Brad Kavonius didn’t walk on his graduation day from Hood River Valley High School in Oregon.
Instead of picking up his diploma, he loaded up his car and drove south to spend his time surfing and exploring the coast of Mexico.
“I had dreams of punk rock and surfing,” said Kavonius, who has surfed and played in bands for 20-plus years. “I was out.”
Kavonius, now 38, bounced around for about eight years, splitting his time between Mexico and California, surfing and working in surf shops as a repairman.
A little more than three years ago, the wanderer who had spent part of his childhood in Camas and Washougal moved back to the area and opened El Brado’s Fiberglass & Board Repair in Camas.
“I’ve been all over and seen some crazy places,” he said. “It turned out, what I was looking for this whole time was right in my backyard.”
At the shop, Kavonius and his two employees can build and repair surfboards as well as kayaks, paddleboards, kiteboards and wakesurf boards. If that’s not enough, there’s also El Brado’s Fiberglass & Boat Repair, a second business Kavonius owns and operates from the same space at 1725 S.E. Eighth Ave. in Camas.
“Basically, if it gets wet, we can work on it,” he said.
Kavonius said he learned how to repair so many different types of boards out of necessity, since Camas doesn’t have enough of a surf scene to keep a surfing-only business above water.
“We’re storm chasers,” he said in describing himself and fellow surfers. “We follow the weather, and that’s kind of what I’m doing now. I have to be real adaptive to my surrounding.”
El Brado’s — which Kavonius borrowed from a nickname he was given while living in Mexico — is a little more than three years old, and its business has increased consistently in those years. Kavonius had no employees for the shop’s first two years. He worked 12 to 15 hours in the 1,250-square-foot garage, which he converted into a shop with a $20,000 investment in insulation, heat and work stations.
Customers from all over
Customers come from from Canada to Chile. He gets some walk-ins or calls from Internet searches as well as referrals from other surf shops. Some of those shops are ones he worked at while younger, when he was trying to learn as much as he could about repairing boards.
“I was bugging people to teach me how to do their job,” he said. “I learned polishing to sanding to hot coating. I learned how to do everything. Some people can stay in this business for 50 years and know how to do just one thing.”
For a new board, people are spending upwards of $550, Kavonius said, and a person can spend as much as $2,000 on a new standup paddleboard. He warns that surfers and other board users should look out for rocks, as a lot of repairs he sees are boards that get washed on rocks.
It’s not just Mother Nature messing up boards, though. Kavonius said a lot of boards are damaged when they’re not properly tying them down to cars, causing them to fly off while driving. He added that it’s really up to the owner to keep a board in good condition. Some customers bring in their boards multiple times a year, and some he doesn’t see for years at a time.
Plenty of shops have different people to build or repair each part of the board, making the process similar to a factory line, Kavonius said. He wanted to know how to build an entire board. That’s how Keith Swanson, 60, used to build boards while working in various shops during his 36-year career in the surf industry. Swanson — nicknamed “Perico,” or “parrot” in Spanish, because of a tattoo on his arm — started helping Kavonius in the shop a little more than a year ago. He’d built Kavonius his first board when Kavonius was about 17. Kavonius hung around the shop where Swanson worked, and the two met up again years later when they both happened to get jobs at the same surf shop in California.
Swanson, who was born in Compton, Calif., said he spent much of his life moving from California to Mexico. Camas is the most inland place he’s ever lived, he said.
Camas via San Diego
Kavonius’ journey to Camas began when he was working at a shop in San Diego, where he was paid per board he repaired. The shop was tiny, so Karonius couldn’t take in a lot of boards at once. The owner didn’t want to expand, so Kavonius decided to set out on his own. He was looking to move back to the Hood River area, but found a place within his price range in Camas.
“I just sort of laughed,” he said. “Everything was coming full circle, especially once I got ‘Perico’ back.”
Even though Camas isn’t a surf town, Kavonius doesn’t mind going against the grain.
“It’s OK to live off the grid,” he said. “Be rebellious. Be chaotic.”
Kavonius cherishes his eight years of bouncing around surfing and working. He thinks a lot of kids graduate from high school and go into college just to go, as opposed to going in with an idea of what they truly want to do with their lives.
His father started a janitorial business. While Kavonius said he got his work ethic from his father, he saw people of the older generation working hard while forgetting to actually enjoy life. He didn’t want that fate.
“I retired first,” he said. “I wanted to live. I looked at my dad and saw how hard he worked, and I didn’t want to be that guy.
A different path
Kavonius said he also wants to show kids it’s OK to forge their own path, even if it’s a bit different than how most do it.
“Punk rock and surfing pay my bills. That’s what kids need to learn,” he said. “You can do it if you work hard. I’m building surfboards 200 miles from the ocean.”
About four or five neighborhood kids who stop by Kavonius’ place wash his car in return for parts for their skateboards. It’s important to show the younger generation that someone like them can own a business, Kavonius said.
“It’s OK to be a professional dirtbag,” he said. “You’ve gotta give kids something to strive for besides higher education.”
Kavonius said he’s found peers at other businesses in Clark County who have similarly taken their own paths to opening a business, citing 3rd Heart Tattoo and Doomsday Brewers, both in Washougal.
Even now as a business owner, Kavonius is still having fun.
“We own stoke, we create smiles,” he said. “When people come in here, they’re never unhappy. We’re like a legal drug.”
With his business growing, Kavonius said he thinks it’s close to self-sustaining. That makes him hopeful that he can turn things over to his employees for a few weeks and take a vacation or go on tour with his band. Until then, Kavonius is going to keep doing what he knows best: working.
“You can shred and make it,” he said. “You just have to want it. Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
“I defy logic right now. I should not work where I work.”
