Catching Up With Chase Stopnik, Adri Law, and Lana MacNaughton: Founders of Paradise Road Show
We recently set up our pop-up trailer and spent a warm January weekend at the Paradise Road Show — a classic car, motorcycle, and hot rod show held every year in Palm Springs. After a great two days of sunshine, vintage eye candy, cold beverages, and great company, we took a few minutes to sit down and catch up with Chase Stopnik, Adri Law, and Lana MacNaughton, the founders of the event.
Adri: The show was really good this year. There were lots of people and lots of things going on. [We’ve] gotten good feedback, so I’m happy. I’m tired, but it was exciting, and I’m happy with how everything turned out.
Chase: The show’s growing, the weather’s beautiful.
Chase: That’s definitely how we know each other. But Adri and I have a lot of similar interests, like vintage and that sort of stuff. We both live in LA, Lana lives in Portland. But yeah, it’s definitely the motorcycle thing that got us all connected.
Adri: I think it was more of a common interest. I don’t know, something that we all kind of resonate with.
Lana: We just don’t like new sh*t. We would never put on a modern show. And I think ‘75 and older is just rad. It’s just beautiful. You know, everything that was made well was made a long time ago. Everything is kind of bull sh*t now.
Adri: They’re more rare, you know? You don’t see them as often, so they stick out more.
Chase: A new car show would kind of just be like a dealership, haha.
Adri: It’s kind of just referring to older decades, you know.
Lana: American tradition, really.
Adri: Americana
Lana: Families.
Adri: The roots of American culture. 50s wholesomeness.
Lana: Like eating dinner as a family, making a pie.
Chase: No phones at the table.
Adri: You want to do it together. It’s a fun thing to do with your friends. It’s cool to find people that are into those things. It’s special when you can find that and enjoy that with your friends or other people that you enjoy.
Adri: Lana and I went to Europe a couple years ago together. We rode across five different countries for a whole month with two other girls. Chase and I went on a trip a couple years ago, and it was a work thing. We rode across all these places in California for Marlboro.
Chase: For her brother’s cigarette company which was like the worst. But it’s whatever.
Adri: Sell your soul for a little bit. American tradition.
Chase: But I mean, really, I think we got the good part out of it. We got to ride motorcycles in cool places.
Adri: And it was also paid for.
Chase: The CHP was blocking the best roads for us so you could just ride.
Adri: It was really pretty epic.
Chase: Pretty much from the LA area, up the 395 to Mammoth. And like Mono Lake.
Adri: No, we stayed in hotels.
Chase: We had a sick camping set-up, but it was just for a photoshoot, haha.
Adri: A staged campsite. We were like, “we’re gonna go to our hotel room. You guys can set up this tent sh*t.”
Lana: It was years ago. There was one of me and Doug on the pack of cigarettes. Someone sent a photo to me. I saw [it] a long time ago. It was a really sh*tty quality photo, but that was the only thing I ever really saw from it. Who knows what they do with those photos.
Lana: Oh god, that’s so scary.
Adri: Her and I are.
Lana: I shoot with a 60s Hasselblad and then a Super 8 and then a Canon 6D.
Adri: I shoot a lot of 35mm.
Adri: I have a 99 Sportster. Lana has a couple bikes.
Lana: I have a 61 Bultaco Pursang, I have a 2013 0F250, I have a 2001 Sportster, and I have a 73 Shovelhead. And then I have two Royal Enfields.
Lana: Yeah. I’m building a flat track bike with Royal Enfield right now, and I’m actually part of this build, train, race program…slash I’m not building it. I’m hiring somebody to build it and I’m like, “I want it to look like this.” He’s teaching me, but I’m not building it. Then they’re training me how to race flat track with a coach which is really cool.
Adri: That’s cool.
Lana: Yeah, and then I’ll be doing a couple races on a 650 which is really scary, but…yeah, there’s no front brake.
Adri: Sick.
Lana: And I’m racing against professional girls.
Lana: I’m practicing at Mama Tried, and the American Flat Track Association is doing races, so I think I’ll be at one of those.
Lana: Totally. It’s so fun. Royal Enfield’s rad because it’s run by mostly women and it’s really refreshing.
Lana: Yeah!
Chase: At the moment, right now, I just have motorcycle parts. I just sold a motorcycle, because I like to build them, but then I also like to sell them so that I can keep building them. So right now, I just have parts.
Chase: Like ten years, probably. I like doing it. And that’s really, I think what bonds a lot of these people together in a show like this. They get what it takes to create something, you know? And most of the stuff that everybody works on is older stuff anyway, so it just only makes sense.
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