Hop Podcast #5 - Dan Pape the longboarding visionary
Above photo by Yuji Fujiyama
I wont lie,
Dan Pape is one of my favourite humans.
His enthusiasm, his ideas, his non stop ADHD means conversations fly around and you can get lost down rabbit holes.
He was suppose to be my podcast number one, I pitched my podcast idea with Dan last year when I was planning to go to Japan. I caught up with Dan, talked all day, had a blast exploring Yokohama with him, and then realised I had not recorded anything! Doh!
My headline says Dan is a visionary, or is he a polymath? Or maybe more an inventor? Longboarding's idea guy? In a way he is a skateboarding genius. He lives for ideas, it is like a type of madness for him, they flow from his brain, and he has a need to make them a reality. The difference between Dan and 99% of other skateboarders is execution. Dan lives the life, he works to make his visions come true and he has been doing this since the birth of downhill. I know that is a contentious statement, because in theory downhill has been around since the start of modern skateboarding in the 70's. For me, the epicentre of downhill and the birth of modern downhill skateboarding racing is in Canada in the late 90's and early 2000's.
Interviewing Dan is like reaching back to those days and hearing all the stories. So many of them are connected to today's longboarding. He are some of the things and people we talk about.
He raced at Bricin "Striker" Lyon's first Danger Bay race. He raced in Danger Bay from DB1 to DB10.
On Shore boards was his first skate project
This lead to Colabo. Team members we talk about are:
Mike McGoldrick interview about his Nine Two Five board
Brianne Davies - Women's downhill World Champion
World's first Downhill Skateboard Video: Fellowship of the Bearing
Patrick Weir - FOTB Drone pilot and the company he now works for is Peacemaker
Mack Dawg Productions snowboard videos that inspired Dan Pape
Lid Tech - aim to create the world's first downhill helmet
Dan's new website - check it out
SkateSlate: we'll talk about this in part two...coming soon
Dan writes at Skate Slate Japan but more recently he has started getting creative on his new blog, covering a wide range of topics, not just skateboarding.
Colabo tee shirts!!
In collaboration with Dan, we are doing some limited edition OG Colabo t-shirts. There are two versions. The double sided one is Dan's version, and the other one is Hop's version. You choose, which one do you like best, order before we close off the deal. These are printed on demand. Order one, they are printed and shipped direct. If you are in Canada or USA, they are shipped fast and cheap because the print company is in the USA.