doug hofkins, santa cruz sentinel, surfing magician -

Boardwalk Magic's Doug Hofkins featured in the Santa Cruz Sentinel

Doug Hofkins, the Surfing Magician, is looking forward to big things in his future


Doug Hofkins is ‘The Surfing Magician’ who performs at the Boardwalk during the summers, and at private parties and other events year-round. He hopes to open a magic shop at the Boardwalk sometime this coming spring. (Credit: Dan Coyro, Santa Cruz Sentinel)
By Wallace Baine, Santa Cruz Sentinel
POSTED: | Getting to Know 

Doug Hofkins AKA: The Surfing Magician
Home: La Selva Beach
Age: 36
Venues: Besides performing at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk during the summer season, Doug can be found many Fridays at Michael’s on Main in Soquel. He also performs in schools, for the Pajaro Valley and Soquel school districts. He’s also available for hire for birthday parties and other private events.
The ‘Surfing’ part: Doug grew up locally, attending Aptos High. He discovered surfing at the age of 10 and has been doing it regularly ever since. He’s surfed at spots up and down the coast, but his home break is Manresa State Beach. The ‘Magician’ part: Doug got turned on to magic at the age of 12 when, while visiting his dad in San Jose, he would regularly visit a magic shop in Milpitas called The Magic Touch. Even before then, his grandfather would show his various card tricks and, as a teen, he steeped himself in books and videos on how to perform basic illusions.
Influences: While living in Los Angeles, he found a mentor in the person of professional magician and magic innovator Steve Spill, who owns and operates a 150-seat theater in Santa Monica called Magicopolis. Other heroes includes David Copperfield — “he taught me a lot about stage presence” — Lance Burton, Mac King and a British-born street performer named “Gazzo.” Rules for being a magician: There are five rules to remember as a magician, according to the Surfing Magician. The first three are the same: “Practice.” The others? “Never reveal your secrets” and “Never perform the same trick twice for the same audience.” While working at the Boardwalk in the summer, he does four shows a day, but is careful not to do the same show twice. For more information see, www.surfingmagician.com    


If you spent more than 10 minutes at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk this summer, you probably caught the act of Doug Hofkins, the Surfing Magician.

Really, how could you have missed the guy? He logged in 20 performances a week, alternating between sites at opposite ends of the Boardwalk. If you didn’t see his Copperfield-meets-Spicoli persona entertaining a largely pre-adolescent audience with card tricks, sleight-of-hand and goofy comedy, then you probably caught him hustling to the next show, carrying a surfboard mounted on an ironing board. 

“I did four and a half, five miles a day just walking back and forth.”

The season is now over at the Boardwalk, at least for Doug, and now comes time to lay down some plans to make 2016 a magical year. Sometime next spring, Doug aims to open a business at the Boardwalk, a magic shop with magic supplies, party gags, whoopie cushions, fake rubber vomit, the whole enchilada.

The Surfing Magician has been a part of the Boardwalk summer for three years now, and when he’s not there, he’s entertaining at school assemblies, hospitals, restaurants and private parties for his most devoted audience — kids, who believe that surfing and magic are about the two coolest endeavors in human history.

But he’s also thinking big about the future, even beyond the opening of his new shop. “I got dreams,” he said.

Among those are producing more big magic shows — “stage shows” in magician parlance — involving more elaborate illusions in front of a paying audience in a theater. He wants to beef up his offerings of his YouTube videos, and, like an magician worth his bowtie, he’s thinking up big wow moments for his act.

“I’d really like to produce a live dove while riding a wave,” he said, with a grin. Much of Doug’s appeal as a performer comes from that kid-like demeanor. He’s relaxed and playful on stage, will often allow his young audience to “catch” him with a trick, only to dazzle them with another.

Part of the inspiration in opening his new store came from the Tom Hanks film “Big,” in which a 12-year-old boy wakes up in the body of a 30-year-old. That’s close to the kind of vibe the Surfing Magician aspires to on stage. It allows him to tap into the joy of his performance, he said, as well as stay loose as a performer.

“I like to freestyle it,” he said. “I mean, I do have structure to my show. But I like to kinda wing it, depending on the audience and the venue and the mood. I think it makes me different as a performer that way. Whatever’s happening, go with it."

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