Inside This Adventure Filmmaker's Gear Garage & Colorado Home | Huckberry Homes Ep. 7 Sinuhe Xavier

This one's real special and I don't even know what to make of it. But he came to me with this and he goes, dad, I got it. Chicken scented crayons. It's, it's baffled me for the last couple of years. And as he gets older, he's, he's kind of denies he ever did it. My name is Sunway Xavier. I'm an adventure photographer and director, far off places, small footprint, hard to get to that type of thing. We're on the Western slope of the Rocky mountains, just outside of Vail, Colorado. For me and my connection to the Colorado plateau, it's, it's worked out really great because I'm three hours from the Red Rock desert. That means a lot to me. And I'm also 20 minutes from great snowboarding. I think the thing about the Colorado plateau is still a place where I think you get into a little bit of, of raw nature where you can look out over a landscape and not see a discernible road. You don't see power lines. You don't see a building. For as far as you can see in some places, it's just pure, raw nature. Being this close and being able to get there is key. We're going to start here at the garage. This is where I kind of prep everything for most of my adventures, depending on who I'm with. Hopefully it's with my son. We've got the motorcycle, we've got his bike. I love that he loves riding a motorcycle, riding a mountain bike and a BMX bike. It's great to expose him to it and have him glom onto it. 2012 BMW GS doesn't matter how bad your day is going. An hour on this fixes it. Back here is the workbench. I do most of the work on my trucks or my motorcycle, definitely bicycles. You know, it keeps costs down when I can do it myself. A couple of years ago as I was invited to race the Mexican 1000, and it was really a ragtag group of guys that did it. We had no idea what we were doing, you know, running a 1969 Myers-Manks. So it was a really special time. And I think there were six of us that did it, which is teeny for a team. You know, I don't know that I'm going to do it again, but it's nice to have that there to remind me that I did do it. Something funny that's kind of followed me throughout my life is I had the first skate ramp in Montana. I've had Tony Hawk skate it. People knew about it from everywhere in that zone. So skating has always been a part of my life. It's not much anymore because it hurts real bad when I, when I slam, but Cooper, my son's into it and I support him a hundred percent. I think if you want to create a space like this for yourself, don't get caught up in the stuff of it. You buy things slowly as you need them and buy stuff that that's quality. This thing's gotta be 15, 16 years old. This snow peak awning, 20 years old, maybe these Therm-A-Rests have gotta be 10, 15 years old. When you buy stuff that's quality and it lasts, it just it never goes out of style and you'll have it forever. I'm going to move out here towards the back of the truck. This is my work truck. I built it and designed it to be able to go out, be remote for two weeks ish and try and keep everything, you know, in here and ready to go at a moment's notice. And then, you know, here's one of my favorite things, the trash picker upper keeps campsites clean. Pasadena Pickle Company. My son started that. He got a 3d printer and he makes 3d printed key chains, sells them on the playground. He got shut down at school. Uh, he couldn't actually sell it during class, uh, after a couple of weeks. So I made him some stickers, Pasadena Pickle Company. I've never understood people with like a super clean garage, the sterile garage, but I've always been a Land Rover guy and those things leak oil and it's a mess. And you know, I think maybe if I had a larger space, it could be a little tighter and organized, but this works. Let's go into the gear closet. This is kind of my spot where I come down, sit down, put on my boots. I keep my boards inside. It's just out of respect for them. My little guy's board, you know, it's the old Craig Kelly, mustard and ketchup board. My friend Ty, he had a bunch of these Nigerian barbershop signs that were brought over from Nigeria. And you know, and I just like coming home and seeing cross-eyed Tupac. So yeah, this is my main bookshelf where I have a lot of my books that I really love from photography, adventure, travel, design books over here. My old Leica camera down there. For me, it's really important to have these books. People aren't making books like they used to. It's not on some computer monitor, an iPhone monitor. It's like flip through and feel the photos the way they wanted you to see it, the color grading. And I think that that is really important and something that's getting lost. It's the best little thing ever. This sports cars and hi-fi. So this area, it's naps, a lot of naps, no TV, not into the TV in the living room. I keep all of my rare books in here. You know, I married adventure by Osa Johnson, little hiding spot for good stuff. Rocks from the kid. Got so many rocks in my life, but this one, if you look close, he swears it's gold. Where did film and photo and directing come into your life? Well, I grew up, my mom was a photographer, did not professionally. But I grew up with a dark room in my house and it was always this thing. And I think once you've been a professional athlete, you're pretty unemployable. It's just my opinion, but that's my own experience. But having a regular job after you get paid to go skiing, it's super hard to work for somebody. So photography for me was a really natural evolution. If I'm being completely honest, I spend most of my time over here. I'll post up, you know, I've got my books, I've got my art, I've got my record player over there. And it just feels really big and open, even though it's a tight, compact space. This table was a gift to me by a great friend in LA who had these made out of a reclaimed factory floors in Brazil. And it hasn't fared very well here in the super dry climate started kind of cracking apart, but I've also kind of fallen in love with the Wabi Sabi of it. And these chairs, I found these at an estate sale and they're the classic Herman Miller ply chairs, score of a century as far as chairs go. Here we have a Jim Mangan print of Ken Block from their project that they did together called Blast. Jim gave this to me last year, shortly after Ken Block passed away. And then here we have Banksy print of the Trolley Hunters. This was from his 2006 show. First thing in the morning, I pretty much sleepwalk into the kitchen. And this is my little station for the first bit. I'm not an espresso guy, nothing wrong with espresso guys. When I found pour over coffees, I fell in love with them. And when I found this where I could hit the button and walk away, and it's the best coffee out of the machine I've ever had. It's amazing. These are done by Matt Alberts, these tin types. I was going to get one of them framed, but Cooper, he wrote his name on it. And I just can't, I'm going to get it framed just like this, on the cardboard with Cooper's old name there. I mean, it's just, it's the best, just a really special moment with him in Ojai with Matt Alberts. You know, a note from a great friend, you know, some pictures from production, Jimmy Chin, Riley Harper, Dave Castillo, Polaroids from spring breaks, past coop stuff, you know, getting anything from him is the best. It's, there's nothing better. So now we'll head upstairs to my office where I do the grinding work. And this is a funky little room. It's just a nice quiet spot where I work when I really need to focus and least amount of distractions. Over here, we've got Hitchcock poster that I shot all the photos for and signed by all the, all the stars. This is definitely my favorite painting that I own. Mark Paul, Darren, AKA Mad Stees, an incredible artist. This is one of his earliest works. I mean, this thing's gotta be years old, at least Mr. T in a suit, like wearing glasses. And it's just kind of this fun little spot where I've ended up keeping a lot of my doodads, you know, my little trinkets, my matchbox cars, my Lego pieces, my, you know, some fun books that mean something to me. And this is one of the best gifts I ever got when I first had coop from a great friend, Megan. It's the dangerous book for boys. You go through it and it's got all these different little activities that kind of explain the world for a kid. And it's super fun. If he ever comes up to me and goes, dad, I'm bored. This is the book I come and grab. I'm glad Huckberry called me to do this project because it really made me dive into and kind of get reacquainted with a lot of the stuff that mattered to me and going through the house. The best part of the whole day was how obvious it was to somebody that's never met me before, how tied in my son is to my house that he doesn't live in full time. In Pasadena where he lives, he has to get in the car to go to the park, to go to the skate park, to go to the BMX track in this neighborhood. He's got his little crew here that he plays with and they've got a fort up in the woods. He'll go mountain biking. He'll go skateboarding. He's so free here and that was really important for me, for him.