A personal story to a van dweller’s beginnings…
Interview by Coco Liu & Siddhant Marar
Evan Fu, the familiar face we see at Socialhaus, the most people-oriented person you will ever meet. Let’s take a deep dive into his family background and the personal story behind what led him to work on his passion.
Let’s start with… walk us through your childhood.
My childhood was very… simple. I had a good childhood, very good childhood. My parents gave me a very clean slate to work with. I’ve told people that my parents didn’t really raise me to their values. They raised me in a sense that they gave me a roof above my head, gave me food but other than that a lot of the values, ideas, beliefs I hold, were things I developed myself. I had such a clean slate to work with, no traumatic or bad experiences. My childhood was nothing but good. Because of this, when I got older, I started to realize how different having a good, simple childhood was not the norm. I felt like an outsider hearing everyone saying they’ve experienced family issues, etc, and I’ve experienced nothing but privilege. A lot of how I look at what to do in the future is utilizing that privilege as much as possible.
Do you feel you know your parents really well?
This is somewhat common in immigrant households. There is a kind of distance in how we express affection towards one another. I remember during college when I was about to leave to go back to school [Santa Cruz], that was the first time I ever hugged my dad and it just felt so weird.
I know your parents have a small business background, how has that influenced who you are?
My parents own a custom cabinet business. The earliest thing related to carpentry that my dad tried was to open a cabinet shop with his brother somewhere in the LA area. He’s been in the US since the 70s, went to high school here, and my mom came to the US in ’87 [from Vietnam]. They’re a prime example of immigrants that come here, work hard, and build success. Literally, the American dream.
I think that my path to the success that I want for myself is not the same path that my parents took to earn their success, in a way that they had nowhere to start. They started with nothing and worked their way up and for me I have so much to work with already. For example, even now I don’t have to essentially work to support myself. I’m taking advantage of that by focusing as much attention on Socialhaus instead of having to work to support myself. This is a way in which I’m investing as much time as possible focusing on things in which I can learn from. It’s great that I keep my expenses down by living in a van. One thing my family is really good at is being resourceful. That’s something that I really am appreciative of and building that van was the gateway to my experience in San Francisco when I never thought I was going to be here.
How did the decision came about of building that van?
It happened one specific night when I dropped out of college and stayed in Santa Cruz for 9 months after. I moved to San Diego to live with my two cousins for 8 months. I was optimistic leaving Santa Cruz to rebuild a community in San Diego and in San Diego, I made a strong effort to build a base, a community there. I put flyers out in public with my google voice number saying I’m new in town.
I eventually had to move back home as my mom wanted to help me build a business, because that was how I saw my future at the time. I wasn’t going to school anymore, and was not going to have the kind of career because I didn’t have a degree. I was going to work my way up through building a business, gain capital through it and give myself more options for bigger projects that I want to work on.
I was not very keen on working within the business ventures my mom wanted me to be in because they involved firearms, essentially leading a home security consultation business, where I would be going to people’s homes who want to beef up their security. This was something that I did not believe in. I felt that there was a sense of taking advantage of people’s fear and it just didn’t feel right.
Being back to my parents’ place was starting to get really difficult for me personally. Back home I went to a very small high school, I didn’t really have friends or a community to come back to. I feel my mentality changes and I don’t to go out while as opposed to me being in Santa Cruz, San Diego and San Francisco, I feel this sense of freedom. I can go out the door and my parents won’t say anything but I feel this sense of being trapped, at my home. This was my most difficult experience I’ve had in my life. Prior to this experience my life has not been normal in that I’ve avoided so many hardships. This expanded my spectrum of emotions, because I felt anxiety, depression to a certain degree, overall apathetic towards everything.
There would be nights where I think, what would have been like if I had stayed in Santa Cruz; and those thoughts dug holes within myself. I couldn’t fall asleep, I was literally screaming in the middle of the night. I woke my mom up one night because of it. She came to ask what was wrong and I told her I can’t live like this, I can’t. I had grown so accustomed to having people around, having company, a good community. Having that ripped away from me… damaged my soul.
I knew I couldn’t live like that and a thought came to my head, I knew what living in a van is like; I took a road trip up to Canada with a friend before. I knew I could build one with my dad as he is a carpenter with all the tools and knowledge to build a van from the ground up. I suggested it to my mom, and she said, “okay, if that’s what you need.”
…
This was in June and I think we ended up buying a van in less than two weeks after. We started building that van, and it took 4 months, nonstop, 16 weeks back to back to just grind on it. My dad had no rest, working 10–12 days and with no break during the weekends. There was a sense of urgency because I needed to remove myself from that situation. That’s how the van came up.
Did you have expectations on how your life will be living in a van?
Initially, I had no choice but to leave home. There’s no way I would’ve stayed there and it was eating me from the inside. Living in a van was perfectly fine. I love it. It’s amazing. When I tell people I live in a van, and they worry “is everything okay?” I say “oh it is more than okay!”. I have it better than people living in a house, in a super expensive apartment in San Francisco! I didn’t worry about living in a van. I just knew it was going to be better than staying at home.
I remember you said you were part of a van party? Can you explain how that happened?
My buddy, Will (the videographer), he’s building a van, an adventure vehicle, just for fun. He was the one I went to a roadtrip to Canada with. When I built the van, I had no idea he was building a van too. I found out half way through! It was kind of coincidental that we both stayed in a van to go to Canada. One of his childhood friends growing up, they got reconnected recently, his name is Jurell. He bought his van pre-converted, and he’s modifying it even further. That was fun to see the two vans. He also wants to create a deck on the top of the van so people can go up. My parents actually wanted to look into that as a new business venture.
Going back to the American Dream, how did your parents decide which businesses to build?
They went into custom cabinets because my dad was trying to do that himself, but my dad was not very business minded and that’s where my mom comes in. He’s very skilled at a craftsman level, very good with his hands, with the technical side of things. When it comes to sales and finance is where my mom fills in. My parents are the definition of a power couple. My mom was working at the post office when I was born. She ended up quitting the post office, which was crazy! All of her coworkers thought she was crazy because that such a stable job; it makes decent money and it was such a secure job. But my mom left that to focus on building the business. She comes from a history of business owners and know that business will outshine any sort of job working for someone else. That’s what she always tells me; don’t work for someone; own your own business.
So you mentioned that your ideal success is different from your parents’ ideal of success, how would you define what does success mean to you?
My parents use business to make a living in order to have security. Financial security is their priority, something they had to build to get to. For me, in my perspective, I was always financial secure. My parents are always supporting me. I take that strong base, foundation, to look beyond that and I’’m most likely not going to be homeless. When I don’t have to care about the bases, I want to care about is how I’m going to be able to work on the projects I care about in the future, in which case Socialhaus is a project I care about and want to work towards.
My definition of success would be… to never, ever retire, to always be working towards a goal. If I work on a project right now, and to build that as much as possible, and if I ever feel content with how that project is going, then I will take the success on what I gain out of that, to reinvest it out of something else I believe in as well. It is always to help people as much as possible because I’ve been given such a privileged life I want to help others who are not as privileged as I had been.
How do you feel you fit within San Francisco? Do you think San Francisco could be home?
How do I fit in San Francisco? I don’t. I mean I don’t mean that in a bad way; I just come from such a different background than everyone. I’m not in tech, I’m not working, I’m living in a van, I’m doing all these weird things. I think “fit” from my perspective is an overrated thing. In some ways I love the fact that I don’t fit. That is actually what I look for. The exact thing with Vintage Faith [the church I go to], I didn’t fit in, [I’m not a Christian], but I found my way to fit in. It was my way of figuring out a way to fit in something I like. In a way,I was able to find my way into that church could be very similar to how I found my way to San Francisco.
So, to answer can San Francisco be my home? Absolutely. I’ve always dreamed about living in New York, but a little far away so San Francisco will have to do in that case. But yea, I can see myself calling this home, but at the same time there is so much more time, who knows, I have no idea where I’m going to be in 10 years. No one knows.
