The Confirmation of Danny Kwock

Danny Kwock’s hair is long. Like, hippie long. 

This might surprise those who’ve leafed through the tome The Eighties at Echo Beach, or are old enough to have been there and remember when Kwock, Preston Murray, Jeff Parker, Peter Schroff, and their Newport Beach confederates upended surfing’s no-fun ethos with a blast of punk rock style and attitude. 

Kwock’s long hair has gray streaks in it, but not enough to betray his 56 years. Not much does. He is slim and sinewy, and he wears bracelets and rings and necklaces and appears to be unafraid of turquoise. The bearing is a little more Native American than new wave, but save for the crow’s feet and frown lines, he still reads a lot like the dervish who helped turn the stretch of sand between 54th and 56th Streets into the so-called “hottest 100 yards.” 

When I approach the front door of Kwock’s wet-sand house on Miramar Beach, the guy who helped rocket Quiksilver and the entire surf industry into its orbital trajectory (before it all came crashing down a decade ago) is on the back deck staring past the point toward Hammond’s reef. This is one of the Santa Barbara retreats where Kwock has spent the past 12 years in peace negotiations with himself, trying to make friends with the quiet.

He seems slightly startled when I rap on the door, but warmly invites me into his bright living room. Kwock’s beach pad is minimalist: a couple of couches against the walls, a coffee table in between—nothing to distract from the real show out the window. Two things do, however, command the interior. One is the ’61 Martin acoustic propped up against the wall. I quickly learn the guitar sounds as smooth as Tennessee whiskey cut with a drop of honey. The other eye-grabber is a framed Woody Woodworth photo, circa 1977, above the couch. 

The shot is of Kwock making a crazy drop at the Wedge, while enforcer Ron “Romo” Romanosky perches comfortably on the shoulder. Kwock came across the pic when he and one of his four sons noticed a display with a polka dot surfboard, and some familiar looking trunks, at the Newport Beach Surfing Museum. 

“My son goes, ‘Whoa Dad, they did, like, a shrine to you.’ And I was like, ‘Really?’ I didn’t even know. And then I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s one of my old boards.’ My son looked at the photo and goes, ‘Dad, that’s you. Your name’s on it.’” 

Kwock says he doesn’t collect many pictures of himself, but this was a must have. “There are so many stories in this photo. There’s Romo and all my buddies that became legendary bodysurfers—Terry Wade, ‘Mel’ Thoman—all these guys that were in the Dirty Old Wedge documentary. They’re all right there, you know?” 

Not to mention the shorts he’s wearing. 

“Those are one of the pairs of shorts me and Preston Murray, my buddy, got caught stealing at Quiksilver, which was how I got my whole career,” he laughs. “I’m wearing one of them right there.”

A creation myth in 35mm.

*

The shot was taken during the “Bustin’ Down The Door” days, when South Africans like Shaun Tomson and Aussies such as Ian Cairns, “Rabbit” Bartholomew, and Peter Townend were lighting up the North Shore while wearing an exotic brand of trunks that actually stayed on in consequential surf—and didn’t look like dishtowels. Kwock and Murray just had to have a pair. 

Before their infamous caper could even be possible, though, Jeff Hakman and Bob McKnight had to meet while surfing in Bali/Hawaii. (Accounts vary). The pair bonded over how they both wanted to turn their passion for surfing into a sustainable enterprise. With OP and Hang Ten gone to the malls, and Birdwell Britches getting long in the tooth, they struck on the idea of acquiring the American license for Quiksilver boardshorts. A considerable amount of hazing by Aussie-founder Alan Green ensued, including a gonzo weekend in Las Vegas, but soon enough McKnight and “Mr. Sunset” were living together on the top floor of a house on 59th Street while sewing and snipping at a Quonset hut on 17th Street in Costa Mesa. 

The work situation made Newport Beach their go-to surf spot, but they mostly stayed away from what was not yet known as the hottest 100 yards. Kwock and his unruly crew, however, did not go unnoticed.  

“He and his co-brats would hang out at 54th and 56th street,” laughs McKnight. “I’d see him flying around and yelling at people and taking more than his share of waves and I was like, who is this little shit?”

Soon word got out to the little shits that hard-to-find Quiksilver shorts were now miraculously at hand. There was just one problem. 

“Quiksilver was like 25 bucks, you know? It was like Air Jordans, and we were broke,” says Kwock. “I was like, ‘I’m okay. I’ll wear my old OPs.’”

Preston Murray had other ideas. They decided to “borrow” his mom’s Chevy Vega while she was playing tennis. The newly permitted Kwock was tapped drive them up to the Quonset hut in Costa Mesa. 

With Kwock piloting the old beater and Pink Floyd on the 8-track, they made the short drive. Kwock parked in the lot, and Murray crept into the back of the tin shack. A couple minutes later, Murray came running out with a large stack of shorts in his arms, yelling for Kwock to open the trunk. 

“I said, ‘No fucking way, dude! Take that shit back, we’re going to jail, that’s too many,’” says Kwock. “He goes, ‘Shut up!’ and just throws it in the back and slams the door and says, ‘Let’s go, dude!’” 

Murray had grabbed a stack of size 36s—about eight inches too large for the teenagers—so they went around to the local shops trying to trade them in, claiming their grandparents had bought them the wrong sizes. 

“He had this whole freaking story, you know,” says Kwock. “He’s such a mastermind.”

Eventually, the scam filtered back to McKnight and Hakman. Meanwhile, a jealous kid on their surf team ratted them out. “We were kind of showing off at school,” says Kwock. “So, he freaking narc’d on us.” 

The two were summoned to face the music. Murray, who came from a well-off family, could mostly buy himself out of the predicament. Kwock had to work it off at the warehouse. There was something else, too. 

“I told him,” says McKnight, “that part of his penance was, when he saw me and Hakman, or any of us out in the water, his job was to paddle 100 yards away from us in any direction, or go in. That was one of our rules.”

Playing against type, Kwock showed up to work, kept his mouth shut, and did his job. 

“We got to know him and like him,” says McKnight. “He was a good worker.” 

*

Long before he was a notorious boardshort bandit, Kwock was just “a kid from the ’hood in Kalihi,” whose mother tried to keep him away from the waves. Of Okinawan and Dutch descent, Kwock’s mom had grown up surfing, and told stories of carrying big redwood logs on her head. But, the beach life was also full of cautionary tales. 

“She had this fear that I was going to be a beach boy,” says Kwock. “She’d say, ‘Those guys, man, they live that life, but they can’t make money and support their families.’ I was always more pushed into sports. I did Little League and all that stuff.”

Kwock’s dad was a one-time professional bowler and full-time hustler, who left a complicated legacy, genetic and otherwise. He had three children with his first wife, four with Kwock’s mother, and “a couple we just found out about on the side,” says Kwock. The tree is twisted enough for Kwock to have a nephew older than he is. 

The elder Kwock was a bit of a dandy who inherited some land and money, and was also an ace chef. Under his dad’s guidance, Kwock’s aunt Helen opened up Helena’s Hawaiian Food, a longtime Honolulu icon and recent James Beard Award winner. 

According to Kwock, his father’s club, Dan’s Den—“this smoky lounge with these singers who would go on and play jazz and stuff”—was one of the first places to give Don Ho a break. As the story goes, Don’s uncle hit up Kwock’s dad to give “the Hawaiian Perry Como” a slot on stage. 

“My dad said, ‘We’re getting out of that slow stuff. We’re going into rock and roll, but I’ll give him an off night,’” says Kwock. “So, he put Don Ho on the off night and I guess someone saw him and he got discovered.”

Though he tells this story fondly, Kwock is less sanguine when he talks of how his father could never quite get off the booze, the hustle, the cigarettes, and the women. 

“He freaking lost everything, man, because of his alcoholism and his lifestyle choices,” says Kwock. “Next thing you know, my mom’s just trying to hang on for dear life and raise us. They crashed and divorced, and that’s when we moved to California.”

Kwock already had his first taste of surfing by then, though it came courtesy of Five Summer Stories, not mushy Waikiki waves. 

“I remember watching it on the big screen at Kaimuki because it was a big deal for surf movies to come to town,” he says. “When I saw freaking Gerry Lopez at Pipe and heard the music from Honk, it was like a light went on. It was just insane. What I saw was a creative dance and art form in this organic setting in nature. The water was our paradise in Hawaii.”

After the movie, Kwock ran to the store and bought a Surfing magazine. He started putting pictures up on his walls. One in particular captured his imagination. 

“I remember this one shot. There was this guy—he was in California, which intrigued me, because he had a wetsuit on. It was this long wall and he’s taking off and he’s falling and it looks scary and it looks exciting to me. And I looked at it and read the caption and it said, ‘He who hesitates is lost.’ I used to look at that everyday.”

*

California was less intriguing in real life than it was in that photo. It was further from the water, too. Or, at least, the San Fernando Valley was, where Kwock’s mother moved Danny, his sisters, and his stepdad in the early 70s. Kwock went from Five Summer Stories to Valley smog and Catholic school. 

“It was a shocker to me. Next thing I know, I’m at this Catholic school having to wear covered shoes and a collared shirt and tuck it in. I remember getting racked by the nuns with rulers.”

The culture shock was too much for Kwock’s mom and stepdad, and they “just got in the car and started driving south,” says Kwock. The idea was to keep going until the smog wasn’t visible. A wrong turn off Interstate 405 put them on the road to Newport Beach. They stopped when they ran out of peninsula. “They couldn’t drive anymore, so they were like, ‘Let’s look for rentals here.’” 

The house was right in front of the Wedge, though at the time that had no significance to Kwock, who’d been left behind in the Valley to finish up junior high at Catholic school. 

“I was just all by myself, living with my aunt who’s an opera singing teacher. It was kind of creepy, lonely vibes,” he says. 

His parents eventually retrieved him, but Kwock’s first day of school in Newport almost made him wish he were back in the Valley. 

“I’m the minority guy, not the majority. I’m sitting there and kids are teasing me, calling me names, calling me out,” he says.

The day ended with Kwock delivering a Hawaiian-style beatdown to one of his tormenters. He was sent to the principal’s office, but ditched instead and started hitching home, where he got royally chewed out upon arrival. 

“I’m like, ‘I’m fucking over California. Fucking haoles are mean. I want to go back to Hawaii.’”

Kwock was so unruly, his mom ended up giving him his wish, and sent him to live with an aunt in Ala Moana. He says he went feral that summer, catching buses to Sandy Beach, hitching around the island, staying away for days at a time. 

“I was an adult going into eighth grade,” says Kwock. “My aunt couldn’t handle it.”

Before she could bounce him back to the mainland, though, Kwock started standup surfing at Waikiki and Portlock Point. 

“It clicks, right? I’m in Hawaii and I’m like, ‘Yes, this is the land of surfing…and, oh, my God, I love surfing.” 

Back in Newport, feeling rudderless and unwanted, surfing became a way for Kwock to forge an identity and garner some much-needed affirmation. The jetty-formed rebound wave that occasionally broke outside his front door would be his crucible. 

On big days, the “nasty beast,” as Kwock calls the Wedge, pops up like a snarling monster and breaks furiously into a shallow, cement-like sandy bottom. Ten people have died surfing there since they started keeping tabs, and dozens more have been paralyzed. Back in the mid 70s, it just wasn’t stand-up surfed. And, anyone willing to take his chances would have to run the gauntlet of grizzled watermen—bodysurfers and knee-boarders—led by Romanosky. 

“They didn’t let anybody surf there,” Kwock says.  

The old guard, though, took a liking to the lost boy and allowed him into the lineup. 

“The dudes down there were very affirming to me as a little kid, because I was different, you know? Hawaiian kid, ethnic kid, and into what they were doing. I was a bodysurfer first, skim boarder…I did what they did. I loved it. They knew that I liked surfing so they let me do my recreational craft, because they liked me. I was always watching them with eyes curious to learn how to be a man, because I had no father figure.”

After taking countless beatings, Kwock finally made the drop. 

“I was the only one standing up, trying to be Gerry Lopez,” Kwock says. “I was trying to be Gerry Lopez at the Wedge. That was kind of my deal.”

*

Back then, Quiksilver was a bottle looking for lightning. McKnight and Hakman had the best boardshorts in the business, but they didn’t have a business to go with their boardshorts. They needed to build the brand. 

Meanwhile, Kwock and the Echo Beach kids had started turning up in the surf mags almost as much as the pros on tour. McKnight and Hakman realized that their inmate might hold the keys to the kingdom. When Kwock finally finished working off his debt, McKnight set up an audition at 56th Street. 

It couldn’t have come at a better time for Kwock, who found himself caught again in the grip of something familiar and inchoate at the same time. 

“I wasn’t living in Hawaii anymore. I was pissed off at my teachers. My mom and [step]dad were melting down. I was living at friends houses a lot. I just wanted to be a pro surfer. I was angry.”

Kwock acted out at the Wedge, suffering broken bones and near drownings in his determination to master the wave. Once, he was knocked unconscious in shallow water, resulting in “a bullet hole” in his head from a fin, and a subsequent police escort to Hoag Hospital.

Another time, he found himself pinned to the bottom under “a million pounds” of water after taking off on a huge wave. 

“I felt my fingertips on the sand like woosh, like they were feathers and everything was super slow and all of a sudden I started getting these visuals of me on the bottom. I remember saying, ‘Okay, you can’t lay down here forever, it’s super comfortable and it feels really amazing, but you gotta push up.’”

It was during this period, when “life seemed the worst ever” for Kwock, that McKnight approached him about coming onboard. 

“All of a sudden, these guys are saying, ‘Hey, we want to make you a surf star. We’ll get you your dream of being a pro surfer.’” 

They set up a few photo shoots for Kwock and it was all starting to click, except for one thing. 

“I’m looking at the Quiksilver shorts I’m wearing, [and thinking] these are so freaking ugly and boring. They’re like this brown, beige, muted color, old floral prints that aren’t happening anymore.”

Kwock pleaded with Quiksilver to “make more radical stuff,” but they weren’t having it. Instead, they told Kwock to concentrate on getting pictures in the magazines and entering contests. He had other ideas. 

“I remember my girlfriend at the time would wear these super cute dolphin shorts. They were new wave, and I’m like, ‘I’m gonna rock these out surfing.’ I put them on and I freaking go out with all the photographers there and sure enough, I get my first big picture in Surfing mag.” 

In the aftermath Kwock was called to the carpet again. McKnight wanted to know why his sponsored rider was getting snapped wearing red-and-white striped shorts. “I was, like, ‘Dude, look at my board. It’s got polka dots on it! And you’re making me wear these brown, old, hippie shorts—with that? That era is over. New wave and punk are the new deal.’”

After some resistance, the bosses gave in and put together a line featuring stripes, checkers, diamonds, and polka dots. 

“They put them on the rack and boom, they went like hotcakes,” says Kwock.

Soon Gotcha followed suit and, suddenly, the boating and polo-shirt capital of the West Coast was one of the coolest places on Earth. “Echo Beach started the whole thing,” says Kwock. 

“That shot in the mag was like the first shot with those kinds of graphics. And then Preston stared putting checkers on his board and polka dots, and Parker started putting stars and then, Alan [Green] saw it and was like, ‘I get it.’”

McKnight and Hakman may have thrown Kwock a lifeline when he desperately needed one, but he gave them something back they needed almost as badly. 

“He saved us from being some old-guy thing,” says McKnight. “He was listening to the Clash and we were listening to the Rolling Stones. He knew the market like an edgy kid and we followed that into surfing. He’s very responsible for making Quiksilver a cool, connected thing.”

Of course, it wouldn’t have worked if Kwock and company couldn’t back it up in the water. 

“Danny was a really good surfer,” says McKnight. “He was insane, doing all those modern moves, power surfing with an edge. Whenever Newport was big, he shined. People didn’t necessarily like him for it, but he was legit.”

Bill Porter, reminiscing in Newport Magazine, captures just how radical a figure Kwock cut at the Wedge: “I remember it like it was yesterday. His shortboard had primary-colored polka dots and a Quiksilver logo. And sure enough, he made the drop. I’d never seen anything like it. [He] not only surfed the Wedge, he shredded it. I’ve witnessed spectacular feats in major sports, but nothing compares to this triple-overhead tube ride capped with an off-the-lip snapback. Danny won’t remember that particular wave like I do, because for the next 90 minutes, he continued to tear into the Wedge in ways I didn’t think were possible.”

*

There was no such thing as a surf industry in 1976, and it’s not too much of a stretch to say the multibillion-dollar lifestyle and cultural signifier we know today sprouted from the sands of Echo Beach. Riding that zeitgeist, with Kwock as team rider and then team manager and then a company Jack-of-all-trades, Quiksilver shot to $20 million in sales by 1986. McKnight, a USC business school grad, then took the company public.

A few years later, Kwock signed 18-year-old Kelly Slater to an unprecedented contract. “When he told me he got him, and what he paid him, I almost fired him,” laughs McKnight. He could afford to laugh: Quiksilver’s sales had hit $100 million by 1990.

What comes after $100 million? For a while, it didn’t seem like there was any ceiling. After signing Slater, Kwock and McKight launched Roxy, the first women’s surf label. Roxy rolled out its own show, “Surf Girls,” on MTV. It would grow to be a half-billion dollar brand at its peak. 

By the mid-90s, Quiksilver had become something like surfing’s rock and roll circus. Kwock was equal parts ringmaster and rainmaker—the guy who had to be at every party and lasso every star. His Hawaiian roots and street cred were critical to luring iconic bad boys such as Johnny-Boy Gomes, Derek Ho, Sunny Garcia, and, later, the Irons brothers into the fold. He signed Slater, Machado, Beschen, Irons, Lisa Anderson—some of whom left for other brands, eventually, while other remained with Quik for decades. Zeitgeist impresarios such as Preston Murray, Richard “Wooly” Woolcott, Steve Jones, Peter Schroff, and others followed Kwock to Quiksilver. Companies like Gotcha, Stüssy, Volcom, and Hurley rose up within a 20-mile radius.

Kwock, though, was starting to feel the grind. He’d gotten married in 1987 to the daughter of a wealthy Newport developer and had four kids at home. He was away a lot and when he wasn’t away, he wasn’t really there. Drugs had become part of daily life, work and otherwise. 

“I’m just burning out, but things are getting bigger and the company is getting more corporate. In the beginning, I was super excited. I remember McKnight was more stressed. I was more reckless. I’d be like, ‘Dude, let’s go for it. Let’s be like Levi’s on the beach. Let’s be the first billion-dollar company in the surf industry and give surfers jobs all over the world!’ I was just into helping surfers. I think that was probably from the cocaine, just me being crazy.”

In the midst of this, the receptionist at Quiksilver called Kwock to let him know that “a little old man with a cane and a Bible” was in the lobby asking for “Danny Boy.” Kwock’s father used to call him Danny Boy when he was a kid. “I didn’t like it because he’d sing that song all drunk and it just used to bug me.” 

It had been many years since Kwock had seen his father. He’d heard he was in an old folks’ home somewhere. He wasn’t sure. Now his dad was in the lobby of the company where Kwock had a big office and a portfolio of responsibilities—marketing, media, brand development, acquisitions, entertainment—which was expanding as quickly as Quiksilver was. He had one request.

“I don’t want to die in California. I want to die in Hawaii,” the elder Kwock told his son. He asked if Danny would fly him back home. Kwock bought his dad a one-way ticket and drove him the airport. On the way, Kwock told him about his wife and kids and his life. “We bonded, and buried the hatchet and made amends,” says Kwock. 

His father died a few years later. 

At the time, Kwock was at the annual Quiksilver meeting in Tavarua.

*

Grow, meet quarterly projections, exceed shareholder expectations. “Finance, budget, spreadsheets, gross margins, fucking Wall Street,” as Kwock puts it. This wasn’t punk rock—this was big business. Not to mention all the damn entertaining. “Twenty-four fucking seven entertaining,” says Kwock. 

The pressure and the partying were starting to get to him. One rainy night on the North Shore, Kwock found himself out with some of da boyz, speeding down a wet road, long after midnight, hell bent for a dive bar in Mokuleia. 

“We’re flying down the highway,” he says, “100 miles per hour, and I’m like, ‘I’m gonna die in this car tonight. This is not your everyday job prerequisite. This is going to go till three or four in the morning.’”

It didn’t help that the team back at the office was also riding him about business-side details. 

“So, I’m just beating myself up and I’m going ‘What the fuck can I do for you guys, man?’” Kwock says. “I can’t do any more. I gave it all for you. I’m fucking living in the battlefield on the front lines in Hawaii, dealing with everybody and every fucking facet of this crazy-ass, billion-dollar business. And you guys are fucking giving me shit?” 

Few businesses have tried to square the circle of being cool and being a business like the surf business. It can work for a while, but eventually either the cool or the enterprise cracks. 

“People that were businessmen were kooks when I was a kid,” says Kwock. “I felt like I was pulling it off and then I said to myself, ‘No, dude, I’m living a lie because I’m a corporate asshole. I’m becoming the person that I just dread being.’”

Back at the Quiksilver compound that night, Kwock lost it. “I remember just cracking and I broke down in tears. I got in the car and said, ‘Fuck it, I quit, I’m fucking over it.’”

He hung on long enough for Quiksilver to blow by the $2 billion mark on its way to a peak of $2.5 billion in revenues—more than a quarter of the surf industry’s business. When he did leave, it was  under a bit of a cloud. A small investment he made in friend and former employee Richard Woolcott’s startup paid out handsomely when Volcom went public in 2005. Kwock was politely shown the door, which he was on his way out of anyway. He cashed out his stock and fled to Santa Barbara. 

“I needed to be alone,” he says. “I was around so many people. I was just tired.” 

For Steve Jones, the influential designer whom Kwock hired in 1985, something essential went missing in Kwock’s absence. 

“It wasn’t until after he left that I really got it. Danny was the soul of Quiksilver,” says Jones. “His rapport with everyone was the glue that spiritually held the company together. When he left, it was like the soul of the company walked out the front door.”

*

In Santa Barbara, Kwock found himself suddenly quiet and extremely uncomfortable, even amid the many comforts his success had provided. 

Ensconced in a converted barn on the Ranch, he would sit and watch waves form, break, and peter out practically at his doorstep. He wouldn’t move for them, couldn’t for some reason. The newfound quiet felt just as heavy as those million pounds of water on top of him at the Wedge. 

“I’d be at the Ranch watching perfect waves and I’d just start crying. There were times in the past when I had to get every wave in the lineup. Now I was like, ‘I don’t even want to go surfing.’ I was saying, ‘Man, I’m in trouble.’ Everyone’s thinking, ‘Dude, you got the best. You got all the money in the world. You don’t have to work. You got all this shit and your success, you’ve accomplished so much.’ And I’m thinking, ‘I’m a fucking douche. I’m a fucking lost child.’”

Suddenly there were no emails, no calls, no noise—no distractions. “You have a lot of time to think, and you have a lot of time to ponder, a lot of time to check in with your truths. Or you can choose not to do that and just get high. I didn’t want to get high. I wanted to heal.” 

Kwock and his wife set up a foundation and started giving “many, many millions” to charities. He joined a men’s therapy group, volunteered to do yard work, and help with art and music classes at his kids’ schools. Still, there were times when the silence seemed like it might consume him. 

He started going to church, where he met a priest named Father O’Donnell. “He doesn’t remind me of what I think of as a Catholic priest. He just reminds me of my dad, when my dad was at his sweetest moments. This little Irish man, and he’s so rad and he’s got a twinkle in his eye,” says Kwock. “He was fully into the Beatles, and we’d sing ‘Let It Be’ and he just pulled on my heartstrings.”

Kwock chose to be baptized. “It was therapy. I remember praying about my life and what defines me, who I was and what I’d done, the wild ride I’d been on and why I wasn’t happy for my successes. I just started praying and it gave me peace.”

He’d sometimes see himself as a kid, staring at the Wedge, unable to resist its call. And he began to understand who that kid was and what drove him. 

“That abandonment issue was there,” says Kwock. “I remember, because at the Wedge, when I’d take off—he who hesitates is lost. ‘Don’t hesitate man. And I’m not afraid of dying. Fuck, if I die, good! I don’t even want to fucking be here.’ That was my attitude as a kid. I was kind of crazy suicidal, but that craziness got me fame. It medicated me. All those things started coming out of me later, as a man. I had sadness from when I was a kid, from being abandoned. That was where the real issues were.”

Kwock’s first marriage didn’t survive the fallout. He recently remarried, however, to a woman who has two kids of her own. Now, he’s the patriarch of a brood ranging from 14 to 28. 

His attempts to parent the children for whom he acted “more as a big brother than a father,” are awkward, but appreciated, says his son Ben, now 26 and the head of operations for What Youth magazine. 

“He had his struggles,” says Ben. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t, considering his broken family.”

Far removed from roar of the Wedge, the action of Echo Beach, and the hustle of Quiksilver, Kwock lives in a tentative détente with his second act. 

“I get up, feed my dogs, take them for a walk. My wife and I do yoga, or workout together, or hike or ride a bike. We’ll walk on the beach sometimes. We just sit and talk and share moments. Having a blended family with six boys, that’s enough for us to always be talking about their lives, all their stuff, and what’s happening. Then, a lot of times, I meditate in the morning and pray, and then do that again at night. I just live a slow life,” he says.  

Still, Kwock can’t help but flash back to the past every now and then. “It wasn’t the money,” he says. “I wanted to change the world. I wanted to blow fucking minds. It’s that simple. Who in the surf industry today wants to blow fucking minds?”

Kwock recently closed on a house in Newport. 

“He says to me and my brothers that this is a trial run,” explains Ben. “But I can tell he’s excited.”

[Feature image: Photo by Mike Moir.]