I met Cyrus while we were working on our book Tiny Homes on the Move. He is a talented filmmaker, surfer, traveler, van hacker and an all-around awesome person. He is in the midst of a new van build using a dually diesel Dodge Sprinter van and chronicling the journey for Reef.
I first moved into a van 10 years ago. It was a practical decision. I’d been commissioned to make a 16mm surf documentary and failed to negotiate a living wage for myself during the three years it took to make it. This oversight had me surviving on cans of kidney beans and needing a rent-free place to sleep while I traveled between Australia and Los Angeles shooting and editing…
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Cyrus Sutton and his girlfriend Anna Ehrgott dropped by the Shelter office last week. Cyrus is a surfer, director, photographer, and all-around amazing person. His girlfriend Anna Ehrgott is just as an amazing person as Cyrus: a great surfer, she started her own surfboard bag company, Sagebrush Bags (made with recycled coffee bean sacks), and is an amazing photographer.
I met Cyrus the other year when we were working on Tiny Homes on the Move; he had just built a van for a trip down the West Coast in search for surf (featured in the film Compassing, below). He just sold the van recently to the owner of one of the local surf shops and happened to be in town for a week. Cyrus recently got the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van and has plans to do some conversions soon.
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Bobby Heffelfinger created this rolling art studio in West Marin county, California, on a 2013 Ford F-350 truck with mostly recycled materials (left over from various building projects). He started with the truck chassis and built a flatbed with 2 × 2 steel square stock.
It’s immaculately built. It’s framed with 2 × 2 fir studs. Siding is 1 × 4 tongue-and-groove cedar. Curved rafters were cut out of fir 2 × 12’s. Roof sheathing is 1 × 6 redwood tongue-and-groove.
It’s 8 feet wide by 14 feet long. Inside, it’s 7 feet to the top of the arch. The roof is 18-gauge copper with standing seams. Windows were built out of redwood from an old water tank.
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Portland-based design firm Von Tundra did the conversion of a 1969 Dodge Chinook into a mobile juice and cocktail bar. Their client wanted something a little different to serve street food to the city’s public as well as host guests inside. It went from a bland old white truck to Sip Mobile Lodge, a stylish vehicle that feels right for the American Northwest with its heavy use of wood and comfortable interior.
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Drew and Justin
I have been seeing this van around for a few weeks and trying to catch up with the driver. I love these vans and wish California/U.S. Customs would relax some of their crazy import laws and allow some of these in. I finally found them in Bolinas today! This is Drew De Panacis and his friend Justin Artuso. They are on a surfing/rock climbing road trip from Vancouver, Canada and went as far south as Big Sur for surf and out to the sierras for rock climbing. They are slowly making their way back up to the great north and hitting as much good surf as they can along the way. The van is a 4×4 diesel and it has a veggie conversion kit on it and holds 35 gallons of oil. To get something like this in America, you’d really only have one option — a Sportsmobile — which start out in the $30-$40k range for a used one. These Delicas go from $5-$10K in Canada which makes them a lot more affordable to younger folks and people who don’t make a ton of money.
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