Kolohe Andino Starts ‘2%’, A Flowerbed For San Clemente’s Blossoming Surf Talent

As E-Lo bears down on the bottom half of the CT with oversized treetrimmers, a fair few CT vets sit in perilous territory. Alongside Kelly, Kolohe Andino will need a very solid result at Margaret River to stay on tour.

Despite the probable stress, he doesn’t seem worried about potential relegation, stating “I’ve been on tour for so long now people think I’m way older than I am or something, I will definitely be doing the Challenger with the boys if I don’t make the cut at Margies. Either it’s chilling with Griffin, or chilling with Crosby. Either way I’m cool with that.” 

Earnest, somewhat unexpected words which made for a refreshing post heat interview. 

According to Kolohe’s longtime friend and filmer Jacob Vanderwork, he’s released a lot of pressure off himself in the past few months.

“I definitely think he’s relaxed lately, and I think our friendship has gotten way better over the past few months as well,” Jacob tells me. “I feel like he put too much weight on his shoulders to do well in the past, and recently has realized he just wants to have fun. Obviously he cares about winning, but things have changed. His whole vibe now is having fun and giving back to the kids.”

What does giving back to the kids look like? Well, they’re calling it Two Percent Surf, and it’s a surf media channel focused on springboarding Kolohe’s hometown surf community.

“He wants to build a home for San Clemente surfing, with old generations and new generations included,” Jacob smiles. “At first, it was called ‘Stagnant Ambition’ and we were just making videos of Kolohe. I think he realized we needed to involve everyone, because San Clemente has too many insane surfers who are hardly ever filming. So he messaged all of us in a huge group chat, had all the groms come over to his house, and told everyone he wanted them to be involved. He’s hired kids who just started filming to grind every day, even when it’s really bad. We want to help those kids too, so I taught ‘em how to film and Kolohe bought them gear.”

Minus the bit about the local filmer kids, it sounds a lot like what Dane is doing a few hours north with Ch11 TV. I wonder if he’ll disagree, but Jacob says he believes that’s where the inspiration came from.

“I don’t want to speak for him, but I’m pretty damn sure Kolohe got the idea from watching Dane,” he admits. “Ch11 is really fun, and really true to what their community is. We have the same, if not more talent here, so we gotta do this. We want the surf community of San Clemente to be a big family.

The kids are all in, I think the energy is beyond what Kolohe or Griff expected. It’s pretty awesome, how psyched they are. Even the kids who are getting into filming, one of them calls me everyday asking me questions,” he laughs. “It’s so good, because I’ve had to go figure out the same situations he’s in now. It’s cool, helping someone through what I went through.” 

Above and below, we’ve attached a few of our favorite Two Percent clips (one of which opens with a timeless Matt Archbold clip). But, feel free to bury yourself deep in the archives of the channel — there’s definitely some goodies.

Also, when can we buy Griff’s new wettie?