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00:00Bro, you know what's more scary about being blind?
00:03What?
00:03I'll never be able to see your beautiful face.
00:06I'm Matterzaps, and I'm on a mission to explore skateboarding's outside edge.
00:10Hop in as we travel the globe meeting skateboarding's mavericks
00:13to find out what skating means to them.
00:36Detroit Rock City, USA.
00:40Here we are.
00:41Gonna meet up with Dan Mancina and Justin Bishop.
00:45Two skaters who cannot see at all, but they skate.
01:09Let's go.
01:25What's the problem?
01:27Yeah.
01:32We did a little session in the streets of Detroit, and now we're going to go meet Dan.
01:38And I'm super excited because there's nothing more inspirational than a blind skateboarder.
01:45After being diagnosed with retinal degenerative disease at age 13, Dan Mancina lost his sight
01:51at 22 and said goodbye to one of his great passions, skateboarding.
01:55But that's not the end of the story. In fact, it was just the beginning.
02:01Dan and fellow blind skater Justin Bishop invited us to America to ride with them
02:06and learn how they are building connections to one another and ride around the world.
02:11So this is where Dan lives.
02:18Knock, knock.
02:19Hello.
02:20Hey.
02:21Hi.
02:22How are you?
02:23Good.
02:23What's up, man? Good to meet you, brother.
02:25Good to meet you, dude.
02:26How are you doing?
02:27I'm good. Should I take my shoes off?
02:29Oh, no. You're good. You're chill.
02:31Can I get a hug?
02:32Yeah.
02:32Super happy to be here.
02:34Yeah, dog.
02:36So that's your new cane right there, or what?
02:39This one, man.
02:40The brand new cane.
02:42Broke one yesterday.
02:45You broke it?
02:46Yesterday.
02:46I was diagnosed when I was 13 with a hereditary eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa.
02:52It's called, like, RP, and pretty much told that my sight would slowly deteriorate throughout
02:57time until I was eventually blind or a little over six months ago.
03:02I lost the rest of my vision.
03:04In my mid-20s is when it really started to affect, like, my lifestyle, when I stopped driving.
03:10That's just the most annoying thing for me, you know?
03:13How do people treat you?
03:15People think you can't, like, do anything or, like, even, like, just all the small things.
03:20Yeah, you know, when you travel, if I'm ever with somebody, you know, like, especially, like,
03:23in the, like, security line or something, they'll be like, you know, does he have his ID
03:27or does he have his passport?
03:28And it's like, yeah, I'm right here, you know?
03:48So we just picked up Justin Bishop, and we're going to go skate.
04:01Oh, that's a tiny one, but I have, like, bigger ones that are more precise.
04:06I put it in front of a pole so I can get close to that pole and not hit it
04:10and then be far
04:11enough away from other poles, and I kind of want to just ollie into this bank, so it kind
04:16of gives me, like, a little bit of awareness where everything's at.
04:26That was close to the wall.
04:28That was close to the wall, man.
04:49All right, man, we can't finish this.
04:52Yeah, that's a lot of hard.
05:01I messed up my knee, so it's going to be thrashed all week.
05:04It's like, grip tape's straight to the leg, right?
05:06Yeah, it's grip tape, so, I mean, because if you're doing a trick, it's like, ugh.
05:23Uh-oh, what is that?
05:24Are you going to explode?
05:25No, no.
05:25No, it's just letting me know that I had it.
05:27It's a Nixon watch, so when you do that, like, if you have a rough ball, it explodes like
05:32that.
05:32Really?
05:33Yeah.
05:34That's kind of sick.
05:36Yeah.
05:45Yeah.
05:49That's kind of sick.
05:51It's been a long day of skating, so it's been a long day of skating, so tomorrow we're going
05:54to wake up again, and we've got Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
05:59We've got a couple days here.
06:09Yeah, I grew up skating, filming parts throughout high school and stuff like that, middle school.
06:14And then, like, a full-length part was in super shoes.
06:28I moved to Calais right down to high school, just to live off skating, you know?
06:35Be, uh, I guess, to be pro.
06:37Sounds weird to say, but...
06:39Is this park pretty chill on a Saturday morning?
06:42Um, I haven't been here on a Saturday in probably ten years.
06:49So, we're warming up at Riley Skate Park right by 8 Mile.
06:53Apparently, this is Eminem's stomping ground, and walked around the skate park with Justin,
06:58because he'd never been here before, so I helped him show, see, and visualize how the
07:03skate park looks like.
07:04That's cute.
07:07That's cute.
07:09That's cute.
07:30That's cute.
07:33Good.
07:34Good.
07:43People.
07:46Good.
07:52Good.
07:54Cool.
07:55Good.
08:00Fine.
08:01Yeah.
08:27I used to always see him around back in the day, whether it was down
08:33at Hart Plaza or around the city.
08:36He skates, like, it doesn't seem like it affected him, it's really weird, like, he can still
08:42skate good even though he can't see.
08:51I moved back to Michigan and, you know, having a kid and dealing with my blindness and all
08:55that stuff, so.
08:57I mean, yeah, there's definitely a time when I was kind of, you know, bummed down or whatever.
09:01Some kind of, you know, figure out who I was again, kind of had to refine myself, just being
09:07sick of the way people treated me and the low expectations and stuff like that.
09:12And then just slowly eventually realized that, like, I'm just way happier and just a better
09:19person when I'm on my board.
09:25No stopping, no hesitation, straight forward motivation.
09:58I made a mistake earlier.
10:00I thought, Dan, yeah, you're going straight.
10:01And then he ended up jumping into the rail, like, gnarly fall.
10:08I feel so bad.
10:21I almost got ran over by a car, but he did it.
10:25Oh, I thank him for making me do it.
10:26I'm scared of grinding and moving, so I wouldn't have done it unless Madders told me to.
10:32Let's take the hillbomb. Are you ready?
10:37Over there, like, there's a bunch of nothing. Big, big Canadian flag across downtown Detroit.
10:45A bunch of classic Detroit, Michigan spots here. Glad to see what Mars can do.
11:12We've got to eat.
11:23We work with people that are blind,
11:25vision impaired, in the people's homes. We generally don't do it here.
11:29This is the only exception upstairs.
11:36And what he does is he teaches them skills to give them the ability to be independent.
11:41And he's got a great story to tell because he tells about how he lost his vision.
11:46He tells about what it took him to come back.
11:50And that's the most important thing with vision loss,
11:52is the ability to come back, to decide that your life isn't over.
11:57That's the biggest crisis that people that are blind face, is that they've had vision
12:04and they lose it. Then it's a big crime for them because you start to think of everything you can
12:11do and then you think of everything you've lost. That's why it's so amazing that he can skateboard,
12:18because he's come back through that. It gave him purpose again. As he said it, he wanted to be a
12:25professional skateboarder before he lost his vision. And then he lost his vision, he became a
12:30professional skateboarder, which is the amazing thing, is that he accomplished a goal that he wanted
12:35before he lost his vision. And he got it after he lost his vision, which is, when you think about
12:41that,
12:41that's amazing.
12:53MUSIC PLAYS
13:21We're here at the one and only Detroit DIY spot, the WIG.
13:24Short for the Wiggle Park, me and Mars are trying to get it in before it starts raining.
13:31The real guys were in town and that's when they presented me with the Action Realize
13:35Ray's Braille board, so it just gave this place a little bit more meaning to me for sure.
13:58My favorite thing about Dan is honestly just how humble he is.
14:01As far as being a skater, sometimes I forget that he even is blind.
14:06I mean, we'll go to a spot and I'll be like, oh, you should try this.
14:11They're like, oh, come on, dude, that's lame.
14:12You know what I mean?
14:12So it's like, he doesn't let it get to him.
14:15He's super humble about it.
14:17He's himself.
14:18He hasn't let him being blind change who he is and that's rad.
14:29When I was younger, my life was just more positive, everything about it.
14:34And then losing it, it was like negative in my mindset.
14:38Not all negative, but just something missing, you know?
14:41Like ever since I've been back on my board, like, it's just good things happen.
14:47Everything's, it just feels like it's where I'm supposed to be and what I'm supposed to be doing.
14:55Chili, cheese, mustard, onion.
14:58And these are corny dogs and chili cheese fries.
15:02All right.
15:03Here we go.
15:14I'm going to need to order another one.
15:24Yes.
15:30What does the braille say on the board?
15:33So it says, and then the bigger braille is R-E-A-L, real.
15:40And then skateboards.
15:43Yeah, I don't even care.
15:45That's just gnarly.
15:46Thank you, seriously.
15:48It means a lot.
15:48It means a lot to meet you and I love what you do.
15:56I got that, right?
15:58It's not like helping.
15:59Backside 5-0 slash in the deep end.
16:02So good.
16:04Justin Bishop.
16:06Getting it done.
16:07Yeah.
16:11I wonder if Dan is going to land his first kickflip, because if he doesn't land his first kickflip,
16:16he's going to need to do some push-ups.
16:20Hey, he used the cane.
16:23No push-ups for me today.
16:24He used the cane.
16:25I saw you.
16:25You used the cane to balance that.
16:27You used your eyes.
16:30Oh!
16:32He made.
16:33Oh!
16:35Oh!
16:37Oh!
16:40Oh!
16:41Oh!
16:41Oh!
16:42Oh!
16:42Oh!
16:44Oh!
16:45Oh!
16:45Oh!
16:45Oh!
16:45Oh!
16:55Oh!
16:56Oh!
16:58Oh!
16:59Oh!
17:04It's raining out here in the parking lot because it's raining outside.
17:15Yeah, it's the first time doing a handstand downhill, so hopefully I can get one.
17:34No release, man.
17:53I mean, I like to see myself skating for as long as possible. Man, just travel as much as I
17:58can, be in the van as much as I can with the boys. It pushes me a lot, you know,
18:06just seeing those guys, what they're doing, seeing you skate, see what you do. It's like, man, motivates me to
18:14keep going.
18:19I'm going to try out the blind skateboarding.
18:30Are you regular or goofy? I'm regular.
18:33That's what I do, so stick it far so you have plenty of time to know where the drop is.
18:40Boom. The minute you feel that, it's falling.
18:53I'm going to try to alley without my cane. Without the cane.
19:04It's fun if you realize the dangers of it.
19:28Yeah.
19:31I've probably been skating with no vision for about three years, four years now.
19:36Actually, when Dan's Red Bull thing came out, my friends were telling me that he's in the street, because I
19:43used that as an excuse. I can't street skate. I can't do any of that. I can go back and
19:48forth. I can feel transition and coping and stuff.
19:51And that's when I was like, holy shit, there's like another blind skater that also has RP. And we're the
20:00same age too. It's just, it's insane.
20:02Do you ever lose your eyesight? Are you going to give up skateboarding?
20:07Probably not.
20:08Yeah. No way.
20:10All right.
20:16All right.
20:18All right.
20:20All right.
20:50I've always seen it as a way to express myself, you know, especially now more than ever as
20:56a blind person. It's like I said, it gives me a way to show people who I am in the
21:02way
21:02that I want to be seen, right? As somebody who's capable and not as somebody who's handicapped
21:08her disabled or anything like that, people meet me like they're, like he said, they're
21:12like happy and stoked as opposed to have some kind of pity or feel sorry for me or something
21:18like that. You know, blindness isn't the worst thing that can happen to you. They say a bad
21:23day in the lake is better than a good day in the office, you know? I got it pretty easy
21:26for, compared to, you know, other disabilities and stuff like that. But, I mean, I've just
21:34going through my vision loss and trying to, like, figure out what does a blind person
21:40do and then realizing, like, you know, it's more about what does Dan want to do. So, don't
21:45let other people, especially people who don't understand what you're going through, dictate
21:53your lifestyle and choose your path in life and tell you what you should do or shouldn't
21:59do. I mean, it's really, it's up to you to figure out, you know, what makes you happy
22:05and figure out exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And you got to just keep, like,
22:13the best thing for me to do was, like, I never stopped searching for something. Whatever
22:17it is, I was always, I was always moving forward.
22:20He's alright. He'll find a good worm. Go tell your papa I'm coming for him, huh?
22:25Dan Mancina is a skater who lost his sight but not his vision. A remarkable story, he
22:31made it back from the pits of despair to become a worldwide inspiration. Plus, he is ripping.
22:38Dan's example fired up other blind skaters like Justin Bishops to overcome the cards life
22:43dealt them. And now they rip together. Maybe we can all take some of that energy and use
22:48it in our own lives. Inside skating and out.
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