Danny Brady lived in the skate house where Palace was born, started riding for the brand after the demise of Blueprint nearly a decade ago, and is now handling Team Manager duties. To say that he he has an insider’s perspective on the brand would be a severe understatement. Brady breaks down the key to Palace’s rise in prominence in a new interview published by Free this afternoon. From his perspective, it all boils down to Lev Tanju.

I don’t know man… All I know is that you have to give props where props are due and it all comes down to Lev. He’s really hard to predict, which I think is one of the main things… He’ll always take an idea, turn it into something super weird and somehow it’ll just work really well. He’s also not scared do say or do what he thinks, as I’m sure you know. To be honest I can’t really explain what he does or how he does it, but what I can say though is that on the skate side, anything we want to do, we can do it. They don’t hold back on spending money on the team and they listen to what we want to do: that does a lot. And everyone’s mates in the office you know? Communication is really open, like everyone feels free to say what they want about anything.

For more on Brady and Palace, head over to Free to read the entire piece.

Image Via Alex Pires