CRAIG

Today I talked to Craig.

It’s a beautiful sunny day in Santa Monica. I’m sitting by the beach, scribbling pieces of dialogue that I catch around me. People are walking, roller-skating, and bike riding. It really feels like summertime. Next to me a little girl entirely dressed in pink struggles to get rid of the sand in her shoes. Her mom looks at her amused. I smile at them when I notice a group of people gathered behind me. They are staring at a beautiful dragon that quietly wanders around and stares back at them. He is beige with olive-green legs and turquoise stripes on the back. Its owner walks a few feet behind him and answers people’s questions.

I walk towards the reptile. The group of people disperses. Only a tall man and me remain. The man takes a picture of the dragon and I ask the owner if I could touch it. “Yeah sure, you can hold it if you want. Just hold it like you would hold a baby”, he says. I pick up the animal but my hands are not steady. He pedals in the air, scratching my arms on the way. The owner takes it back on his shoulder and then waits until I take a picture.

I go back to my bag that I left on the wall. The tall man is getting ready to leave on a bike. We start to talk about the amazing animal we just saw. The man’s name is Craig. He looks sporty and energetic. “I just bought this old bike for $80. I love it!” he says. “I named it Simple Seven because it has seven gears”, he adds. “Instead of buying a new bike, you re-use.” I ask him what he does. He shows me a thin black bracelet on his wrist. “I do this. I recycle old tires and create stuff with it.” I tell him that I feel concerned with the environmental issue but sometimes overwhelmed. A plane roars over my words. According to Craig this fight is a tough one. Each time the city changes the rules for a more ecological way of life, the oil companies sue it and manage to delay the implementations. As we talk, I realize that Craig is not a bracelet designer but an inventor, an environmentalist and the president of two companies he created with his father. “My father passed away eight weeks ago. He was a good man”, says Craig. Then he pauses and holds his breath. “During WWII he saved so many lives and so many villages”.

Craig tells me a story he probably heard his father tell a thousand times. “One night, my father and his men arrived in a French village. People were terrified. They brought him to a barn. There, he saw two dead Nazis on the floor with their throats opened. More Nazis were going to come back and kill the whole village. My dad protected these people and many others.” Craig’s father was decorated with two of the highest French medals: The Croix de Guerre (Cross of War) and The Legion of Honor. His name was Thomas J. McGowan Jr. “He landed in France one hour before D-Day. In the battle of Bulge, he and his men were surrounded by tanks and infantry. But he kept his position. He was seriously injured and was one of the three who survived”, says Craig in a muffled voice. I’m picturing these harrowing scenes. Then Craig points at a man riding his bike with four dogs seated in baskets and he laughs.

I ask Craig to tell me more about his work with the “repurposed rubber material”. “Until two years ago, old tires were used to build the roads. They would be cut in pieces and mixed with tar. But the city lost the money to do it, so now everything goes to a huge junkyard. I’ve rescued four tons but there’s a lot more”, says Craig. “You can built shoes, belts, all kind of things. I’ve created a dog harness that holds the dog under the chest so it doesn’t hurt him. And it has reflection on it so you can see your dog in the night”, he explains passionately. A panting man dripping with sweat runs by us, followed by a young couple arguing. Craig is currently working on a suit that a paralyzed person could put on. He has never been married and doesn’t want to because he has so much work to do.

Recently Craig went to a congress for industrialists. He met a businessman who had just opened a factory in China. The man told him how easy it was to get rid of the toxic pollutants in the water because no one cared. Craig asked him if he was thinking about the environment. And the man answered: “Do you know how much money I make?” Craig is visibly still shocked by that encounter.“This is the moment I knew I was doing the right thing”, he utters.

All the objects Craig creates are built in the U.S. and he uses eco-friendly and renewable energy. If you want to find out more check out his websites Ecofunwear and Green World Studios.