Dane Reynolds Discusses The Biggest Regrets Of His Surfing Career | StabMic Ep. 18

If you ain’t the one, you the prototype.

Every institution has its creation myth. Rome had Romulus and Remus, Apple had the garage, The Beats had the 1944 murder.

StabMic, in its larval stage, had no posters, sponsors, or Danny from the booth. It wasn’t even StabMic yet. It was just an idea, and perhaps the defining idea of the modern male condition.

We should start a podcast.

This was sometime around the end of 2024.

Dane and Dooma never got around to settling on a name, though several contenders emerged from the primordial soup: Shit Salad, Off The Pulse, Sucking Dick For Beer Money, Unemployable, and Nonsense. Fine names, in my opinion, if slightly difficult to monetise. History is written by the victors and unfortunately, so are algorithm-friendly podcast titles.

On moving day at the old Chapter 11 store in Ventura, they filmed a pilot episode, an early hominid in the StabMic evolutionary timeline. Consequently, the recording is punctuated by customers wondering if the store was still trading, people searching for the new location, and team riders intermittently raiding the fridge for beer.

The production values were also slightly lower than our current Ventura dungeon.

One camera, a couple of microphones Dooma paid for himself, and several Coors Lights for social lubrication. Civilisation has been built on less. Many ramblings ensued. 

The conversation meandered through Dane’s fascination with inland America, from the magic of Idaho to the hoax of Wyoming, before eventually arriving at a number of his hotter takes.

On the success of the Florence hood:

“It pisses me off that he was able to do that.”

“I’m not pissed off at John John, he rules, but it pisses me off how quickly he was able to connect with his audience, and that we weren’t. It’s a jealous thing.”

On the financial mistakes of his career:

“I was just an idiot. I wouldn’t do anything if I thought it was whack. I was very ungrateful. Money just wasn’t a tangible thing to me at the time. What they were paying me, and what they expected out of me, and how I was always just like, ‘fuck you!’ I was not grateful at all. Pro surfing doesn’t set you up for much humility.”

“I didn’t think I was cool or rad or anything like that. I just didn’t see the transaction of money meaning anything.”

“Money didn’t mean anything to me in my 20s. I’d only spend money on donuts and surf trips, and my sponsors would pay for those. With Monster, I was an idiot. I rode for them for a while, but when it came to re-signing, I was like, ‘Uhhh, I don’t really like Monsters, so I don’t want to ride for them anymore.'”

“I would have been such a failure if I was growing up in this era. It’s so cringey to me to be self-promotional, and now you just have to be.”

Dane also admits to turning down significant money from sunglasses brands because he hates wearing them. They make him feel like he’s wearing a mask, he says. Like he’s pretending to be somebody else.

An hour-long experiment was all it took for the suspicion to form that this might be something worth continuing. Dooma got chatting with Sam Mc. One thing led to another, and roughly a year later, StabMic arrived.

We’re now four and a half months into the project. Long enough, we thought, to revisit its awkward adolescence. 

This is the first recorded episode of StabMic in chronological time.

Episode 18 in the order of release.

Enjoy.

This episode was filmed by Kevin Janson. Big thanks to our sponsors, Rationale Brewing and Yucca Fins, too.