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Kyle Thiermann Interview July 17th, 2010

Kyle Thiermann Interview

By Taylor Paul

Don’t stop reading when I tell you this—Kyle Thiermann is an activist.

I went to his Pleasure Point home yesterday to talk with him about what it means to be a surfer and an activist, and I was surprised by what I found.

It’s a sunny day. 80 degrees. Light breeze. I walk up and he’s shirtless on the front porch, rotating a couple of skirt steaks on the BBQ. My first thought (after that smells good) is shouldn’t he be cooking veggie kabobs or something? Activists are vegetarians. We slap fives and he offers me a beer.

“Nah, water’s good,” I reply.

Then he gives me the tour of the house. It looks like a surfer’s home—posters of waves, posters of surfers, and a giant map of the world above the couch. Where is the self- righteous picture of him at a Berkeley rally, arm-in-arm with some pasty chick with dreadlocks? Or at least a discarded picket sign with a clever slogan. My eyes scan the house for a sign of Kyle’s activism. Nothing.

“Come on, I’ll show you the backyard,” he says.

Here we go. I expect a sustainable vegetable garden or at least a free-range chicken area. But there’s no room for these things; the recently built halfpipe (that he ollies into off of his roof) takes up most of the yard.*

Activist my ass.

But it’s true. He is an activist—he’s just low-key about it. He doesn’t preach. There is no guilt trip. No, you are a lesser human because you don’t do what I do vibe. Which is nice, because it allows me to drop my guard and actually listen to what he says (he’s the opposite of the guys that pounce on you when you leave the grocery store asking if “you have a minute to help hungry children?”).

“I think there is a common misconception in the world that activists don’t have any fun,” Kyle says. “But the amount of fun I’ve had over the past two years…its been the best two years of my life.”

He’s not telling me this. He’s telling 300 people at the California Academy of Science last week. It was part of his acceptance speech when he was given the Peter Benchley Blue Vision Youth Award for his project, Claim Your Change. In Claim Your Change, the 20-year-old used a coal power plant in Chile to exemplify how you (yes, you) may be financing destructive projects through your bank.* The power plant was endangering a whole community of fisherman, as well as one of Chile’s best waves—all funded by Bank of America. Through youtube videos he convinced people to move $110 million dollars from international to local banks, where the money will stay in the community. It’s $110 million dollars that would have stayed put if he’d gone with his first instinct.

“Before I began the Chile project I was so nervous,” Kyle says. “I was scared of the ridicule I’d face by putting myself out there. But then I got down to Chile and spoke with the local people and saw the scale of this whole concept and thought, I have to do this. This is bigger than being scared of people making fun of me.”

It was a logical fear to have, though. Kyle spends his days in the water around Santa Cruz, fulfilling his job as a professional surfer (he rides for Patagonia, a company that shares his environmental conviction). But most surfers around Santa Cruz are turned off by activism. It’s a word they associate with the Banana Slug transplants that crowd the water. (It’s the same assumption that had me expecting vegetables and propaganda at Kyle’s house). To be a part of the surf scene and become an activist, Kyle was soft tossing material to the heckling Santa Cruz surf community. But Kyle was happy to find the boys didn’t bite on the heckling opportunities.

“Guys like G-Boy and Bud Freitas paddled up and told me I did a good job,” Kyle says with a grin. “It was as good as winning any award.”

With the success of Claim Your Change, Kyle is riding the momentum and is raising funds for his next project, which will take him to Sri Lanka later this summer. He plans to track a product that we buy in Santa Cruz back to its Sri Lankan roots in order to demonstrate the power of the consumer dollar. To demonstrate that what we buy or don’t buy affects more than just storeowners. In Sri Lanka Kyle will visit local factories and interview workers, and also try to show the impact the factories have on the local environment. It’s an environment that, not coincidentally, hosts some world- class waves. He’ll document his findings in a short film that he will post on youtube.

“I want people to know the power they have to make an impact on the world with the way they use their money,” Kyle says.

The world obviously needs a positive impact right now. We’ve got oil leaks in the gulf. Global warming. Economic meltdowns. Summer flat spells. The world needs a fricken makeover. Kyle’s doing his part. He’s moved his money. He’s going to Sri Lanka. Oh, and that map of the world that I told you about earlier, the one above his couch—it’s hanging upside down.

*Go to surfingforchange.com to see videos that will simultaneously get you psyched to surf, skate, and change the world.