A year ago, Kevin Kreider was in New York City living his dream as an actor and model for brands like Puma and Adidas. But after he came down with alopecia, an autoimmune disorder that caused him to lose his hair, he soon lost out on many of his modeling gigs. That's when he decided to pursue a longtime dream of learning to skateboard and then heading cross-country on his new set of wheels, filming a documentary along the way. That documentary, 'Kevin & His Skateboard,' just scored over $6,000 of funding on IndieGogo.
'It isn't going to cure cancer or solve world hunger or make world peace,' Kreider tells Yahoo Shine about his adventure, which started in Los Angeles on April 15 and should put him back in his hometown of Philadelphia in late July or early August. 'But that's not the purpose. The purpose was to inspire myself and meet people who inspire me and maybe share these stories with other people.'
For Kreider, who was born in Seoul and adopted by an Irish-German family in Philadelphia, identity is at the core of his journey. His film, which is being produced by the Los Angeles-based Asians on Film, also focuses on how people around the country react to Kreider being Asian-American. Sometimes they express positive stereotypes about intellect and cleanliness, but other times he finds people approaching him to ask if he speaks Chinese.
Although setting off on a cross-country trip by skateboard was daunting, Kreider (who won't disclose his age) believes that he made the right decision by following his dream. And Mother Nature has cooperated so far, which he takes as a good sign.
'The weather has been absolutely on our side. Literally a week or two before the trip, we would have been snowed on and rained on. Every time I come into [a new] town, they say, 'You just missed the windiest day ever!' I missed a huge snowstorm in Wyoming by four days.'
Kreider skateboards about 30 to 40 miles per day before calling it a day at a motel or at someone's house. And the houses don't always belong to people he knows. Many people have reached out to him through social media, offering to let him crash on their couch when he passes through town or to simply buy him a coffee or dinner.
Photo courtesy Kevin Kreider
Athough Kreider's original plan was to simply be the star of the documentary, he now wants to take on a bigger role in expressing his story. After the journey is over, he will be giving up his apartment in New York, moving to Los Angeles, and learning how to edit video so that he can have a say in how his documentary is shaped. 'I feel like I have more of a voice in filmmaking,' he says. 'I get to interact with people. Acting's very lonely. A lot of times it's just you working with the script, but production and filmmaking is interacting with production, and a crew, and whoever you meet.'
Kreider, who is currently in Iowa, already has plans for what his next documentary project will be. He visited Korea in 2012 in an effort to find his birth parents, but was unsuccessful because of restrictive policies put in place by the adoption agency. 'They said my parents signed an agreement saying that I couldn't get in touch with them even if I wanted to. I'm trying to get Hope International to change their rules,' he says. Whether that attempt is successful or not, it's clear that Kreider has a lot more to say about identity, and he found the voice he'll use to say it.
More on Yahoo Shine:
1 Bike, 6 Months, 5,000 Miles: Double-Amputee Cycling Cross-Country to Raise $1 Million for Vets Two Strangers Give Toddler the Gift of Sight Man Fights Depression with 8th Cross-Country Walk
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