112: Arthur Longo and Blake Paul/TRIPLE
“Sometimes you’ll find things close to the slope that you’ve never thought about doing. There are a lot of things to do. You don’t have to travel far. I try to keep my eyes open and find new stuff, even if I know the place.” – Arthur
Arthur Longo and Blake Paul special TRIPLE episode! This episode came about when my friend Matt Georges asked me to write the words for his latest book project with Vans – TRIPLE.
The TRIPLE project saw Matt organise three shoots to represent the different sides of snowboarding – Arthur and Blake for backcountry, Rene Rinnekangas and Fridtjof Tischendorf for park, and Danimals and Benny Urban for street.
Matt asked me to interview each duo for the book – naturally I thought I might as well record these chats and see if they were worth putting out as podcasts.
So that’s what I did – I relaxed my ‘no Skype’ rule, sent the guys mics and arranged to chat with each of them about the whole thing. The first instalment was with Arthur and Blake, and as you’re going to hear it turned out so well that I decided to put it out as an episode of the podcast.
What’s really interesting about this conversation are the insights into how two such stellar riders like Arthur and Blake approach a project like TRIPLE. They pair are obviously both absolutely incredible snowboarders, but as became clear during our conversation, they have different, complementary approaches and it was fascinating finding out exactly what that looked like.
Yep, a proper snowboard geek fest this one – well it has been a while – and, basically, a bit of an experiment to see how it would work doing a three-way chat over Skype, I reckon it turned out pretty well.
Big thanks to Matt Georges and Vans for getting me involved, and to Arthur and Blake for being such good sports.
Listen to the episode here:
Connect with Arthur & Blake
Show Notes
- Family time on the East Coast.
- Graphic design course.
- Cultural Berlin.
- Things to do in the summer.
- Sharks.
- Jackson Hole Opening Day.
- Howly Bowly.
- “Using snowboarding as an excuse to go to Australia”.
- European winter.
- The Chamonix tradition.
- “How to not get trapped”.
- Mistakes.
- Their first trip.
- Random Austrian valleys.
- Proper snow dumps.
- The Chamonix variables.
- Blake’s European rides.
- “For Blake, it’s all Germany”.
- First Layer.
- The start of TRIPLE.
- Planning the trip.
- “To make it worth it, you need to stay longer”.
- Making time to explore.
- Ominous vibes.
- Above the treeline.
- “A 500 million foot cliff with rocks at the bottom”.
- Arthur the guinea pig.
- Having different eyes for shots.
- “Blake does it smartly”.
- Reading terrain.
- Agreeing to disagree.
- The filmer and photographer relationship.
- Working with Jake Price over the years.
- Landline.
- Standout sessions.
- Light-headed.
- Golden light.
- Pressure to get shots.
- More trips planned.
- Influences from the Alps.
- Blake’s snowboarding family.
- Arthur’s Dad and his photography.
- Inspiring snowboarders from a young age.
- Arthur’s graphics for the project.
- “Silly little lines”
- It wasn’t for me.
People Mentioned
- Lena Stoffel
- Ed Leigh
- James Stentiford
- Matt Georges
- René Rinnekangas
- Fridge
- Benny Urban
- Dan “Danimals” Liedahl
- Nick Hamilton
- Bruno Rivoire
- Jake Price
- Tanner Pendleton
- Jake Kuzyk
- Bryan Iguchi
- Mark Carter
- Rob Kingwill
- Alex Yoder
- Guillaume Chastagnol
- Wille Yli-Luoma
- Austin Kleon
Places Mentioned
- Chamonix, France
- Anglet, France
- Japan
- Ocean City, New Jersey
- Montreal
- Berlin, Germany
- Encinitas, California
- Carlsbad, California
- Jackson Hole, Wyoming
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Bondi Beach, Australia
- Thredbo, Australia
- Sydney, Australia
- Revelstoke, British Columbia
- Arlberg, Austria
- Landeck, Austria
- Saas Fee, Switzerland
- Italy
- Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix
- Plan de l’Aiguille, Chamonix
- Les Deux Alpes, Chamonix
- Vermont
Companies/Brands/Organisations Mentioned
- The Atlantic Cup
- Vans
- TRIPLE
- Airbnb
- Whitelines