Dancin' Dan, delivery man: Meals à la art
From a Razor scooter to crazy `Carvid' and wild kilts, artist showcases his ultimate punk prowess
Like a modern-day Sandy Calder, Daniel Diehl likes his art to be mobile.
Only Diehl's art isn't tethered by string or wire, it goes everywhere he goes. And of late that's meant zooming around the North Shore transporting meals to folks who ordered via a delivery app.
It's not uncommon, he said, for people to do a double-take and ask him about the `Carvid,' his latest work of art which, being a 1994 Honda Accord, literally moves people.
“At times, I'm probably the most-photographed guy in Vancouver,” Diehl said. “Everybody's got cellphones, it's click-click-click everywhere I go.”
It could be a sweet elderly couple, it could be a group of unruly rednecks, Diehl doesn't discriminate — if they're polite and want a photo of the car or of him, he'll oblige.
“As an older artist, the older artist's job is to inspire the younger ones and then one day they'll be older and then they'll do the same,” he said.
It's perhaps the 50th vehicle he's turned into art in his life. He's not sure. You buy an old car, you glue a dollar-store's inventory onto the exterior, you drive it, you fix it when it breaks down until it can't be fixed anymore.
His art and life are influenced by punk rock. As he is fond of saying, he didn't grow out of punk, he grew into it.
“If you say you used to be a rocker but aren't anymore, you never were,” he said.
A runaway after dropping out of Grade 8 following his parents' separation, Diehl worked all over North America — as a carny, farmhand, movie extra, whatever job would pay a footloose young man — from the Arctic to the Deep South and back up the West Coast to first arrive in Vancouver 40 years ago.
Now 62, he's called the city home for 30 years and was long a colourful fixture zipping through downtown traffic. Dancin' Dan, they called him, kilt and hair flying behind him as he darted in and out of traffic.
Diehl's body type — mesomorph, like his dad — gave him a barrel chest, circus-strongman arms, and calves sculpted by Michelangelo. Also a melon too big for a bike helmet to fit comfortably.
At least that's what he told the cops after helmets became mandatory.
Couriers then were carrying anything from oodles of cash to diamonds to legal contracts to top-secret corporate information, and Diehl felt perhaps the authorities could have spent their time better policing the wolves of Howe Street.
But to avoid further hassles, he switched to a 1950s-era push scooter, long before the Razor kick-scooter craze.
As unconventional as he looked entering downtown office towers, for every 10 people who would scowl at him there'd be a thousand who'd greet him with bemused grins, he said. (Not bad: 100 smiles to one frown.)
He hit the ground running when he was born near Hamilton, Ont., always hyperactive, always on the move. After his parents separated, he split.
The road was his school. A literal information highway.
“Some of the happiest moments are when you're like, 16, and under a bridge in L.A. and you're reading a comic book and enjoying yourself. Maybe you'll go back to Seattle, maybe go to Frisco, whatever,” he said during a 1999 interview about a Telus ad that featured him in full punk regalia.
He feels the same today. Frontman for the reunited rock band Noble Globals (heavy on punk, of course), Diehl works in other art mediums. But he himself and the vehicles that keep him moving are his favourite canvases, always have been.
In a way, he's boldly gone ... Diehl's mom died not that long ago; his dad, 90, was a longtime trucker who ran a limo business for 25 years until retiring in 2016.
He sees no reason he can't keep at it into his 90s himself.
“My two favourite elder Canadian actors are Christopher Plummer and William Shatner,” he said. Plummer is 90, Shatner is 89.
“I mean, if they can still do it, maybe I can as well.”