my brother opened the doors and about a 900 square foot little shotgun in between a couple other stores in uh benicia, and he had been working in the business for a long time and thought about buying his boss's old store and then said no, I'm gonna do this myself. Um, I was in high school, then started come out in the summers and working with him.
Speaker 2:I was living in rhode island, okay, um, which strangely has a little bit of a feel like being, you know, it's so coastal and um, there's a pretty like sweet surf community there and sid and water brothers and this whole thing that actually has a big connection back to Santa Cruz and um. So I started coming out in the summers and it took about a year and a half to me saying you know what? I don't need winter. I moved here and back to California in December and some might argue with you that there's a winter.
Speaker 1:I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:I guess I am becoming used to it because, yeah, the other day I was like I'm cold but yeah. So my plan was kind of to come back here and finish school. I wasn't sure if I was going to like go to UCSC or do something. I enrolled in Cabrillo and was like finishing my business degree and or trying to and running this business with my brother. He was running it and I was sweeping and thinking I was running it. But yeah, then it became about the recession hitting and kind of had a decision to make. I had a job versus a lot of my friends who were graduating with degrees and didn't, and I just really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:So when the recession hit, clearly the stores survived up there. What was? I mean? I know what it was like here, like it was like here, like it was. It was rough, you know, between all the layoffs in the valley. You know the housing market collapsed. You know it was.
Speaker 1:It was a very strange moment, I know, for me that's. I still haven't recovered, you know, from that doing hair, which, which is pretty safe space for the most part. But you know, because of the clientele that I picked, which was middle class, lower middle class for town, like, I saw everything slow down a little bit once the PG&E bill started going up, right before it all hit. You know it's amazing to sit with someone who's in the business that you're in that survived that moment. You know, not unlike you know the do it boys here where the store survived there that they had the privilege of their building burning down. Yeah, I mean, you know, unprovoked clearly, but but uh, you know that's like the luck of the draw on that one. You know what? What? What kind of luck did you guys fall into up there?
Speaker 2:Um, a big part of it was we've always been a skeleton crew. Um try to keep our overhead low and, like our family, once you're once you're an iron Horse customer, you're an Iron Horse family Gotcha. We really focused on that through that whole time and making sure that we were there and we all just worked nonstop. Yeah, a good thing and a bad thing, but we didn't have a huge employee load that we had our few. Most of them, I think, still work for us today. From that point, wow, that was a big part of it. We also noticed the changes in times. That is, when we notched our quality up. We moved up into a little bit of a higher end. You know, bracket um still taking care of our original customers as well. But, um, no, it's an interesting time.
Speaker 2:we had a store that we had opened in Danville, right, before that and I was sitting in my store watching repo guys pull down hearts Avenue and linking up Ferraris and Porsches and everything while people were at brunch. Yeah, yeah, and that was a really scary and hard time, but yeah, we just, you know, I was in the store seven days a week. My brother was in the store seven days a week. We did our own deliveries after hours and it was really just about making it through, yeah and serving yes, serving your customer, yeah.
Speaker 1:and for those of you who aren't familiar with the Bay Area, you know the areas that we're talking about. Benicia, which is where your first store opened, is a unique town, uh, you know. It's industrial, fairly poor for the most part, but does have some select customers. You know that that that live there, um, and probably work there also. But Danville is a very exclusive community, not far away from Benicia, just across the bay, on the south side, on the northeast portion, and Danville, like many of the other regions, like Palo Alto, the level of money that flows through there is, uh, next level next level, next level it's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1:I mean, the last time I was in Danville, I, I, I walked down the main drag through there and I think I counted about a hundred million dollars worth of cars. Exactly Like it's, it's just like walking down Newport beach. Yeah, I mean it's, you know, bugatti is just the whole nine yards, Just like what, you know. What am I looking at?
Speaker 2:Like multiple Bugatti's it was three, you know not just one, I had, I had my son touching them with one finger finger toddler touch.
Speaker 1:It's real, but um, so let's talk a little bit more about, about really you know this choice to be here. You open the store here was it seven years ago I think so.
Speaker 2:I think we're going on seven years. We we had our one yearyear anniversary in lockdown. So yeah, it feels about six, seven, six and a half seven years now.
Speaker 1:That was an interesting moment, though.
Speaker 2:It was especially for furniture. Yeah, and for us to become. It's kind of funny. We were locked away from our community, but yet I was becoming a part of the community at the exact same time. Um, and it came again to that, you know, my face was visible all the time. I'm in the stores, I'm going out to customers, homes, even if I maybe wasn't supposed to be, yeah, um, you know, just making sure they had good air purifiers.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it was like six, seven years ago now and moved in down here where modern life was, which was great because Jill kind of lined me up with the Duex and she had two incredible members on her team that were ready to.
Speaker 2:You know, I meshed with them right away and I was like oh yeah, this is you know, we want you to continue working with us and it kind of just opened a door for us. But let us, like, show everybody who we are, but let us like, show everybody who we are, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And as far as transitions go, you know, store to store, jill represents something I've never seen in the business before and I'm somewhat familiar with furniture, you know, because the boys, you know, and they're, you know, they're fighters into, in and out and doing various things and making lots of money, losing lots of money and in various stores, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we need big spaces. Things are expensive.
Speaker 1:Or, you know, trying to open a store in Monterey Again, another one of these juggernaut towns where it's like you would think you could open a store there and do well and nope.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Yeah, I've looked at Monterey multiple times, being like it's just a heart. There's places where small but big communities of being in hair.
Speaker 1:I did sales and I worked in Carmel doing hair and a vast majority of those shops, all those stores, are just husbands who want their wives with a project so they never make money. And so, especially in the 80s, early 90s, carmel, it wasn't a front, it just was like-.
Speaker 2:Tax benefit something to do just everything.
Speaker 1:Which is so weird to be in this whole community, like there. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of stores there, they're on ocean Avenue and like none of most of them don't have to make it. Yeah, they don't have to succeed. Yeah, cause, cause, I was walking into every shop there. I think there was 37 beauty salons on a half-mile strip and all of them were sitting still, it was really really strange to like. Okay, there's a perception of what Carmel is, but there was only about four or five strong shops servicing whatever community that actually lived there, Exactly the ones that actually do live there and are making the town work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so it was a strange dynamic because, especially at the time, big, big money. But anyways, lest I get lost on Monterey and Carmel, back to Santa Cruz and back to Jill, you know Jill's business model was really, really unique, you know, in that she was a very selective purchaser of very particular items that just could not be gotten anywhere else, and so it allowed her with some margin play. That was very unique in the business, very, very unique.
Speaker 2:Very unique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never seen anything like it. And just a brilliant buyer that way. You know, I still have one of her panels, exactly From Colonial China. Who was it? Who's the big? It's a magazine. It's a selling magazine, darn it. One of the big furniture brands uh, I'm forgetting any. Anyways, they, they bought the whole lot that she happened to buy just four panels from. And just you know. Then they then they sell them. They sell all 15,000 of them, and I just got four and just got four, and she's got them playing and not painted. You know like.
Speaker 1:But you know, here's this piece of furniture that has been somewhere for 150 years, you know, sitting in my store now and it was at someone's house before. And, like you know, I was thinking about, I was thinking about giving away, and then I found out how much it was. I'm like I don't know if I can part with this. I mean, I love her other neighbors, but I'm like that's five grand on the wall. She's like, oh, I got that for a hundred bucks in China. You're like what? But this other company, this big company, did some weird poutine work on it and they sold out. It's pretty wild. It is pretty wild how that all worked, you know. But you know, those were just sitting as displays, mostly that added to the character of the store. And and, uh well, yeah, her guitar desk. Yeah, no, no no, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:It's crazy things she would find yeah yeah, and you know she'd just find the quirkiest, coolest little things. I wouldn't necessarily call it modern, other than the couches. Exactly that's what was unique A couple of tables, side tables, mostly, maybe a dinner table, but a real shift from the store that was previous, which was very dedicated to modern. But for you, you are very much dedicated to that space and I'd love to talk to you about that. Clearly, I want to talk to you about modern furniture. Yeah, you know, because it is a really unique thing. I have this theory, steve. I think Target ruined everything and when Target went modern, that's kind of when I gave up on it. You know, until a little bit of what I saw you were doing and you know modern certainly kind of.
Speaker 2:You know taking over the region it is, and it's transitioning a lot now to like a quiet, modern and, like I really think of, like Japanese design, is like what a lot of that Northern California likes in modern, which is like very natural, very organic, but then like these more modern and contemporary lines that we've seen with like the glitzy gloss on it for years, but now it's kind of like this Northern Pacific world's version of modern, which is kind of a cool time to be a part of. You know Miami modern's cool, but it's not for everybody version of modern which is kind of a cool time to be a part of. You know I like miami modern's cool, but you know, yeah, it's not for everybody.
Speaker 1:Well, it's hard, you know, and and my best friend lives in ross. For those of you who don't know where ross is, it's that place, uh, it's the wealthy part of marin. Uh, and what I mean by wealthy is like Uber wealth, like really wealthy, really wealthy gate fees about 20. But anyways, he had bought a house right in a transition moment where the economy was just a little sticky. You know it was. You know, and the architect and builder he was a combo guy is the best modern guy in the bay area and it was his pet project for 10 years. But he built this spec. You know, my buddy got in for pretty cheap, but it was. It was the first time I had better ever been in a modern space that was truly modern and that guy could put. He put, he had old colonial furniture and stuck it in that house and it looks normal. He had lawn chairs on his deck and they looked right. You know, I've never, you know the. You know, because it's such a stark, stark experience unless it's done perfectly. Hence the reason why I hate target, because they're taking all this design and like yeah, yeah
Speaker 2:yeah, no, no, you fucked it up yeah, it's, it's um, I'm a little lost right now, but the design world is really amazing because it's always changing, but it almost always goes back to these original things, which is really amazing, and that's why I think you can take old and new and put it together. A lot of our Italian lines, when they shoot pictures and photographs of all their furniture, they're not putting it in a brand new, modern, contemporary build like an American brand probably would for the furniture. They're putting it in a 1700s, 1800s old home with concrete crumbling on the sides and medallions on the ceilings, and it always just makes me think. We get so many people who come in and they're like, oh, I live in an old house, I can't buy this furniture and it's just not true, like if you love it.
Speaker 2:I live in an old house, I can't buy this furniture. And it's just not true, like if you love it, you'll figure out a way to make this work.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, yeah, I mean it's. You know not to go too far on this, but the aesthetic, you know, as we're sitting here with concrete countertops, the boys this is one of their little side hustles for years is doing countertops because nobody else was doing them in town. In the first build that my wife and I did, we utilized concrete and did this mixture of what it is you're referring to, of how things have changed, this kind of Pacific natural. There's a piece that's so clean and perfect in the space but you know a lot of furniture is softening. You know the area around that, that one piece, and you know we have a little bit of design prowess.
Speaker 1:But but we can't live in a brutalist world of all concrete and steel yeah I mean my wife and I always think that we can, and then we, we get it super clean and it's like no, you know, it's got to soften up a little bit. You know it. See, my house was built in 1949. It's just a box, so it it kind of fits, you know, with with. You know that post-modern moment you know of of american builders and you know you can enhance that box any way you want to. But you know, but modern's hard, you know, I guess the best way to put it. You know that it is.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's why traditional has run the world. Yeah, um, it's been the easy go-to. You tell somebody to draw a sofa and they draw a rolled-arm, three-cushion sofa. They don't draw some crazy curved piece with a cool leg kicking off the back.
Speaker 1:The other one's easy, this one's hard, yeah, yeah yeah, so you've had fun operating in this hard space though. Oh yeah, so that tells me a little bit about your personality. What, what, what, what are the things? Uh, you know, on the design side, that just came naturally to you, that you just happened to see it. I mean it's. I mean, to me this is fascinating. I mean, I see what I see. I can do what I do, not unlike these guys who have a great eye here. But again, it's a mixture of a lot of things on top of modern type style. We have similar tastes in that range, but for you, operating in this space of really understanding it, when was the first time for you where the space of really understanding it like when? When was the first time for you you know where it's like?
Speaker 2:you just saw it, that it really clicked and I was like, oh, I did a good job, yeah, yeah, um, I mean it took a while, um, I I started doing more room plans for people and actually going out into their homes and helping them figure out what you know what they needed to do. And I remember this one space and it was probably one of the most expensive deals I had done. At that point I was in my early twenties and shaking as I was taking the credit card from them, but it was just a beautiful home and it had. We couldn't take away from the beauty of the home with what we were putting in it and it took up a lot of time and making sure that the size of the furniture was correct for the space and we actually used a bright red, which was absolutely insanity.
Speaker 2:And that was something that the family required me to do. I would have never used that, but it caused me to really have to sit down and think about the space and the scale and, in turn now having opened and moved my stores a few different times and worked in different types of spaces, the thing I love about this space, or furniture as a space, is it's always changing. So because of that, I'm always having to change my store gotcha, so you'll come in on tuesday and the store will look totally different than it did on saturday a lot of times, because I just get like I just start moving stuff and playing with different things and I can't stop.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, well, that's I mean I. I let's just say I'm not dissimilar. You know that, that there's a a way in which flow happens and peace happens as you walk into a space and try and constantly find that flow and find that peace, no matter what the size. You know I'm in 400 square feet, you know. So it's not as though I'm operating in a big thing, but but to be able to rearrange what people get to see when they walk in, you know how to, uh, you know, I I was joking around with my customers, I I pulled all my Easter eggs out, uh, at at at election time, so I overwhelmed everybody with with everything that was hidden in a 400 square foot box, you know, and like, just overwhelm them and lit my light up or lit my mirrors up, which I have never done, yeah, I don't think I've ever seen them on.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, I never light my mirrors up just so I didn't have to talk about the election. So cause they were completely overwhelmed. But these are all merchandising tricks that I learned years ago doing retail for apparel and all those kinds of things, so I understand how people move through space. But I just wanted to like okay, you're just getting overwhelmed, it looks great, but you're overwhelmed because you didn't see all the stuff the last 10 years you've been here. And yet here it is, there, it is all in display, mouth wide open. Oh my gosh, you know. Oh, you bought this, you bought that. No, that's been there for 10 years. That's been the story of our life.
Speaker 2:You know, here, when we are on 41st and my brother's first store, which was on First Street in Venetia, we would have people walk through the store the same people every day on their walk Come in to say hi, you know, it just was locals and that's what they did. They picked up a cup of coffee, walked down Main Street, popped into all the stores and did things. And my brother and I would be a slow day. We're like, all right, let's do some rearranging and move things around. And these people who came in the store every single day would be like oh my gosh, I love this new thing that you got and you're like this has been here since the day we opened. Would you please buy it? But yeah, it's just, we become so we have blinders on when things don't change. And when things change all of a sudden, the blinders kind of move away for a minute but then they're right back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So I'd love to hear more of your heart about hosting people, because this is really what we're talking about. Is you know providing space? You know providing a way of people having an experience. That is totally normal but, like all of a sudden, you've brought excitement to it. You know, over the course of the years, you know doing the store, how you have lived. You know, is this something you actually do in your house also?
Speaker 2:Yes and no, I don't host as much in my house, well, one, I don't have a very big space. I live in Santa Cruz. You know very few of us have large, large spaces. I have a bigger space than I did before. I recently moved, in July, after having, you know, a space that I loved living in, but the home sold and it was, you know, time for me to move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, but the rearranging in my house. I changed the layout of my house three, four times a year. Yeah, just to move energy, to give myself a different feel when I walk in. Um, and, yes, my house is modern. Every piece in there is, you know, it might be a piece. It all does come from my store, or almost all, because you do find things that, like, I've got a set of vintage chairs from Germany that I just won't part with, and you know just these little things. But I talk and entertain and work with people in the store so much that my home's my quiet space. Yeah, yeah, it's definitely my recovery zone revolving door of friends, of animals, of taking people in that we probably shouldn't have and let them sleep in the basement or on the couch. It was always party. So now that I'm 40, things have definitely slowed down a little bit, slowed down a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the beginning of life. As I think Jung would say Life doesn't really begin until you're 40. There we go, so you finally have some perspective. So you said you moved a bunch. So what are the various places that you've moved?
Speaker 2:All right, so don't take this out on me, but I was born in Houston, Texas. Yeah, it's okay, Some people it happens. It's a great place to be from.
Speaker 2:Yep, so we were there for about a year, and then we moved to the Netherlands. Oh, okay, at which point my brothers were in high school. Like I said, my brothers are a bit older than me. They're 12 and 14 years older than me. Wow, yeah, and they're going to the american school of the hay hanging out with like diplomats kids as my dad's just working a job there. But they put us into that school because we don't speak dutch. Yeah, um, and they're just having the time of their lives. I think I'm in like kinder school learning. My parents put me in a dutch school because I barely spoke English at that point. Yeah and um, it was a really cool experience. From what I can remember, a lot of it, I think, is photographic, like I see photos and I'm like, oh yeah, I do remember that.
Speaker 2:But then after that, we got to move to beautiful Minneapolis oh yes, a pleasant community. A couple of years there, minneapolis. Oh yes, a pleasant community. A couple of years there. Then we made our way to California. This was the 90s. We moved out to the East Bay and my brother had just graduated high school and he never left. Okay, from Benakaya High, no, so he actually graduated in Minneapolis. And then we moved to the East Bay and he was like no, never leaving this place. This is it Punk rock scene, skateboarding everything I want is here, I'm going to be down at Gilman, I'm going to be doing all of this, you know. And then we moved again back to Texas, back to Houston.
Speaker 2:No, went to Dallas this time. Okay, you didn't go to Galveston A little different. That's funny that you said Galveston. That is the first place my brother caught a wave is Galveston the ongoing joke in Houston. Yep, he found a 70s single fin in somebody's garage in Houston and he took it to Galveston and that's kind of where my family started surfing.
Speaker 1:Okay, so did you start surfing there in Galveston also?
Speaker 2:I did not start surfing until actually my first wave was at Four Mile. Oh, wow, yeah, okay, I was in kindergarten when we had moved to California in the 90s and my brother put me in his Geo Metro, put the boards on the top looked like a helicopter.
Speaker 1:49 miles to the gallon baby, exactly.
Speaker 2:He used to tell me you could get to Baja on eight bucks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, my friend of mine had one, yeah Eight bucks Get you to TJ.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I just remember we're driving down the one and we get pulled over somehow in that thing and he gets a ticket. Then we get to four mile, we do the hike down. There's half a seal on the beach and I'm like okay, I guess this is what we're doing.
Speaker 1:I remember that. I think that was one of the last ones.
Speaker 2:What year was that? It must have been like 90 to 92, somewhere in that zone, I remember that.
Speaker 1:I think that was one of the last ones. What year was that? It must've been like 90 to 92, somewhere in that zone. That was the. That was the second to last one that parked itself. I remember that. Yeah, those are usually at at Scott's Creek or Waddell. Well exactly Waddell usually catches those Yep.
Speaker 2:That one washed in at four mile. So yeah, that was my first wave was actually at four mile. Okay, and yeah, we were living in, living out in the East Bay and back when Kevin Reed was running, the show still up there? Yes, A little bit different world before some of the new people who run the show up there now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were there. They were there from Friday night to Sunday night. Yeah, a little palapa built.
Speaker 2:Yes, so, yeah. So then we were there living in the East Bay, moved to Dallas and then I got to move to beautiful Cleveland, Ohio. Yeah, that was great too. Luckily you can skateboard anywhere. I was going to say your parents liked flat places. Yeah, that was great too of living in a real city and also having freedom, which was really awesome. You know, my parents trusted me to go out and I don't know if they knew how far I was going, but you know they let me you know, do those things, which is probably a little different than today's youth.
Speaker 2:And then my parents said we're moving to Rhode Island and I was like that's what's up. Went out there, started looking at houses. I was like what I drove by Ruggles, which is in Newport, which is just an amazing wave, okay. And I'm just like, wow, I am unfamiliar with the East Coast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I've heard a lot about Long Island, a lot of waves there, yep, yeah Well, rhode Island.
Speaker 2:what's really cool about it is it's all rocky points, so it feels like surfing in Santa Cruz, a little secret spot on the East, exactly. And that's when I really started surfing, you know. It was like, all right, now it's on Um, and fast forward three years or so and I'm like, nah, I'm moving to Santa Cruz, um. But yeah, they basically finished high school in Rhode Island and then headed out here.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, what year did you move here permanently Permanently would have been 2005, I think and then permanently to Santa Cruz was when I opened up the store here. Okay, and got rid of my place in Oakland and was like full in. And got rid of my place in Oakland and was like full in. But I actually rented a room in Santa Cruz for the first six years of living in California as an adult and I would just drive here, take some classes at Cabrillo, stay in the room, drive back to Benicia, stay there, work three, four days, then come back down here, do this lifestyle, go back there, earn some money. And then it was eventually I was like I can't do this anymore. But yeah, no, it's been like just a really kind of long journey. To make sure I ended up. Here is what it felt like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what still keeps you here?
Speaker 2:It's just a pretty magical place. I, the longer I spend here, the more I feel like it's a home. You know, it's like me running into you yeah, you know, a couple weeks ago and coffee, and it's just like, oh yeah, you know, and sparks back this uh this relationship, this thing that used to happen every day outside in the driveway exactly um, and yeah, it's just, uh, and yeah, it's just, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I just don't really see myself you know, full-time living anywhere else. Anytime I go somewhere, I love it, it's great, but I just always want to get back here, and I think there's a lot of people that feel that way. You know, I've got a friend right now. He just gave up a good job at a good place working here in Santa Cruz, decided he's going to move to Japan. He landed there like three, four days ago and all of us are kind of placing bets how soon, how soon will we see him back here or trying to get back here? Can he come back, yeah, and will he be able to get back in? Yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, this is the thing I remember in my life my uncle, who developed an X-ray technology that took 25 years to land. Microchips had to finally get small enough years to land, like microchips had to finally get small enough. And there's a rumor, you know, that potentially maybe his, his, uh, x-ray was on a mars rover or something like that too. But he had this really unique x-ray tech that he just had to hold on to for a long time. But he moved to texas and the whole family, like my whole dad's side, was just like what are you doing? You know, if you leave, you can't come back.
Speaker 1:And he was the only person I knew who left and came back and he barely made it back and you know that that was, I mean, really the first person in 30 years, you know, and it's like you know we talk about real estate prices. Then it wasn't like it was hard, then it was crazy, but it wasn't like it was hard. Then it was crazy, but it wasn't crazy. Crazy, yeah, but, but, but it's, you know it has that crazy feel now still, which is obvious, because all the zeros that have been added to do whatever number, it seems like they keep adding one yeah, but you know the but, but, this, this thing.
Speaker 1:you know that you're leaving something when you leave here and you may not be able to come back to it Like it's a real thing. But you know the weird internal driver I don't know if you have it, you know of. You know, if I decide to try something else, chances are I don't ever get to come back to a place that I call home. It has this thing and it certainly has kept me here most, if not all, of my life. It's just so unique that way and I don't know if there's anywhere else in the country that feels that way where it's like now's a good time to go take that job that I'm going to make twice as much money as I've ever made in my life, and if not more. In places like Santa Barbara I've had great job offers and it's just been like, no, if you don't come back, Is that where I want to be at the end of it all?
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I think there's probably a couple places that have that. You know that type of a thing, um, hawaii is probably one of them. If you grew up there, you leave for a really good job. You know it's going to be hard to come back in um here new york city. You know, if you grew up in Tribeca and you, you know to get back into that world would be absolutely impossible. I know some friends whose family did you know they owned a loft above Belushi's loft and they sold it in the nineties or you know whatever, and he's like, wow, if my family still had that, you know I'd be living anywhere, anywhere. And yeah, it's sort of the drive of this town. I think you know everybody kind of works to live and lives to work, and it goes hand in hand where other places, like you, just work to live.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it's been a. As mellow as this town is. It's oddly type a, you know, because I think what it takes to remain requires something from you. You know, you, you really have to be bought into the prospect because there will be ebbs and flows, and the ebbs are more often than the flows are and, uh, you know what you have to do to maintain your space to be here, whether you know the obvious, obviously, text the biggest, you know influence on that and you know if, if, if you depart here and end up up in Palo Alto or something like that, your probability of coming back, just due to you know how you climb the ladder there, requires you to be there 24, seven, yeah, the rest, the rest of your life, you know.
Speaker 1:So those, those are more obvious, but it's actually true of everything that gets established here. You know, cause I've certainly had lots and lots of job author offers, other places, where you know the money is enough to to leave, of doing the thing elsewhere, even if you could come back, there's not a return. You know, emotionally or whatever else, that you get here, the friendships that we have, the continuity, you know, as I've expressed before, even my enemies would have my back in particular situations, and there's not many towns that are built that way and just structurally that way, you know that someone that you don't like out in the water is probably your best friend up on the cliff, exactly.
Speaker 2:You're really competitive down there, but up here you're like, yeah, what's going on? Am I bringing the burgers over today?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's such a competitive space and everybody here thinks they're mellow, which is what's weird. It's like these are the most competitive people I've ever met.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know, it's always like when people come visit me from here or different things like that, they're always like there's this edge but mellowness at the same time. There's like is there going to be a fight or are we all just going to have a great time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, kumbaya moment. What was that like when you first experienced that feeling of like do you hate me or love me, who aren't from here? About the process of choosing to be here and that strange choice? It is like, look, I know I don't belong here, but I feel like I belong here, so I'm going to go through the thing that you have to go through and everybody's thing is a little bit different. You know of what it took to decide to be here. You know. Do you recall any?
Speaker 2:I just remember like treading lightly, yeah, just treading as lightly and being as quiet, but around as possible, but around as possible. You know like, um, I've never wanted to act like anything was owed to me. You know like I definitely had to earn my time and put my time in and be there for people and just kind of it took a long time.
Speaker 1:It took a long time.
Speaker 2:You know certain, and then respecting like tradition, like not paddling out at Stockton, yeah, yeah, right, don't paddle out at. Stockton Like just respect tradition and locals and for the most part, people respect you and eventually, like you, will be somewhat part of the family.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I used to joke with the boys, you know, cause, you know, certainly over COVID is, kind of when I just departed from surfing, I remember. But they'd see me rack up and go out, and they go. What are you doing? I'm like FaceTime. You know you got to keep your FaceTime at Surpee or else you lose the rotation spot.
Speaker 2:It can be a week and you lose your spot. Oh, yeah, yeah, some of the spots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, fortunately I've had presence for a longer time, but it's actually a thing. You still have to go show your face, or else you are easily forgotten at some point.
Speaker 2:There's so many people that come in and come out, come in and come out here, whether it's at a coffee shop, it's in the water. We've got so many tourists. We've got so many people come for three weeks, they come for a year, they come for. You know these, these points, but you know they all kind of fade away. And then the ones who really do want to make this place their home, they're here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you know it's, yeah, you know it's. You know where I live in and around capitola, like, there's a very strong central valley presence and it's interesting because this place is home to them too and you know, you'll have these families that have been coming here for almost 100 years, who have bought cottages in the way back when and all that kind of stuff. But there's one family actually two or three families I'm thinking of in particular in my neighborhood that we see them for three weeks every year and you watch their families grow. The grandkids are eventually adults, but it seems like it attracts just that kind of personality of no, this is our spot, that we want to be here, this is what we choose to do. We could go anywhere, but we choose this place because this feels like family here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our three weeks a year that we get to check out of our life. This is where we want to check into, and they choose that year after year after year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they choose it in the same spots, like it's, you know, because I'm in the rental market that way, you know, with, with, you know my housing, the, the, the continuity of staying, you know where you were always at. You know that the families keep coming to the same spots doing the same things and they really end up being a part of the community. You know there are certainly a lot of people that come from out of region to come do junior guards, that kind of thing, just to raise their kids in this spot during the summer, so that they have the experience of whether it's Capitola, santa Cruz, whenever they can open up to people who aren't necessarily from here, because that isn't always a part of the program as far as guards go. But there are a lot of families who, historically, from when junior Guard started, as the adults have developed and have their own kids, keep doing the same thing with a program that's been around for almost 50 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just drove by Capitola Police Station the other day and they were all out there getting ready and I was like, ah, spring, summer's coming yeah, I was like oh, the junior guards are out.
Speaker 1:This is great. Yeah, I know, was my son down there. He's probably down there, probably down there, probably down there in his Class A's with his badge on yeah, so what drives you right now? I mean you and I talk about a lot of things, steve. You know you and I talk about a lot of things. Steve, you know you've been through a lot the last year. You know, waking up in the morning, you know what's the thing this year for you that you get up to, you look forward to that really makes you still love life.
Speaker 2:You know, I really feel like I'm like on my way to a well-oiled machine of life, like whether it's myself. You know my business. It's like every day I feel like I'm getting up and it's like the previous year, I felt like I had walls in front of me. Like this year I kind of feel like every day I step out of bed and I can move forward with things, which has been really great. I also think I loved having my store down here on 41st, but I knew that there was a ceiling of how much I could grow it and there was going to be a limit. You know I probably only have two or three people working for me in that store at a max and you know that's great. You know supplying two, three jobs for locals and things like that.
Speaker 2:But where I am today, you know we're four times the size we were when we were down here, times the size we were when we were down here, and I'm just going to get to grow that. You know I going to have more people working. You know, with us and for us. We've been able to partner up with another local company here who's doing almost all of our deliveries and home things now and he's hiring more people because of how much we're able to put onto them now, where he's having to grow his business. So it's kind of like I feel like we're in a moment of growth which is much more exciting than a moment of like, oh, there's my ceiling. So that's really kind of what's getting me up today. I've just kind of seen a good future here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, you know it's an oddly tenuous time. You know it's on the political side. It seems very self-imposed in a lot of ways. But you know it is, I think, unique to be in a spot like we're at right now, because I think you and I are sharing similar feelings of like, yeah, there's a lot going on, but I'm in Santa Cruz, it's going to be okay, Exactly, which is really strange. You know it kind of feels weird and awkward. You know I'm still getting multi-million dollar houses built in front of my place and you know the people are still coming and they want to be a part of it. And you know, embracing the change that is now coming is is it's a new phase of types of money that has not really we haven't faced it before not like this.
Speaker 2:I mean, the hill kept things, yeah, a certain way for a long time here and um, we always had people going over, you know, coming back and forth and doing things like that. But now, with the ability for people to work multiple days from home and and everything that is, that's changing our community. There's no doubt about that yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's strange for me because you know, when I grew up where I grew up, I was one of three children in all the jewel box. It was crazy empty, except it was really full because everybody came on the weekends. It was that kind of vacation rental spot. Growing up, growing up, and then when we chose to move back in 2008, right when everything took shit, when I moved back on my block, it was amazing. There were children everywhere and you know I got to raise my children with other children.
Speaker 1:It was the reason why we left in the first place is we were now I had the only child, you know, on the block. I'm like we can't live here. You know we got to get to a neighborhood here somewhere else where there's going to be other kids, but you know watching it empty again. You know watching as each family leaves and takes the great digits. They got to go elsewhere and do what they're doing. You know more power to them. But it really has changed the neighborhood dynamic because every house that sells does not have a car parked in the front exactly, and and you know it's like oh, here we go again.
Speaker 1:Here's the next phase of how I grew up. You know it's it's different kind of money, but you know people are coming here still and want to be a part of it. So it's, it's interesting, you know to, to say the least. You know, especially on on your end.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I don't have kids, but I've got to imagine like that feeling. You know, um, cause I, as a kid, I lived in places with lots of kids and I lived in places where there weren't many kids around. So like it has a really different way of growing up, essentially, um, but like the schools are going to be affected by this um enrollment. You know, if these I live on a very 50, 50 street 50% of the homes have people in them, 50% of the homes have people in them every couple of days. Yeah, and it feels different than other places I've lived because of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on the other side of that, though, too, is like far more people are utilizing that beach that's in front of you now, oh yes, which is really like okay, people are going to beach here. Like this is kind of a little secret spot. Yeah, it's pretty packed now Not so much anymore, like there are no secret spots in Santa Cruz anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're running out of those as our coastline evaporates and more people come in. Yeah. Less beach, more people, yeah, more people come in, yeah.
Speaker 1:Less beach, more people. That is what is happening here in Santa Cruz is we are losing our beaches but we're getting more people on them. We lost our rock at Rockview. Yeah yeah, no, it's the tsunamis. Those earthquakes have rearranged a lot, yeah, yeah. Well, steve, thanks so much for taking the time to come sit with me. You know I love you. I think you're a great man and it's been a pleasure to know you thus far. I can't wait to spend a little bit more time with you. But thanks for sitting on the program. I appreciate it, appreciate you. Thanks for having me. All right, everybody else, have a good day.