WE SKATE TOO: Dani Torres
Dani Torres is a mystic creature. The twenty-one-year-old Puerto Rican artist is a skateboarder, painter, spiritual being, and modern-day nomad. From settling down in London to south Oklahoma then ending up in the city of Los Angeles — Torres now finds herself back in her homeland of Puerto Rico, or what she likes to call “paradise.”
Torres had a modest beginning. While selling her artwork a few years back on the streets of Venice, a starry-eyed bystander at Venice Skatepark, she stumbled upon an adequate amount of tools to finally create her own deck, thanks in large part to a commission from a local Venice skater. Ultimately, it seamed together.
Currently, we can find Torres doing what she loves in the exact same way she started out in—but in Puerto Rico. Torres sells art, shreds hard, and is making new meanings in the tropical city. She’s reconnecting to her roots in the rich culture she once lived in, but now, she’s making it her own. While leaving behind a past relationship, friends, and a sense of comfortability, she’s traded it for something better: her solitude.
Torres had the chance to talk with me over the phone while suddenly hitting a gush of rain and looking for cover. Even as she scrambled for shelter in the Puerto Rican rain, Torres was ecstatic to share her spiritual journey of realizing that all she really needed was herself, how skateboarding became her muse, how art led her to where she is now, and the power of being a young woman on your own (in a different country).
What’s the history behind your start with skateboarding?
I feel like I have a super interesting, complicated, weird, and fun life. I was born in Puerto Rico, then when I was about two years old, my mom wanted to be an actress so we moved to LA. So since I was a young kid I've been living on and off in LA. I've moved to Oklahoma, I've even lived in London and I've always traveled every year. I've been fortunate enough to see a lot of the world. I spend most of my time alone because I don't have siblings, and I guess that kind of pushed me to draw constantly since I was a kid. I've drawn my whole life. I’ve always loved art but never felt it could be a career. Everyone around me always told me not to or that I would have to have a side job, just kind of demotivating me. Then in my first year of college, I started selling art at Venice Skatepark. I just decided to make prints and see how it would be to actually push my work to customers. I got a positive result, people really wanted my prints and gave me the idea of painting on skateboards because Venice Skatepark is there. That escalated to people giving me boards that I could paint then I started skating because I had supplies. It's just been flowing since then, just constantly meeting more friends to skate within different places and having different people order grip tapes off of me. It's gotten to a cool point where I go to Venice and I'll see two or three people skating around on my art. It's awesome because people take their skateboard everywhere and my art gets to travel a bunch.
Follow her art on Instagram
It seems like your art is the reason why you got connected with skateboarding.
That's a beautiful thing about skateboarding, it’s such an intense thing that usually people tend to be pretty artistic in at least one way. Whether they sing, dance, or paint. Very poetic and passionate souls. You need a lot of passion to keep skating.
So you've only been skating for about three years now; from your videos, you skate like you've been skating for way longer which is insane. How’s your work ethic in terms of technical and comfortability skills with your board?
I am not disciplined. I'm shocked as to how much support I get with skating because I feel like it's something I just do for fun. I was naturally born a little daredevil and was probably just meant to skate my whole life and never even knew about it because I would find any way to seek thrills or go fast. So when I got a skateboard, it just started as a way I could finally get around easily. I would skate everywhere. Just to school or the skate park and back. What really started pushing me to get better is just having friends that are moving around in a pack, and you have to keep up. If you don't, you'll get lost. You just have to be super alert. It helps me with my focus because if you’re out of focus, you’ll get hurt. Then I started to like bombing hills and that’s not something that many girls do. So when people start watching me just go down steep hills, they're like “whoa” and would want to take me out to skate more things.
I know a lot of people who can do kickflips and whatnot, but they could not feel comfortable going down a hill, you know? It’s more important to be comfortable than technical. I'm just all about flowing, and it's really easy to flow on a skateboard. I love bowl rides and grinding things.
How long do you think it took you to master the techniques you currently have?
I feel like I'm still working towards that, I feel like I haven’t mastered anything yet honestly. There’s not one thing I could say that I can land every time no matter what. Maybe a shove it or a back fifty on coping. For the most part, it's just a constant everyday renewing mindset of being confident and imagining yourself roll away. It’s not even the physical practice of skating I need, I just need to believe in myself. When I go towards things I just believe in myself, I'll roll away and not even realize I landed my trick until a few seconds after it and it feels awesome.
I know the skate scene must differ in terms of size and experiences from Los Angeles to now living in Puerto Rico, so how has your support system been in your new home?
It’s completely different than anything I've ever known. The support here is incredible, Puerto Ricans love Puerto Ricans and it’s a really small island. I have had a lot of really heartwarming moments here where I'm skating home in the middle of the night and all of a sudden I’ll hear a car pull over and be like, “Dani Torres! You rip!” or just scream something random and walk away. Or someone will buy a sticker off of me or something. I've never really felt like this, in LA it's so big. So many people skate there and especially now, I feel that people are starting to notice how special it is to skate and how you get friendships and experiences that you really can't get otherwise. LA is a very focused point.
There’s a tight community of girl skaters here, all because of one of my closest friends in Puerto Rico who was a big motivation for me to move here. She runs a brand, it's called Skate Mommies, but it's just a way to connect all the girls in Puerto Rico and skate together everywhere. They’re localized a little farther from where I currently am but there's a skate park there that's colorful and nice. It's a safe home for the girl skaters. I'll be going there next week to paint the ramp. I'm very excited.
Torres with her painting on a ramp
That’s amazing, how did you get connected for the opportunity to paint the ramp?
The thing about Puerto Rico is that it's not so strict. You really can paint wherever you want. I painted a mural last night at one of my favorite skate parks. And it was so awesome because everyone gets so excited when they see me painting or doing art. I've never felt so motivated to keep painting and skating. Sometimes I feel like you need a little bit of hype from your people to feel like what you're doing is worth it.
I painted a sun and a moon with it swirling. I have an art account called @ArtByDaniT which I put a lot of my work on and that one is on there. But most of my things are just like what I talk about all the time which is just flowing. I'm all about energy, balance, and connection. Those are the three most important things to focus on for me.
I’m sure those factors you focus on really transcend your skating.
Yeah, exactly. You really need to put energy in your body to be able to skate and focus on balance. Connect with your voice and people. I’ve learned more about myself and have gotten closer with myself throughout the past two years ever since I truly got into skating.
That’s another amazing thing about Puerto Rico, I'm so spoiled in LA with a million parks everywhere and you can drive on a road trip for like a month every day hitting a new park and still not even get all of them. Here, there's no park or anything. I still find ways and everyone finds ways to entertain themselves to have fun and progress. It makes me like actually learning things in skating, rather than just doing the same kick turns and a mini ramp all day. Although I do love a good bowl and mini ramp. It's nice to be skating the streets over here. It's empowering to mission places and just get through and not fall. The rain falls constantly here. So suddenly we're all skating with sunny skies and all of a sudden it's like boom, raining. Everyone goes and runs, and hides and figures out where to go all together.
It's empowering to hear your stories because with you being in Puerto Rico, it’s given you this extra strength to push forward with your art and skateboarding. Do you see that being just an everlasting thing? Are these two elements something that you want for your career?
It definitely is, I feel relieved because people in my life finally stopped asking me “what are you doing? What's your move? Where are you going to live? How are you gonna make money?” Because they get that I'm already living exactly how I'm gonna live till the day I die. I'm going to wake up, paint and I'm going to skate. I'm going to try to inspire people and spread light. If I make $15, that's fine. If I make, $80 I'm grateful. If I make nothing, that's okay. I would rather adapt to my situation than go out of my way to change things. Because I feel that I might be changing my natural destiny or something. I don't know what it would feel like to be happier than this. So I don't know what else I would strive for. I feel super fortunate to be able to survive off of two incredible passions that I have because then I just get to do what I want and be able to eat off of it also.
You’re truly taking the path that your life is meant for, some people go in circles looking for that.
For me to be able to figure all this out finally, was just taking space. I feel like if anyone actually spends enough time with themselves, they can easily pick out what makes them happy. Then after that, you just have to keep doing it.
What was the motivation for you to finally say, “you know what, I'm doing this”?
Well, I've always felt alone and didn't have didn’t take it as a positive thing. I was always searching for people to hang out with or someone to love me. I guess this past relationship I had and just got out of was the final push because what I thought I wanted was somebody to be in love with me and a bunch of people that wanted to hang out with me, then realizing it wasn’t even what I wanted. I finally was ready to hang out with myself and be alone. Being out here by myself has been great. I'm honestly shocked that it's been so easy because I usually don't feel comfortable alone. Lately, I’ve been feeling super strong, empowered, and less alone than I ever have. Because I'm surrounded by so many people but they are also not connected to me. I felt very smothered in my last relationship, and it caused me to make this life that I have now.
What do you envision for the future of skateboarding?
So I just think that overall in skateboarding, things will be way more open-minded and there's never really been rules. That'll probably just keep getting more intensified and just welcoming of anything and everybody that wants to skate. I think of time as the present you know, the past and the future is just right now also. The world is so crazy in general that I don't even know how much time we even have. But skating is one of those things that will go till the end. If a lot of things fail, such as sports teams getting shut down or whatnot, skating is something that cannot ever be stopped. Even if there are no skate parks anywhere or no wheels or wood, people will get on something to figure out how to skate and get that feeling anyway because it’s such a powerful feeling.
