Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest this week is skateboarder Extraordinary, one of the most
Speaker 1: famous and successful athletes in the world, Tony Hawk. Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Good to have your Tony. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna jump right in. Okay, did you first jump on
Speaker 1: a skateboard? I was about nine years old, was when
Speaker 1: the skating craze of the seventies was was in its peak, basically,
Speaker 1: and my older brother was a surfer and he started
Speaker 1: skating as a natural progression. Um he was skating and
Speaker 1: I just picked up his old board and I said,
Speaker 1: how do I do this thing? And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: just stand on and go and I I got on
Speaker 1: it and I rode to the end of the driveway
Speaker 1: and slammed into the fence because I couldn't figure how
Speaker 1: to turn. Well, it's funny, I have almost an identical
Speaker 1: story because skateboarding was a big thing in the sixties.
Speaker 1: Even Jan and Dean had a song called Sidewalk Surfing,
Speaker 1: which was a remake of Surf City and with we
Speaker 1: had the metal wheels. You had the metal wheels and
Speaker 1: you had the clay wheels. And I was in Mammoth Mountain,
Speaker 1: this type, the same type. I was there for the
Speaker 1: month of May, and you know Mammoth the main lodge,
Speaker 1: the gigantic parking lot. Okay, so the guy gives me
Speaker 1: a board with the new wheels, and I go, and
Speaker 1: then suddenly I realized, for those people don't know, it's
Speaker 1: slowly downhill and it's an eight thousand, almost nine thousand feet.
Speaker 1: It was a holy crap, I'm gonna have to walk back.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't been on a skateboard in about nine
Speaker 1: or ten years. And I stepped off the board. Wow,
Speaker 1: because you know, I was smart after us, you have
Speaker 1: to run off the board. So you just you did.
Speaker 1: We call that a Mr Wilson. I believe I had.
Speaker 1: The only good thing is I'd come from skiing and
Speaker 1: I had, you know, multiple layers of clothing on ripped
Speaker 1: right through my turtleneck, my ski pants, my long underwear
Speaker 1: got road rash. Wow. That was my reintroduction of the seventies. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you're you have an older brother. How many kids
Speaker 1: in your family? For we have two older sisters as
Speaker 1: well and young and you're the youngest by a lot.
Speaker 1: My my older brothers thirteen years older than me. Your
Speaker 1: older brothers thirteen years and how much older your sisters
Speaker 1: eighteen and you'll have the same parents. Yes, so I was.
Speaker 1: I was very much a surprise and accident. My mom
Speaker 1: was forty three at the time. So you essentially grew
Speaker 1: up as almost as an only child with your parents. Wow.
Speaker 1: So where you know a lot of times when you're
Speaker 1: the baby of the family, your parents are lenient. They
Speaker 1: let you do whatever you want. Uh. That definitely that
Speaker 1: was the case. I think also my they had been
Speaker 1: through a lot of a lot of scenarios with my
Speaker 1: a lot of challenging situations with my siblings as well,
Speaker 1: just because it was the seventies. You know, they were
Speaker 1: experimenting and my my sister got into music, my brother
Speaker 1: got into surfing, and they fully supported them in those endeavors,
Speaker 1: but you know, it just jumped them out on their
Speaker 1: comfort zone very much. So once I came along, it
Speaker 1: was like, what just keep him happy, whatever he's doing,
Speaker 1: let him do it. And what did your father do
Speaker 1: for a living? Uh? He well, he was a Navy
Speaker 1: pilot World War two really and then uh and then
Speaker 1: he sold Um. He kind of got into it through
Speaker 1: my sister. He started selling musical instruments UM wholesale in
Speaker 1: San Diego just as a hobby because their band needed
Speaker 1: gear UM. And then he got into it and he
Speaker 1: made connections and he did that till you retired. Really,
Speaker 1: so part of the whole NAM world, etcetera. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: used to go to NAM when I was when I
Speaker 1: was like eight nine years old. For those people don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the Music Merchant Show. It's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest shows in the ammah Anaheim. Happens in January.
Speaker 1: It's a private show, but really, if you know, anybody
Speaker 1: can get in, right. But I just went because like
Speaker 1: I didn't, you know, my mom be out of town
Speaker 1: and so my dad would have to take me and
Speaker 1: I just his booth or go. You're just plowing my
Speaker 1: mind because you know, this is my girlfriend's world. My
Speaker 1: girlfriend runs a foundation called the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation,
Speaker 1: which they give instruments to underprivileged schools. So why don't
Speaker 1: you start talking. I know all these people through her
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't know otherwise. Is I got a NAM
Speaker 1: with her? So I didn't realize your father's soul music.
Speaker 1: Well it was, I mean it was a pretty it
Speaker 1: was relatively small business in San Diego. But but it
Speaker 1: was cool. I that's how I started. I started playing
Speaker 1: violent actually at that time. Really okay, but just stay
Speaker 1: with your father. So he's a navy pilot. When they
Speaker 1: have the right stuff, the movie, the book, whatever, does
Speaker 1: he start telling stories about that stuff? He Uh, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I don't think he didn't feel I
Speaker 1: don't want to say proud, but you know, his valor
Speaker 1: wasn't that he really wanted to brag about it. I
Speaker 1: think he he didn't like a lot of stuff he
Speaker 1: had to do in World War Two, especially, so he
Speaker 1: was pretty mom about all of it. You know. It's
Speaker 1: also he was definitely through, you know, running bombing missions,
Speaker 1: you know, with with propeller planes off of aircraft carriers,
Speaker 1: like it was the real deal. Wow, that really is
Speaker 1: the real deal. But my father was not in the military.
Speaker 1: He was the sole support for his mother. But it
Speaker 1: was you know, my father would so internalize. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until he was like in his fifties, remember writing this,
Speaker 1: Have you ever been asked for highlands? He used to
Speaker 1: have this cheerlift that took a half an hour. And
Speaker 1: my father also started telling stories about his youth. I'd
Speaker 1: never heard. I never got into that. I think I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it was he was he was ashamed.
Speaker 1: He didn't you know, he didn't like there there was
Speaker 1: I remember a time someone was talking about some area,
Speaker 1: some remote area and near Okinawa, Japan or something, and
Speaker 1: and they said, have you ever been there in that area?
Speaker 1: And my dad said, bombed it? You know, like but
Speaker 1: like it was kind of a joke, but you could
Speaker 1: tell there was a very it was very weighted, right. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're nine years old and you pick up your
Speaker 1: brother's skateboard, you skate, and you crash into the fence
Speaker 1: at the end of the road, and then you think
Speaker 1: there was no epiphany. Um, I thought, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it was fun. A lot of my friends had
Speaker 1: started doing it around that time, so I joined them.
Speaker 1: It was more like it was a social thing, and
Speaker 1: we would go skate around the different driveways. You know,
Speaker 1: we had these alleyways, um, and we would go skate
Speaker 1: around them. And then every once while someone would build
Speaker 1: a little a little wooden ramp, and so their their
Speaker 1: place was the place for a couple of weeks, you know,
Speaker 1: their right their driveway with their little ramp, and then uh,
Speaker 1: eventually I got invited to go to the local skate
Speaker 1: park which was in San Diego, UM called Oasis. And
Speaker 1: how far is that from your house? Uh? Like twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: It was right by the the stadium where the Chargers played,
Speaker 1: actually where the Padres played, UM, and so I went there.
Speaker 1: And when I went there, that's when I had my
Speaker 1: wow moment. I saw I literally saw people flying around.
Speaker 1: I saw these guys. Okay, so was it more seeing
Speaker 1: what was going on? He was seeing what was going
Speaker 1: on in the terrain, because suddenly it was like, we're
Speaker 1: not just skating on the sidewalk. These are you know,
Speaker 1: empty swimming pools that have this potential to throw you
Speaker 1: in the air. And I saw that, I saw these
Speaker 1: guys flying around. I was like, I want to do that.
Speaker 1: I want to do that at any cost. That was
Speaker 1: that was my moment for sure. And I mean, that's
Speaker 1: really enough. But any other thoughts, like you know, I
Speaker 1: might get hurt, or this might be fun or thrilling, thrilling,
Speaker 1: I mean that that was the motivation for sure. And
Speaker 1: like I said, it was they were flying. I wanted
Speaker 1: to fly, and and everything that I had done leading
Speaker 1: up to that I had played a lot of sports.
Speaker 1: I was always frustrated that I wasn't bigger, and you
Speaker 1: know I was, you know, I was. I was a
Speaker 1: run I was like I was a little scrawny dude,
Speaker 1: you know. And I used to get mistaken from way
Speaker 1: younger than I was all the time back then, And
Speaker 1: so I would play sports, and you know I was.
Speaker 1: I was a good basketball player, especially from my size,
Speaker 1: but everyone else was taller and they just had an advantage.
Speaker 1: And like I was a decent baseball player, but it was,
Speaker 1: you know, there was just more. I didn't have the
Speaker 1: strength of the weight, and skateboarding unknowingly leveled that playing
Speaker 1: field for me because I figured out this way to
Speaker 1: propel my what my limited weight into the air and
Speaker 1: that generally wasn't the way people could do it. And
Speaker 1: I was pretty fearless. I didn't I didn't mind getting
Speaker 1: hurt for the sake of learning. That was never my issue.
Speaker 1: And a lot of my friends would get hurt and
Speaker 1: they were over it. They're done. Okay, So how old
Speaker 1: are you? Literally, when you go to the skatepark ten
Speaker 1: years old, you're ten years old. It's twenty minutes away.
Speaker 1: How do you get there, I would get a ride
Speaker 1: with friends. Um, sometimes my dad would take me and
Speaker 1: my brother was in college at the time. We had
Speaker 1: one day a week that he would dry. He was
Speaker 1: in um, Northern San Diego he or no, was he? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Northern San Diego. He would drive down and take me
Speaker 1: to skate park once a week and we would go
Speaker 1: skate together. Okay, So, so when you're ten years old,
Speaker 1: how many times a week are going to the skate park?
Speaker 1: Probably too okay? And did they charge you to go
Speaker 1: to the skate park? They did? Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was nominal, but it wasn't easy. Like my we were
Speaker 1: middle class ish, um, so it was you know, it was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that I was getting a free ride, Definitely,
Speaker 1: there was. I had a paper route and I had
Speaker 1: to earn it. I had I remember earning money for
Speaker 1: to buy stickers. The buy stickers. Wow, what stickers did
Speaker 1: you buy? Going trucks? Okay, so you're going twice a
Speaker 1: week to the skate park when you're not, are you
Speaker 1: skating in the neighborhood? Yes? Yeah, so you're pretty much
Speaker 1: skating every day. Yeah. I mean street skating as a
Speaker 1: as an actual thing was not considered so it was
Speaker 1: just more transportation at the time. Sometimes we'd find say
Speaker 1: a curb in front of the dentist office that was
Speaker 1: that was red and you could grind it and um
Speaker 1: or a little banks like there there was a little
Speaker 1: curb right in front of my middle school that you
Speaker 1: could slide and we used to slide it in the
Speaker 1: morning until we started breaking the sprinklers. And then because
Speaker 1: this was also the era, you know, they started to
Speaker 1: be a backlash against the noise and the grinding, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit before that. I mean, the
Speaker 1: skating still was largely contained at the skate parks because
Speaker 1: there was an abundance of skateparks then. But as that
Speaker 1: started drying up, mostly because of liability and the interest
Speaker 1: of skating was waning. Um, that's when it started becoming
Speaker 1: this this thing that was like, wait a second, there's
Speaker 1: no more facilities for us to go to. We're taken
Speaker 1: to the streets. And that's when the stigma changed to
Speaker 1: where these guys are a nuisance, they're breaking property, there outlaws,
Speaker 1: like we're just looking for a place to do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: going to a parallel thing. Whenever you do any research
Speaker 1: on you it goes on about schooling and being tested
Speaker 1: and having an I I high i Q. So what
Speaker 1: was your educational experience, Like, Um, I was always putting
Speaker 1: advanced classes and uh yeah, I mean I did have
Speaker 1: this high i Q testing and whatnot, and that follows
Speaker 1: me to this day, right, But I was I really
Speaker 1: did enjoy this daredevil thing. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: the little kid that would go off the high dive
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So so even before you were
Speaker 1: a skateboarder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, and I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: wasn't Like I said, I wasn't really afraid to get
Speaker 1: hurt in the process. So I was so focused on that.
Speaker 1: But but at the same time I was I was
Speaker 1: keeping up with my schoolwork. I guess the thing that
Speaker 1: sort of redirected my education was that I got successful
Speaker 1: in high school. I started making really good money in
Speaker 1: high school, especially around my junior year, to the point
Speaker 1: where I was looking around on everyone's trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what they're gonna be for living. I have a living,
Speaker 1: you know, And especially my senior year, I was literally
Speaker 1: making more money than my teachers. I bought a house
Speaker 1: while I was still a senior in high school and
Speaker 1: so it was kind of like there were all these
Speaker 1: signs that just said you have you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: already doing something. You have a career, and my parents
Speaker 1: were worried that it was short lived, which they were
Speaker 1: absolutely right to um, and so they they encouraged me
Speaker 1: to maybe take some college courses, you know, on the side,
Speaker 1: or at a community college. That I went to a college,
Speaker 1: and I looked at the kind of curriculum that I
Speaker 1: would have and I said, Mom, if I do this,
Speaker 1: I won't be able to go to these events, like
Speaker 1: these competitions on the weekend, which is what's fueling my career.
Speaker 1: Because back in those days, the only thing people cared
Speaker 1: about was your titian record, and if you weren't able
Speaker 1: to go to those, forget it. You're not making living
Speaker 1: as a skater. You're not getting magazine coverage and not
Speaker 1: giving you professional skateboard models. Okay, let's go back. So
Speaker 1: you're starting ten, your tens, that's the middle seventies. And
Speaker 1: then you say, because of liability of the skateboards, parks
Speaker 1: died out. Yes, okay, I'd say like around eighty three ish. Okay,
Speaker 1: to what degree is their infrastructure that point in terms
Speaker 1: of skate shop, skate magazines, etcetera. Well at all. There
Speaker 1: was sort of a reorganization then, so everything everything collapsed
Speaker 1: from the inside out. For the most part. On that
Speaker 1: skate brands were just going up, you know, they were
Speaker 1: all going on a business. My my sponsors. So my
Speaker 1: my first sponsor was Dogtown Skateboards. I would go there
Speaker 1: would manufacturer was in San Diego. At one point they
Speaker 1: just said, oh, if you need skateboards, just go to
Speaker 1: the wood pressing and go get your own. Like, these
Speaker 1: are skateboards that are no have no graphics on them,
Speaker 1: having a label on them, but they're Dogtown skateboards. So
Speaker 1: I was getting those and putting Dogtown stickers on them.
Speaker 1: And then sometime around that I stopped hearing from them.
Speaker 1: And then I got a call from Stacy Pelta, who
Speaker 1: was widely regarded as the one of the most legendary
Speaker 1: pro skaters but also um a curator one of the
Speaker 1: best teams, and he called me and said, uh, hey,
Speaker 1: I heard Dogtown went out of business. I felt I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have known. This is the same dog Town in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica that they made the movie about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was on the very tail end of that
Speaker 1: as a young gramin amateur. So but but that's that's
Speaker 1: just an example of one of the business like that.
Speaker 1: Literally the company involved with there was there was one
Speaker 1: skateboard magazine, skateboarder, skateboarder magazine that transformed into they called
Speaker 1: Action Now and then it covered like motocross and snowboarding,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of ahead of its time because
Speaker 1: they're those were all fringe sports. They weren't even labeled
Speaker 1: extreme yet, and so they called it Action Now and
Speaker 1: that was the only skate magazine. Then Action Now went
Speaker 1: on the business. Then there was no skate magazine were
Speaker 1: and we're putting this about a D three eight two
Speaker 1: eighty three, and then Thrasher started. Okay, a couple how
Speaker 1: old your fourteen? And then what can you tell us
Speaker 1: about Thrasher starting? Because you know all these people, uh
Speaker 1: it was it's Thrasher started. It was it was a
Speaker 1: newspaper print skate magazine. Um, and we're just excited to
Speaker 1: have a skate magazine, you know. And the content was
Speaker 1: it was the usual fair It was like it was
Speaker 1: competitions and a little bit of street stuff, but it
Speaker 1: was it was very geared towards a skate distributor started it,
Speaker 1: so it was geared towards their brands that they distributed.
Speaker 1: Still it is kind of but it's more North calcentric. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then another scape, the sort of antithesicist skate magazine
Speaker 1: started called trans World Skateboarding, and their goal was to
Speaker 1: promote like healthy skateboarding, and then it became this weird
Speaker 1: like good and bad thing and um, but that's where
Speaker 1: it all started. And Thrasher obviously still exists, right, and
Speaker 1: trans World got into snowboarding and other things Transford, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was transform media. Okay, so it dies in the
Speaker 1: early eighties. Your fourteen, when do you go to your
Speaker 1: first competition? Well, my first competition was when I was
Speaker 1: about ten years old, and because as just at out oasis,
Speaker 1: I just went, like one one weekend they're having a competition.
Speaker 1: So I signed up and you know, filled all the
Speaker 1: paperwork and then they called my name when I did
Speaker 1: my little run, and then I went and asked what
Speaker 1: the results were. And this woman, I'll never forget, she
Speaker 1: was going through the results and she had a sheet
Speaker 1: of paperwork and I said, can you tell me you
Speaker 1: know what place I got? What's your name? Honey? So
Speaker 1: she look at the paper. She she like folds over
Speaker 1: one paper, she folds over the next paper. Finally she
Speaker 1: gets to the last column and I'm second to last
Speaker 1: out of like a hundred and how great is that?
Speaker 1: So your second second I'll never get the look she
Speaker 1: gave me. She's like, Oh, I'm sorry, honey. You got
Speaker 1: four through whatever it was, so your second to lass
Speaker 1: and what goes through your brain? Uh? I didn't really know.
Speaker 1: I think what because went went through my brain at
Speaker 1: the time. You know, I wasn't trying to make career.
Speaker 1: No one was making I was yeah and whatever it was.
Speaker 1: But it was more like, oh, I gotta figure out
Speaker 1: how to do better tricks, or I gotta figure out
Speaker 1: a better approach, because my approach was that I thought
Speaker 1: I was supposed to submit the tricks that I can do,
Speaker 1: to tell them ahead of time, and then do that thing.
Speaker 1: And I there was no room for being spontaneous. There
Speaker 1: was no creativity really, and I was like, I gotta
Speaker 1: figure out better tricks. It will get me noticed. And
Speaker 1: that was pretty much the catalyst for sort of creating
Speaker 1: my own style. Okay, how do you learn those tricks?
Speaker 1: I just started tinkering with different ways to like spin
Speaker 1: my board and and do tricks that were not of
Speaker 1: It was more out of um necessity, because I wasn't
Speaker 1: big enough to do these really these really gnarly tricks
Speaker 1: at the top of the bowl and things like that
Speaker 1: that the guys we're doing. I mean, I figured out
Speaker 1: how to do little aerials and things, but but I
Speaker 1: knew how to maneuver my board and and and switch
Speaker 1: my body around and do these relate what they called
Speaker 1: at the time avant garde tricks that didn't get much
Speaker 1: traction but set me apart. Okay, so you literally on
Speaker 1: your own trip. No one else is doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: No one but for those of us who's certainly been
Speaker 1: to the skate park and watched it takes an incredible
Speaker 1: amount of repetition and failure to master these tricks. It does,
Speaker 1: but it was it was less so then because the
Speaker 1: tricks that you were learning back then, you were learning
Speaker 1: them for the sake of competition. So you're learning them
Speaker 1: to get consistent with them. Nowadays, you can do a trick,
Speaker 1: you make one out of a thousand, get it on video.
Speaker 1: You know it's hero. But it was not like that
Speaker 1: back then. We didn't have videos. We only had competition
Speaker 1: to prove ourselves. So you had to learn stuff and
Speaker 1: get it dialed and put it in your competition run.
Speaker 1: That's how you're gonna get noticed with And how long
Speaker 1: was a competition run? Seconds? Seconds? And when you it's
Speaker 1: it's whether we're heroes hit San Diego? Mean you're number
Speaker 1: ninety four? Was there a big cahun in the skate
Speaker 1: park in San Diego? Uh? Yeah, Dave Andreks he was
Speaker 1: the local hero. That's why I wanted going stickers. He
Speaker 1: read for going. Okay, So I mean, are you up
Speaker 1: in your bedroom at night plotting this or is this
Speaker 1: just one thing you're doing? It was just one thing
Speaker 1: I was doing. It wasn't until I guess, by default,
Speaker 1: the way that skating started to get really I don't
Speaker 1: want to say exclusive, but it started getting very narrow,
Speaker 1: you know. And there wasn't a lot of competition. There
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of interest. I was still skating a
Speaker 1: lot and and learning tricks. And the skate park had
Speaker 1: a tryouts for their skate park team, um and that
Speaker 1: team was going to go represent that park at different
Speaker 1: parks for this competition called ASPO Associated Skate Park Owners
Speaker 1: and so I went to the tryouts and I don't
Speaker 1: think I was the best skater at the tryouts for
Speaker 1: my age group, but I made everything and they picked
Speaker 1: me for the team. I made all my tricks, and
Speaker 1: the other guys that I thought were better than me,
Speaker 1: they were trying really hard things, but they weren't consistent,
Speaker 1: and so they picked me, and suddenly I was on.
Speaker 1: I was representing Oasis as a skate park team member.
Speaker 1: So you originally went to Oasis with your friends. Did
Speaker 1: they stick with it or they fall off? Okay, they quit?
Speaker 1: So were you friendly with all these people in Oasis?
Speaker 1: I found my community there for sure, absolutely. And the the
Speaker 1: locals were, like I said, skating was kind of drying up.
Speaker 1: So there were only a handful of locals and that
Speaker 1: became my That was my crew, and they were all
Speaker 1: from different walks of live, different age groups. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were they were my peers in
Speaker 1: the sense of same age or the same area. Which
Speaker 1: was super cool because I got to know, you know,
Speaker 1: I I learned about punk music back then. I I
Speaker 1: was hanging out with dudes that a mohawks and and
Speaker 1: you know, people that were coming from really difficult backgrounds
Speaker 1: that found skating as a salvation and and and I
Speaker 1: just learned so much through that. Your parents have any
Speaker 1: idea of what was going on there? My parents became
Speaker 1: their surrogate parents. Yeah, because they really liked the They
Speaker 1: like the creativity and the they liked what it had
Speaker 1: given me, and they were helping to They wanted to
Speaker 1: help the other kids as well, the ones that we're
Speaker 1: having trouble, and so we would have like if there
Speaker 1: was a competition in San Diego at Oasis, there would
Speaker 1: be ten dudes sleeping at our house from all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's the kind of parents your parents are in
Speaker 1: terms of your house. You have an open door policysel
Speaker 1: uh to an extent. Yeah. So now you're on the
Speaker 1: Oasis team. Yeah, and how often are you competing? Um?
Speaker 1: The series is was usually during the summer for a
Speaker 1: couple of months, you know, every other weekend or so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then we would just be gaining points for our
Speaker 1: for our team or whatnot. And then eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: the guys who were really succeeding would end up getting
Speaker 1: real sponsors and they would move up a class of
Speaker 1: of Um. So where do you fit in all this? Uh?
Speaker 1: I got sponsored by Dogtown right around that same time.
Speaker 1: Eventually got sponsored by Powell my first year on Powell,
Speaker 1: or made my second year on on pal Perelta, which
Speaker 1: was Stacy Pearlti's company. That's when I won the amateur circuit. Like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's go way back before that, so it's not that far.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, okay, so you're not. You're number ninety four.
Speaker 1: Then you come up with your own track tricks. Then
Speaker 1: you're on the team. When you first start going to competitions,
Speaker 1: how do you do? I was usually in like the
Speaker 1: top three, okay, And you're attributing that to the fact
Speaker 1: you made up your own tricks, okay. And I put
Speaker 1: the I put the effort into getting used to different terrain.
Speaker 1: A lot of the skaters back then we're only good
Speaker 1: in their home park. And you did that how well.
Speaker 1: I would try to get to the other parks as
Speaker 1: much as I could, and my dad would make these
Speaker 1: day trips where he would load a bunch of people
Speaker 1: in his camper, in his UH pickup truck camper, and
Speaker 1: we would go like we would we would drive from
Speaker 1: San Diego to Recida really for the day, and everyone
Speaker 1: get to practice at the Resida Park for the day
Speaker 1: and then we would come home or like a friend
Speaker 1: of a friend. I mean I remember I remember getting
Speaker 1: in the back of a pickup truck in San Diego, um,
Speaker 1: putting a tarp over me and my friend, and then
Speaker 1: he drove us to Upland to go practice. And that's
Speaker 1: that's what we had to do. It happened, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and I don't look back on that thing like that
Speaker 1: was the struggle that was. It was more like that
Speaker 1: was an adventure. It was super dangerous. Of course. I
Speaker 1: remember going to boys Scout camp before they changed all
Speaker 1: the rules and we could ride to the back of
Speaker 1: the pickup trap. They can't you do that anymore. But
Speaker 1: as I say, go you when how many competitions before
Speaker 1: your top three? I would say within the first second
Speaker 1: year of competition in my division. But pop three is
Speaker 1: pop three? Yeah, what's going through your brain? Then? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's so weird, you know, it's it's I wasn't aspiring
Speaker 1: to do it for a living. I wasn't aspiring to
Speaker 1: be number one or anything, because well, I wanted I
Speaker 1: wanted to do well. But skating was such the small
Speaker 1: industry that you didn't dream of fame or fortune because
Speaker 1: no one had it. It didn't exist. So I guess
Speaker 1: that's that's the strange. Well that's the lucky thing for me.
Speaker 1: And I was young enough that I didn't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that so much. Um. But as I did
Speaker 1: start to do better, then suddenly it was like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: this is you know these other I'm on the radar
Speaker 1: of of these bigger sponsors, and then eventually picked a
Speaker 1: couple of them up and then it was like, well,
Speaker 1: these guys believe in me. I better really performed for them. Okay,
Speaker 1: but at what moment do you internalize and say, wait
Speaker 1: a second, not only am I good, I'm better than
Speaker 1: most of the people. Uh. I think that was around
Speaker 1: the time that that I got sponsored by Powell because
Speaker 1: POAL was considered the elite team, and I went through
Speaker 1: a lot of um issues just with self confidence and
Speaker 1: self esteem. I was made fun of a lot, and
Speaker 1: I was a scrawny little dude with a strange style
Speaker 1: doing what they called circus tricks. Like I I didn't
Speaker 1: feel great about myself, but I liked what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I like skating. When Power sponsored me, it gave me
Speaker 1: this validation that it was like they believe in what
Speaker 1: you're doing, Like, keep keep at it, keep going that direction. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you must have been like over the moon when
Speaker 1: they decided to uh sponsor you. Yeah. Well I was
Speaker 1: that and completely intimidated because suddenly I'm on the team.
Speaker 1: I mean I was on the team with Steve Caballero,
Speaker 1: who I saw in a magazine when I was little
Speaker 1: and gave me. He gave me the inspiration to go
Speaker 1: learn how to scape pools. You know, when I saw
Speaker 1: him flying out of a pool, I was like, I
Speaker 1: want to do that that. It looks like he's my
Speaker 1: side is wow. Okay, so now you're you're on the
Speaker 1: Oasis team. How long before that burns out? Well, Oasis closed,
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, not not much long after that,
Speaker 1: and it closed because of liability. Yeah yeah, and obviously
Speaker 1: UM attendance as well. Okay, So it looks even though
Speaker 1: you're doing better and better, that the sword is dying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Luckily I was naive enough to not understand how what
Speaker 1: that meant as an industry and as a future. UM.
Speaker 1: I just knew that there were a fewer parks. That's
Speaker 1: the only effect that had on me. Okay, So the
Speaker 1: Oasis team is over. Where do you end up competing?
Speaker 1: Who do you end up competing for? For for power
Speaker 1: perl to brigade Um. I got, you know, I got
Speaker 1: a couple of re sponsors. I got a truck sponsors,
Speaker 1: Tracker Trucks. And then eventually I started doing well in competition.
Speaker 1: I reached the top of the amateur circuit um and
Speaker 1: a lot of my peers started going pro. And what
Speaker 1: that men at the time, to go pro meant that
Speaker 1: when you fill in an entry form for a competition,
Speaker 1: you tick the pro box instead of the amateur box.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. That was it? Okay, but how old
Speaker 1: were you then? You're fourteen, they're going pro? You're on
Speaker 1: so well, it was more like I was. I was
Speaker 1: the top of the amateur circuit. Some of my peers
Speaker 1: have gone pro. If I stayed an amateur, then I
Speaker 1: was I was a worse because I'm just um, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm taking it easy, I'm staking. But what did it
Speaker 1: mean to go pro? Then? Well, you took the box.
Speaker 1: If you were lucky and your sponsored believed in you,
Speaker 1: they would give you a scapard with your name on it.
Speaker 1: But there was no victory schedule. Not no, okay, champagne. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now you're where you're skating for Powell. Walk me
Speaker 1: through the next chapter. Uh so I'm skating for Powell.
Speaker 1: Eventually they did give me a pro model. Um. I
Speaker 1: got a couple of royalty checks. I got one for
Speaker 1: four dollars one month. The next month, I got one
Speaker 1: for eighty. I have sense, and you're like a sophomore
Speaker 1: junior in high school. I was a Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: a sophomore probably at that point. So at that point
Speaker 1: you're not seeing the dream. This is just something you're doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I was stoked, of course, with my name
Speaker 1: on it. What could be better? And and you know
Speaker 1: the fact that I still got to skate for not
Speaker 1: for a living, but as as my main hobby. Um.
Speaker 1: I at some point I got to start traveling. I'ment
Speaker 1: to Japan when I was fourteen for a TV show.
Speaker 1: UM I went went went a little bit slower. This
Speaker 1: is before the days of email. What the phone rings
Speaker 1: or you're with the other guys with peralta. Um. I
Speaker 1: guess they had seen something of me on either video
Speaker 1: or you know, because then I was I was moving
Speaker 1: through the ranks of the Pro series very quickly. From
Speaker 1: the first year that I turned pro, I was at
Speaker 1: the top pretty much, and I pretty much again. Would
Speaker 1: you think that's because you had your own unique tricks,
Speaker 1: because once you do them, other people can take you.
Speaker 1: It's also because I grew into my style. I got
Speaker 1: it more refined, I got bigger, I got stronger, and
Speaker 1: suddenly I had that power that I wanted, you know
Speaker 1: that I thought that I wanted to emulate from the
Speaker 1: older guys when I saw them at first. Suddenly I
Speaker 1: was that size and the size of the the bulls
Speaker 1: and things where wasn't as intimidating and something. I could
Speaker 1: do these really difficult tricks at new heights and it
Speaker 1: was like this perfect storm of of my puberty and
Speaker 1: my skill set all coming together. Okay, but I'm interested
Speaker 1: in the internal element because anybody has competed at an
Speaker 1: elite level knows the people at the top. It's kind
Speaker 1: of funny. You can skate with him every day, but
Speaker 1: like I used to worry, you know, ski professionally, and
Speaker 1: there were guys used to the world champion. This is
Speaker 1: freestyle skiing in the seventies. He would be better in competition,
Speaker 1: you know, he didn't choke. He went up to another
Speaker 1: level okay, and there was an internalization where he felt
Speaker 1: comfortable with his abilities. I'm interested in how you felt
Speaker 1: yourself independent, you to say when I have this nailed,
Speaker 1: I'm better than everybody, or you're insecure, or what is it? Um?
Speaker 1: I I would obsess on competitions to the point where
Speaker 1: I to the point where my routines became boring to me.
Speaker 1: And I knew that I had that most of these,
Speaker 1: you know, I had. I had all the components to
Speaker 1: the run I wanted, and when it came time to compete,
Speaker 1: I could put them all together and feel confident with it.
Speaker 1: So I definitely had that where I did up it
Speaker 1: when the time came time to compete. But I think
Speaker 1: that it was in that moment that that like a
Speaker 1: lot of the guys, you know, we are coming into
Speaker 1: our teen years, a lot of distractions. People are starting
Speaker 1: to party and stuff like that. I never I wanted
Speaker 1: to do that because I didn't want to. I don't
Speaker 1: want my skills to fade at all, and and I
Speaker 1: didn't want my success to fade. And I felt because
Speaker 1: I had been you know, we we've come so far
Speaker 1: in society and whatnot. But you know, I was buoyed
Speaker 1: for the most part when I was a kid, before
Speaker 1: I started skating, and even when I did start skating
Speaker 1: by the older generation and all. I just always was
Speaker 1: trying to prove myself. You know that that gave me
Speaker 1: this fire to to keep. And you're in high school
Speaker 1: and you're getting successful. Give you any status in the
Speaker 1: high school, that's okay. The irony of that is is
Speaker 1: I would go to these competitions, you know, I'd say
Speaker 1: I had to go to Florida for this big event,
Speaker 1: to be thousand people there cheering and they think I
Speaker 1: was great and whatnot. To come back to to high school,
Speaker 1: I was a ghost like and I would sometimes hide
Speaker 1: my skateboard because people thought there was a stigma was skating.
Speaker 1: It was like you still skate like it was like
Speaker 1: you used to bringing a yo yo to school, right right? Okay,
Speaker 1: go back to your fourteen and you go to Japan.
Speaker 1: How that comes together? Uh so? They I I don't
Speaker 1: really know the details of it. I know that they
Speaker 1: called my sponsor and said, hey, we we would like
Speaker 1: to bring him. It's it's sort of I forgot what
Speaker 1: it was called, something about talent you know the talented
Speaker 1: Kids show kind of like that's incredib all kids back then. Um,
Speaker 1: you know. One of the other acts was this this
Speaker 1: group of sisters all sort of um middle school age
Speaker 1: that had a band um and they were all from America.
Speaker 1: It was just you. Wasn't the whole team. It was
Speaker 1: just me. And then they had to assign uh, sort
Speaker 1: of an escort to me, a translator. After did you
Speaker 1: get on the plane alone and you go with your mother? What?
Speaker 1: I got on the plane with my with my handler.
Speaker 1: Then they assigned to me. Really, so somebody you didn't
Speaker 1: know and your parents went in from Japan, flew to
Speaker 1: l A, met me in l A, flew me to Japan.
Speaker 1: What'd your parents say? They thought it was awesome? Okay,
Speaker 1: so you go to Japan, I gotta ask they fly
Speaker 1: in the back of the plane to the front of
Speaker 1: the plane. Oh no, there was no first class. So
Speaker 1: as as successful and as as full of ourselves so
Speaker 1: to speak, as we were back then, we were not
Speaker 1: living large ever ever. So you got to Japan. How
Speaker 1: long were you in Japan? Four? About four days? Five days? Okay?
Speaker 1: So is it like being a rock star you could
Speaker 1: be anywhere or did you actually see what was going
Speaker 1: on in Japan? Um? What do you mean? Okay? You know, uh,
Speaker 1: this guy and Neil was sequestered. You know Neil Preston,
Speaker 1: he was a photographer for led Zepp. When he says,
Speaker 1: I've been all over the world, I've seen nothing. Oh
Speaker 1: uh no, they got they showed me around. You know.
Speaker 1: My my um my handler was very good at just
Speaker 1: because she knew I was super excited, and I was.
Speaker 1: I was just bewildered with everything. And so she took
Speaker 1: me to some of the tourist spots and you know,
Speaker 1: they filmed me. I forgot to bring a new pair
Speaker 1: of shoes. They filmed me going to buy shoes, and
Speaker 1: and it was I mean, it was life changing for
Speaker 1: me because it was the first time I had traveled
Speaker 1: abroad and and I was alone, I was in Japan.
Speaker 1: It was all it was exciting, right, Okay, So at
Speaker 1: that time forgetting the trip to Japan to what degree,
Speaker 1: how frequent were competitions? Uh, they started to get more
Speaker 1: and more frequent around that time. So I would say
Speaker 1: every three or four weeks, And how often would you
Speaker 1: have to get on a plane or somewhere to go
Speaker 1: st to a competition. Um, but the same there there
Speaker 1: were some sometimes we were doing exhibitions in between those.
Speaker 1: You know, every once in a while we get called
Speaker 1: some big skate shop would want to put up, you know,
Speaker 1: a skate thing, and we would go do that and
Speaker 1: then uh, and then they started putting together tours. So
Speaker 1: we would actually go out on the road for five
Speaker 1: weeks in a van, five of us with a bunch
Speaker 1: of ramps shoved into the back, like we would travel
Speaker 1: with our own little skate park and put it up
Speaker 1: in a parking lot. At what point does it turn
Speaker 1: into money? Um? Around the time for me, around the
Speaker 1: time I was sixteen. Okay, what change that turns it
Speaker 1: into money? Uh? The hype the skating started to get popular.
Speaker 1: I mean you started to see it on TV. Like
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Back to the Future was a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of people in that generation started skating because
Speaker 1: back to the Future that's amazing. Put those together. So
Speaker 1: you're not getting paid how by winning competition, by sponsorships,
Speaker 1: mostly by royalties skateboard royalties. Um, the boards. What's the
Speaker 1: traditional deal back then? Uh? I think that roughly you
Speaker 1: got about a dollar per skateboard they sold. Uh, we started.
Speaker 1: I mean, what do we know? You know, we were yeah,
Speaker 1: and and there was no like, there's no template for this.
Speaker 1: We didn't know how we're supposed to handle this or what,
Speaker 1: you know, what the best way to save money is
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And suddenly we are making ten grand a month.
Speaker 1: And then it turned into like sometimes twenty okay, of
Speaker 1: the ten grand a month, most of that was board royalties,
Speaker 1: all of it. That's a lot of boards. That's ten
Speaker 1: tho boards. Yeah, it And and then we're like we're invincible.
Speaker 1: We're buying you know, we're buying cars and we're flying
Speaker 1: our friends of Hawaii and and you know, not realizing
Speaker 1: that we got a half of that we got to
Speaker 1: say for taxes, of course. Um, and I was I
Speaker 1: was really thankful that. You know, the reason I bought
Speaker 1: a house is because my dad encouraged me. He saw
Speaker 1: this money and it was substantial, and he's like, you
Speaker 1: gotta put something away, you really got to say, for
Speaker 1: the future. And it's like, what are you talking about,
Speaker 1: because like I used to my house, like, yeah, my
Speaker 1: own house. So hi, everyone Bob left sets here. I'm
Speaker 1: humbled by the initiable response of the podcast, and I've
Speaker 1: been able to line up some excellent guests in future episodes.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to share those. I think you're in
Speaker 1: for a treat, so be sure to subscribe, leave reviews,
Speaker 1: tell your friend it's gonna be a big year. And
Speaker 1: now more with Tony Harn. Okay, so now you're in
Speaker 1: high school, you're doing all this stuff and you're making
Speaker 1: more money than the teachers, etcetera. Say I found my calling. Okay,
Speaker 1: for those of us you know who think about your ubiquity,
Speaker 1: it really kind of coincided with the X Games. Would
Speaker 1: you say the same thing? Um? Yeah, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of skipping, a sort of no, don't skip it.
Speaker 1: Don't skip it. That's what. Want to know how we
Speaker 1: get to there? Okay, So that that hype of the
Speaker 1: eighties was was relatively short lived. I would say that
Speaker 1: the gravy days were eight six to where we were
Speaker 1: making a lot of money. You know, we're being recognized,
Speaker 1: We're being asked to perform, to go on TV, to
Speaker 1: do videos and whatnot. Um. I spread myself extra thin
Speaker 1: with mortgages. I bought another place with a lot of
Speaker 1: properties so I could build my own ramps and around
Speaker 1: ninety everything started falling. And I mean like skating again.
Speaker 1: The skate parks that were being built at the time,
Speaker 1: they weren't concrete anymore, they were generally made of wood.
Speaker 1: They all lost their liability. Skating was considered a fad.
Speaker 1: People started to quit. Uh my income drop by half
Speaker 1: every month without every kidding, not kidding. Yet how load
Speaker 1: did it ultimately go? You know, relatively non existent? I
Speaker 1: mean in ninety one, Um, I found myself with two mortgages. Uh,
Speaker 1: money just not coming in at all, and I was
Speaker 1: scrambling to do whatever I could, and luckily my name
Speaker 1: was it was still sort of out there in the ether,
Speaker 1: can you know, with skateboarding. So, for instance, they would
Speaker 1: do they're gonna do a commercial. Let me see what
Speaker 1: was the commercial. There was a coat commercial for Japan
Speaker 1: and they said, oh, we need we need stunt skaters
Speaker 1: and we need a skate coordinator and they called me up. Okay,
Speaker 1: you had no handler, anybody which went directly to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm just getting scale, but absolutely, But I'm about
Speaker 1: a segue to a different thing, which I find fascinating.
Speaker 1: You buy your own house, but you also got married
Speaker 1: and had a kid. Yeah, well that's so that comes
Speaker 1: right at the tail end of all this dropping. So
Speaker 1: I happened at the tail end. I didn't know, as
Speaker 1: this is all sort of dropping, like when it's getting dire,
Speaker 1: that's when we have a child on the way, and
Speaker 1: it's like this is this is it? Like I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm not sure how to part lay
Speaker 1: this career into something else. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: a nine to five job necessarily, but I will if
Speaker 1: I have to. And so I took my I mean
Speaker 1: this is literally like all at the same exact time.
Speaker 1: I took my equity in my house that I was
Speaker 1: in then um and used it to start a skate company,
Speaker 1: which seems like it seems like deeper, but for me
Speaker 1: it was my In my eyes, skating it was cyclical.
Speaker 1: It had come and gone twice already in my like
Speaker 1: while I was doing it, Um, it's bound to come
Speaker 1: around again. I feel like there's so I always knew
Speaker 1: there was something more to skating than the general public
Speaker 1: was seeing. You know, they were just seeing like the
Speaker 1: crazy graphics and the hard news and the punk music,
Speaker 1: and it was like there's something else here. There's you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's something that provides two kids that they
Speaker 1: can't find anywhere else, the ones that don't fit in,
Speaker 1: the ones that you know, don't like team sports or
Speaker 1: whatever it is. There's an artistic element as well. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to be in the skate industry, and I
Speaker 1: thought my career as a skater was over. I really did.
Speaker 1: I was like, I've I run my chorus as a pro.
Speaker 1: You know, I was on number one for ten years
Speaker 1: in competition, and I want to form my own company
Speaker 1: and do my have my own direction and get my
Speaker 1: own skater. So I did, Okay, you totally did it
Speaker 1: on experience. Did you have a friend and mentor any
Speaker 1: of that stuff. I had another I had a friend
Speaker 1: that was a former pro skater. Well, coincidentally the guy
Speaker 1: who did the skating and Back to the Future um
Speaker 1: Para wheelander who was but he had a business degree,
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, I heard you're thinking about making
Speaker 1: a move. I would like to pool our funds together
Speaker 1: and do something because I have the business Yeah, exp well,
Speaker 1: expertise that more knowledge, you do it? Yes exactly, and uh,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, let's do it. So we formed
Speaker 1: a distribution company with a skate brand inside of it. Birdhouse. Um,
Speaker 1: and off we went. And you know, at at one
Speaker 1: point there were three of us that worked for the company. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was doing graphics, ads, videos, team management and being
Speaker 1: a pro skater at the same time. Um. It took
Speaker 1: all my time. You know, it was super Obviously it
Speaker 1: was a big strain on a marriage and can a toddler. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know that was the dream for me. That
Speaker 1: was the dream was to have a company. And what
Speaker 1: are the other two guys do? Uh? Well they did.
Speaker 1: They did most of the paperwork, phone call calling shops. Say,
Speaker 1: so you start. Was it successful from the start? No? Um, no,
Speaker 1: I mean nothing was. We made a splash, like we
Speaker 1: we were on the radar. I think what I what
Speaker 1: I knew back then and in hindsight especially, is that
Speaker 1: it didn't take a lot of capital for us to
Speaker 1: be known because skating was so small, so for us
Speaker 1: to get like say the back page of trans World
Speaker 1: or Thrashing. They were begging for advertisers. So we positioned
Speaker 1: ourselves pretty well at the time when didn't cost a lot,
Speaker 1: and we were we were making really good videos. I
Speaker 1: had an eye for talent, I had one of the
Speaker 1: best teams. So our videos were you know, they were
Speaker 1: they were sought after. UM. So we were Let's just
Speaker 1: say that we were staying above water, okay, and you
Speaker 1: make big mistakes, uh not at the time. UM. I
Speaker 1: think the mistake that we made was that we thought
Speaker 1: that it was gonna turn around quicker. So somewhere around
Speaker 1: the third year of business, pair and I had had
Speaker 1: a pretty heavy discussion about how do we disband this?
Speaker 1: You know this, because we can't we barely stay afloat um.
Speaker 1: And that's right when the X game started. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you did you break up? Are the partnership? We both
Speaker 1: we both took pay cuts, were just said we gotta okay,
Speaker 1: let me ask you this. How do you decide to
Speaker 1: get married at age two? I? UM, I had been
Speaker 1: with the same uh girlfriend for a while. We lived together,
Speaker 1: and there was a little bit of outside pressure where
Speaker 1: it was like you guys lived together, you know, it
Speaker 1: was that era. It was just like what how do you?
Speaker 1: How does that work? And so we got We got
Speaker 1: married because we thought that was the natural progression. We
Speaker 1: were both way too young and working at the time.
Speaker 1: She was working full time, yeah, as a manicurist, and
Speaker 1: she was the breadwinner at the time when we got married,
Speaker 1: and then how did you decide to have a kid? Uh?
Speaker 1: I don't think it was a conscious decision. But so
Speaker 1: you're like, twenty three year old old with a kid.
Speaker 1: What did I don't even have kids? What is that? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, it's weird. It was I've I have many
Speaker 1: children now, so I know, you know, I have a
Speaker 1: better road map of what to do. But at the time,
Speaker 1: it was really fun because I grew up with a
Speaker 1: dad that was so much older he couldn't really participate
Speaker 1: in this stuff. With me, I was right there in
Speaker 1: the mix. You know, I was super fun. I was.
Speaker 1: I was and I was you know, I was just
Speaker 1: sponsible enough. But but I was pulled in so many
Speaker 1: direct trying to make a living that it did get tricky,
Speaker 1: you know. And there were a lot of attractions for sure,
Speaker 1: and ultimately pulled us apart um just based on our schedules.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was just different scenes and and
Speaker 1: there were a lot of strains back then. It was
Speaker 1: it was really it was really tough, um. And and
Speaker 1: it's it's hard now because you know, my that's my
Speaker 1: oldest son, Riley, he's now a pro skater. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think he just had a free ride, he
Speaker 1: had silver spoon. Like. No. At one point he was
Speaker 1: living with his mom and a trailer on her boyfriend's
Speaker 1: dad's property. You know what. Like it was not easy
Speaker 1: at all, and I was out trying to to to
Speaker 1: make a living for us. How hypothetically, if you couldn't
Speaker 1: make ends meet, could your parents help you out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: to an extent. But my expenses were pretty big at
Speaker 1: the time. I really I sold. I sold my house
Speaker 1: for what I owed on it, um and moved into
Speaker 1: a duplex, the original one that I had bought, and
Speaker 1: you know, just cut back and I literally ate top
Speaker 1: brahmin and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a couple
Speaker 1: of years. Wow. I mean, I don't know how we'll
Speaker 1: publicized that is, but okay, so am I leaving anything
Speaker 1: out if I go to the X Games next or no?
Speaker 1: I mean that's around that same time. Okay, So that's so.
Speaker 1: That's so the X game started. Is this something in
Speaker 1: your world? Do you see the potential of that in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways? Yes, Um, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of pushback because it was the strange experimental event that
Speaker 1: was including all these disciplines and all these sports that
Speaker 1: we had nothing to do with, and then suddenly they're like,
Speaker 1: it's extreme, Like what does that mean? Like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: rock climbing and skysurfing and bungee jumping. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't do anything, Like we don't do any of
Speaker 1: those things. I don't identify with any of those people
Speaker 1: like doing that. And but but I saw the opportunity
Speaker 1: to be to to have to have modern skateboarding televised
Speaker 1: properly basically I don't properly, but to have it shown
Speaker 1: for what it really is, you know, not just for
Speaker 1: the graphics and the hair dues and and the eccentricities,
Speaker 1: but really for the for the physical feats of of
Speaker 1: some of these talented skaters. And so I felt like,
Speaker 1: if we just stay the course and we're skating and
Speaker 1: we're not falling into you know, all the goofiness of
Speaker 1: what this can be or the side show that this
Speaker 1: is in a lot of ways, I feel like what
Speaker 1: we do will shine through. And I made that no
Speaker 1: until a lot of my peers too, you know, I
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, we have this opportunity, Like I know
Speaker 1: people want to ban this and whatnot if we banned this,
Speaker 1: then these random other skaters that maybe aren't even as
Speaker 1: accomplished or as good are gonna be the names everyone knows.
Speaker 1: Like I literally did say that to a few people
Speaker 1: who were considering boycotting the event. So you go, at
Speaker 1: this point, you're still competing while you're still running your Birdhouse. Yes,
Speaker 1: well okay, so so around that time, um, we're getting
Speaker 1: deep here. But around that time, I was still doing
Speaker 1: all the ads, you know, all the marketing for Birdhouse.
Speaker 1: I had tried to sort of step back from being
Speaker 1: in the spotlight just so that I could run the business.
Speaker 1: And one of my one of my best skaters on
Speaker 1: the team and my partner pair in the company, they
Speaker 1: sat me down. They said, you're way better for us
Speaker 1: front and center than you are sitting behind a computer.
Speaker 1: Like you're way more effective. You're still skating super good.
Speaker 1: We want to bring back the Tony Hawk skateboard. You know,
Speaker 1: we feel like this is this is the time, and
Speaker 1: and there's these events and your name is still out there,
Speaker 1: like this is what we should be doing. And I
Speaker 1: was kind of reluctant because I just felt like, I mean,
Speaker 1: at that time, what it was like twenty you know,
Speaker 1: twenties six or something. UM, And I was like, I'm old,
Speaker 1: I'm over the hill, like I was. I felt good
Speaker 1: about my skating, but I was just like, you know,
Speaker 1: I've feel like at that time, no one was in
Speaker 1: their late twenties professionally skating. No one was in their
Speaker 1: thirties professionally skating. There's you know that wasn't that was
Speaker 1: nunheard of. Um. But I listened to him, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I really focused on my skating again and
Speaker 1: and got better than I was and became you know,
Speaker 1: this name that people knew from the X Games. Okay,
Speaker 1: but a little bit slower. Okay, So you had to
Speaker 1: hone your chops for the X Games. Um, I just had.
Speaker 1: I had to get back into competition mode because by
Speaker 1: then I was just more shoot skating for myself and
Speaker 1: for video for for video coverage, which is a different
Speaker 1: type of scanning. It's a little more risky, um, more sporadic.
Speaker 1: You know. Competition skating is like you gotta work on
Speaker 1: these routines, and you gotta work on these combinations, and
Speaker 1: you gotta make them consistently, and you gotta score good. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you go to the X Games. The first X
Speaker 1: Games and you go and as I say, you're coming
Speaker 1: from a thing where you see the up and down
Speaker 1: skate paring. You don't go with great anticipation. This is
Speaker 1: just another thing you're doing, right. Um. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: knew there was a lot of potential and that it's
Speaker 1: the biggest thing we had ever seen. So what was
Speaker 1: it like on your end of it? You go, it's
Speaker 1: on TV for you know days, did you feel it? Um?
Speaker 1: Afterwards when we left there, I started getting noticed again.
Speaker 1: It was like, hey, Tony Hawk, saw you on that
Speaker 1: Extreme Games Like that was awesome? You know whatever? The
Speaker 1: Mick twist and it was like, what you know what
Speaker 1: twist is? Like? Um, a little bit of that, but
Speaker 1: but a noticeable shift. Okay, And did that now start
Speaker 1: to grow? You have to wait for the next year's
Speaker 1: X Games. I would say it was the third year
Speaker 1: of X Games when we relate and they got rid
Speaker 1: of a lot of the BS sports to be yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, the bungee jumping for the rock climbing
Speaker 1: was on its way out right, and then skateboarding actually
Speaker 1: took a new higher level. Yeah, and they started adding
Speaker 1: modocross and it was like, okay, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: more familiar with UM. But by then, you know, I
Speaker 1: was doing really well. I was still kind of dominating
Speaker 1: the competitions, and that was the name they knew. And
Speaker 1: I had survived one wave of skateboarding, so I was
Speaker 1: on the second wave, and so people knew my name
Speaker 1: from prior generations. And suddenly we felt it. In sales,
Speaker 1: Birdhouse was profitable, like it was a real thing, um,
Speaker 1: And I was being asked to do a lot more things.
Speaker 1: I was getting sponsors that were non endemic, you know,
Speaker 1: like random okay, a club, med you know, hot wheels, um.
Speaker 1: And and it suddenly it was like, wait, hey, this
Speaker 1: is a business now at this point in time, do
Speaker 1: you have a team, you have a lawyer, you have
Speaker 1: a manager of any of that stuff? I am no,
Speaker 1: not really. I UM. My sister had come from the
Speaker 1: music industry. She actually used to sing back up for
Speaker 1: Michael Bolton yeah and for the Righteous Brothers, and she
Speaker 1: got pregnant with twins and she was a little older,
Speaker 1: so she decided to pull back for that and then
Speaker 1: as my as as my career started to rise, she said, hey,
Speaker 1: I think I can help you with the stuff because
Speaker 1: it is very much like entertainment these times. Um, so
Speaker 1: she became my my business partner and manager and helped
Speaker 1: me navigate these you know, strange territories of endorsements. Why
Speaker 1: don't you start dealing with those companies. There's real money involved. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they don't want you to know that. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then not long after that, I got a real agent.
Speaker 1: I mean she she was still my business partner, but
Speaker 1: I got a real agent because suddenly there were things
Speaker 1: that I just didn't really understand at all. I mean
Speaker 1: I was getting like these these endorsement deals and they
Speaker 1: required me to travel and they want all his time
Speaker 1: for me, and um, it was it was a little overwhelming.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly someone stepped in and said, oh, if
Speaker 1: you know, you need a real manager. And suddenly my
Speaker 1: my income jumped tremendously because because they know the landscape exactly,
Speaker 1: they they negotiate for a living. Okay, So now you're
Speaker 1: in this heyday and everybody knows about skating. Once you
Speaker 1: get to the mid to late nineties and you're the
Speaker 1: face of it all, so is it all groovy or
Speaker 1: whether you know deep inside you when they're still questions, um,
Speaker 1: was it all groovy? It seemed like it was all groovy. Um,
Speaker 1: for sure, I was, you know, I was falling into
Speaker 1: distractions and I probably I probably could have given a
Speaker 1: lot of more of my time to my kids, you know,
Speaker 1: but I was. I was suddenly thrust into this, this
Speaker 1: level of success that I didn't know it was possible
Speaker 1: in my field, and one that was like, wait, this
Speaker 1: is reserved for you know, actual movie stars and things,
Speaker 1: and is not what I'm supposed to do. And I'm
Speaker 1: just got all the brick carpet events and stuff. So
Speaker 1: I kind of fell into that for a little while. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that I regret now, but I had to
Speaker 1: learn from those problems everything to know whether it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean. At some point I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, why don't have to wear a suit here? What?
Speaker 1: I'm not friends with these people, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like no, no, no, slow down a little bit. So
Speaker 1: how much of this did you actually do? Showing up
Speaker 1: as being Tony Hawk the skater? Well, I just got
Speaker 1: I keept getting requested, you know, like and that was
Speaker 1: the day of awards shows, so it was like the
Speaker 1: Blockbuster Awards and the Video Game Awards, and it was
Speaker 1: like they want you to present, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, at one point I had a wardrobe
Speaker 1: stylist and it was just like this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a little out of hand, but um, but
Speaker 1: it was fun for sure, and and and all along.
Speaker 1: I knew that it was amazing for skateboarding to you know,
Speaker 1: even though some of these opportunities were for me only,
Speaker 1: I was the one that was raising the profile of
Speaker 1: skating through doing that. Like I got endorsement with McDonald's
Speaker 1: and I knew that I was going to use McDonald's
Speaker 1: marketing money to promote skateboarding. Okay, but you're the face.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of solid grapes people out there, you know. Sure,
Speaker 1: but you know, being at the top is as they say,
Speaker 1: it's lonely at the top. So what was it like
Speaker 1: being the number one guy? I mean, you're a friendly
Speaker 1: guy and it's a community. There was a lot of pressure.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of pressure, and there was you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot there was a lot of pushback,
Speaker 1: like a lot of haters. But I guess I I
Speaker 1: endured the haters for so long as a kid that
Speaker 1: once I got to this level of success, I was
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, right, like, go ahead and say all
Speaker 1: you want, you know, and it was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're a sellout. I was like, am I Because if
Speaker 1: McDonald's had offered me a sponsorship when I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: damn right, I would have taken it like I was
Speaker 1: eating there back then. So I don't know what the
Speaker 1: selling out. I feel like, you know at some point
Speaker 1: and it would seem cliche, but people are only calling
Speaker 1: you a sellout when your stuff finally sells. Then what
Speaker 1: they say in the music business, as they say, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been waiting so long. I'm dying to sell out.
Speaker 1: You know, anybody's got the money. But you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you make your point. I want to finally sells.
Speaker 1: That's what people are paying. It was like, you guys
Speaker 1: have had a skateboard with my name on it since
Speaker 1: I was fourteen. You did not care. Back then, no
Speaker 1: one cared. And now now suddenly I'm gonna sell out. No,
Speaker 1: my boards are selling, you know, and and people are
Speaker 1: finally asking me to to do promotions and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's what you know, this is a dream come true.
Speaker 1: But I was the one to first breakthrough that sort
Speaker 1: of boundary that it would be okay to do sponsorships
Speaker 1: and endorsements outside of the skate world, right, And I
Speaker 1: guess that, okay, go back to your point where you
Speaker 1: wake up one day and say these are not my people,
Speaker 1: I don't want to wear a suit, etcetera. Um, I
Speaker 1: think that was that was more I learned it maybe
Speaker 1: a little too late, but that was more in the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's when my video game was really hitting,
Speaker 1: and you know, suddenly my name was synonymous not skateboarding
Speaker 1: but video games as well. And it was like red
Speaker 1: carpets and parties and and bottle service and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And at some point I was like I was just
Speaker 1: too distracted, um and I and I was getting away
Speaker 1: from the core of skating that I really loved and
Speaker 1: falling into this weird sort of celebrity existence. Um And
Speaker 1: I think it was, you know, around that time where
Speaker 1: I decided, like I need to really scale this back
Speaker 1: and get back to what I love doing because I'm
Speaker 1: not loving doing this, and and get back to my
Speaker 1: children because I was really kind of off and running.
Speaker 1: And Uh, I would say it was more like, you know,
Speaker 1: in the mid to late two thousand's that I that
Speaker 1: I've felt like I made a positive change in what
Speaker 1: I was doing, And what does it take to make
Speaker 1: you put on a suit? Now? Um, a wedding okay,
Speaker 1: but shy of that anyway you go, you're going as yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at this point, at this point, like, if they're not
Speaker 1: gonna let me in with what I'm wearing, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be around them anyway. If I can't wear
Speaker 1: my sneakers, forget about it. How does the video game
Speaker 1: thing happen? Uh? So that was around the late nineties.
Speaker 1: Basically I was always into video games. I mean I
Speaker 1: played Missile Command, pac Man as a kid. I bought
Speaker 1: the first you know I had in television, I had
Speaker 1: super anties, and I was a video game kid. I
Speaker 1: was an arcade kid. So, uh this this PC programmer
Speaker 1: approached me and said, hey, I'm thinking about doing a
Speaker 1: video game skateboarding on the PC. And he had this
Speaker 1: really crude little engine in motion. It was pretty sad,
Speaker 1: I mean this thing he had created, but it was something.
Speaker 1: And he's like, do you want to go pitch you
Speaker 1: with me? And if we can get the right partner
Speaker 1: and we can get funding for this and make it
Speaker 1: something real? Said yeah, sure, So I went, I went
Speaker 1: to pitch meetings with him. I went, we went to Nintendo,
Speaker 1: we went to different software publishers, and we just came
Speaker 1: up against like, you know, barely a wall. Like it was,
Speaker 1: I mean not barely any interest. It was like we
Speaker 1: are I would spend the whole meeting defending skateboarding. Well like,
Speaker 1: why would skiboard is unpopular? I wouldn't want to play
Speaker 1: video games? Why I think skebord could lend itself to
Speaker 1: a video game and whatever. That. Finally, after the our
Speaker 1: last meeting with Midway, who were probably the I usually
Speaker 1: say this story and never mentioned them, but at this
Speaker 1: point I don't really care anymore because it's such a
Speaker 1: long time ago. They were so discouraging and kind of
Speaker 1: insulting that that he gave up after that meeting, like
Speaker 1: literally walked out, signs like you know what, I don't
Speaker 1: really have time to do this anymore, but you know,
Speaker 1: I wish you luck, and that had planned to see
Speaker 1: eat in the video game world. That said Tony Hawk
Speaker 1: is interested in video games. And not long after that,
Speaker 1: Activision called me. A few other companies call me, actually,
Speaker 1: but Activision called me and said, hey, we heard you
Speaker 1: want to do a video game. We're working on a
Speaker 1: scaate video game. We'd like to have you come look
Speaker 1: at it. Well, it's very interesting because you know you're
Speaker 1: talking about this. I find if people reach out to me,
Speaker 1: it can work. If I'm selling it never worked. You
Speaker 1: have to explain who you are. It's just never the
Speaker 1: right thing. So anyway, you go to Activision. So I
Speaker 1: go to Activision and I sit in this boardroom with
Speaker 1: all these heads, you know, administrative dudes. I've definitely not
Speaker 1: dressed apart, but I think that's what they expected on me.
Speaker 1: And uh, they hand me a joystick and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what we're working on, and this is the engine.
Speaker 1: And and this engine was built for a game called
Speaker 1: Apocalypse with Bruce Willis, based on not a movie, but
Speaker 1: but you know it's supposed to be this sort of
Speaker 1: dystopian waste land. He's got a gun and whatnot. So literally,
Speaker 1: the first time I played my own game, I was
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis with a gone on my back, skating around
Speaker 1: this desert doing kick flips and stuff. Um, and I
Speaker 1: knew immediately that this was it, really instinctively, the way
Speaker 1: the controls were laid out, Like I started playing it,
Speaker 1: immediately started doing tricks and I figured out what they were,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of mechanism and they're going for.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this is this is it with
Speaker 1: my influence, this will be the skating game. Like it's funny. Now,
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say the opposite, They're gonna say
Speaker 1: this is terrible. No, it was. I mean it really
Speaker 1: was that. It was. There are a few moments in
Speaker 1: my life that I feel like it was an epiphany,
Speaker 1: but there, for sure it was like and it wasn't
Speaker 1: an epiphany, like this is gonna be the biggest thing
Speaker 1: ever game my in my head, I was like, skaters
Speaker 1: are gonna love this, and skating wasn't even that big.
Speaker 1: So I was like, maybe this will inspire skaters to
Speaker 1: buy a PlayStation. Okay, and there at that point it
Speaker 1: was the Bruce Willis game. How much input did you
Speaker 1: have into the final game? Oh? Was there every step
Speaker 1: of the way. Yeah. For for the better part of
Speaker 1: probably two and a half years. Um, they I would
Speaker 1: be up there, I'd be it never soft up in
Speaker 1: Woodland Hills. Uh. They would send me burns of the
Speaker 1: new bills on on c D. They would send me
Speaker 1: CDs like every week, and I would play it and
Speaker 1: give feedback. And uh, I, I mean I was. I
Speaker 1: wanted to represent skateboarding, so it really is your game, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I can't take credit completely for
Speaker 1: the whole soundtrack for um, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: mechanics and things like that, but but for sure, I
Speaker 1: it didn't pass without my approval. And do you have
Speaker 1: any idea how lucrative it was gonna be? No? Never,
Speaker 1: I mean I knew, well, I knew that there was
Speaker 1: something happening because right before its release, Activision call and
Speaker 1: they said, hey, we all want to see if you
Speaker 1: want to get an advance on royalties or a buy
Speaker 1: out on royalties. So what does that mean? They said, well,
Speaker 1: we'll give you half a million dollars for advanced royalties
Speaker 1: for royalties forever, like that's my buyout. And I never
Speaker 1: heard anyone say half a million dollars to me, you know,
Speaker 1: and and um, and I was. I considered it, but
Speaker 1: I had just bought a new house, you know, I
Speaker 1: felt comfortable in my finances beyond that I wasn't making
Speaker 1: money from them yet, and I just said, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'd rather just see what happens. I mean, for sure,
Speaker 1: that was the absolute best business desision I ever made
Speaker 1: in my life. But I didn't realize it at the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't even think it was that significant. Um. And
Speaker 1: then I knew that something was happening when they, you know,
Speaker 1: right as the first game was released, they called me
Speaker 1: and said, we got you need to come up and
Speaker 1: start talking about like what we're gonna do next? What
Speaker 1: do you mean next? Well, for pro Skater two, this
Speaker 1: thing just came out like, well, we need a year
Speaker 1: to develop the next one, Like, oh, I guess we're
Speaker 1: doing a new one. And then the sort of the
Speaker 1: next level of that was when number four came out.
Speaker 1: The the other three were still in the top ten
Speaker 1: of sales, and that was the turning away. That's when
Speaker 1: things got into like crazy money that I never imagined. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean I almost can't say anything. What about the
Speaker 1: when you have the tour of the huck Jam thing? Um?
Speaker 1: So that was supposed to be my uh, that was
Speaker 1: supposed to be my transition from competing. I wanted to
Speaker 1: not compete anymore because I didn't I didn't like the
Speaker 1: schedule and the pressure and I at that point I've
Speaker 1: done it twenty years of my life, and so I
Speaker 1: started the huck gam as a response to always being
Speaker 1: the side show to bigger events. So if they ever
Speaker 1: saw skating at an event, like at the Warp tour
Speaker 1: or at a football game, it was like oft in
Speaker 1: the parking lot or at the you know, it was
Speaker 1: on the halftime show. And I was like, I feel
Speaker 1: like we've come so far with our sports that we
Speaker 1: could be the headlining act and yeah, we'll have music,
Speaker 1: but they're gonna play in the middle of our show.
Speaker 1: And I got um. I partnered up with Jim Giarre
Speaker 1: now would approach me Um, who was a music manager
Speaker 1: who had approached me around that time about working together
Speaker 1: on anything, and that was my what I presented to him.
Speaker 1: I said, I want to do this tour. He's like,
Speaker 1: it's great, I know all the people that do tourist
Speaker 1: Like okay, He's like, we'll get Offspring to play. I
Speaker 1: was like, Offspring said, yeah, I can get Offspring and
Speaker 1: I can get Social Distortion. I was like really, and
Speaker 1: he's like, I think I can get Diva. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you gotta be kidding, right, they just say Devo. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they might want to play a show. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that that's my Speccoli van Halen moment.
Speaker 1: If Devo played at my show, that that is the
Speaker 1: end all to my existence. And it happened. And so
Speaker 1: what did we learn? Ah? I learned that the concert
Speaker 1: industry is um a wild ride, um and way bigger
Speaker 1: than I imagined. I learned that selling tickets is very
Speaker 1: challenging to any event. Um. I learned that. Uh that,
Speaker 1: well it's totally different now, but back then that the
Speaker 1: getting an underwriting sponsor was everything. Um. Luckily ours was
Speaker 1: usually activision, you know, by default. Um. And uh, I
Speaker 1: learned how to I learned how to curate a show.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want to say curate like produce a show,
Speaker 1: to make it something that is fun to watch from
Speaker 1: start to finish. But you stopped doing it. We stopped
Speaker 1: doing it just because sponsorship dollars, you know, in the
Speaker 1: mid two thousand's got very difficult. We couldn't get someone
Speaker 1: to write a million dollar check to underwrite a whole
Speaker 1: tour that would take place in arenas because very few
Speaker 1: people were comeing to arenas. Um. It just you know,
Speaker 1: it just got to the the business model of it
Speaker 1: was too tricky with the with how big it was getting,
Speaker 1: so we scaled it back. We did it in sheds
Speaker 1: uh with sort of half of our gear, and we
Speaker 1: made it work, but it wasn't the huck Jam that
Speaker 1: I was really proud of. And then six Flags saw
Speaker 1: one of our shows and said, we want you to
Speaker 1: do that in six Flags next year. So we actually
Speaker 1: did a six Flags huck Jam tour with sort of
Speaker 1: the the scaled down version of it, which was still fun,
Speaker 1: but it was weird, you know, like doing shows in
Speaker 1: an amusement park. But some people came just for the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: this point in time, your house you have all what
Speaker 1: do you have in terms of skate facilities at your house?
Speaker 1: So I have a I have a concrete park in
Speaker 1: my backyard about four thousand square feet. That's that's sort
Speaker 1: of like a traditional skate park you would see, you
Speaker 1: know around the street. UM. And then I have my
Speaker 1: huck Jam halfpipe ramp in an office nearby. And how
Speaker 1: often do you go on and go out on either
Speaker 1: of them? I skate my ramp at least three times
Speaker 1: a week, three or four times a week. So I
Speaker 1: still do I still actively do exhibitions, UM and I
Speaker 1: want to. You know, I still love skating obviously, but
Speaker 1: I but I started to stay in practice. If if
Speaker 1: I'm home and probably skating out with the kids maybe
Speaker 1: once every other day out in the backyard. But they
Speaker 1: all got their own crews. Like, you know, even though
Speaker 1: I'm a professional skateboarding well known, they're not. Really they
Speaker 1: don't want to go skate with me in and do
Speaker 1: they all want to skate. It's so I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not strange, it's awesome, but it's a totally different time.
Speaker 1: They all skate, they all love skating, and it's not
Speaker 1: because of me. I mean, it's accessible to them because
Speaker 1: of me. But you know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: skating was rare. It was you know, it was the
Speaker 1: really outcast that we're doing it. And now all their
Speaker 1: bro skate. So why would you assess in terms of
Speaker 1: the up and downs? Where would you put skateboarding now?
Speaker 1: I would say that it had a meteoric rise um
Speaker 1: in the early two thousand's, uh that continued gradually but
Speaker 1: tapered off a bit into the late two thousands, and
Speaker 1: it's sort of plateaued but still wrong now in the US,
Speaker 1: um elsewhere it's growing and now skateboarding is gonna be
Speaker 1: the Olympics in that's gonna raise this global awareness. You know,
Speaker 1: suddenly there's gonna be Olympic teams from Ethiopia for Cambodia.
Speaker 1: Like that's true, it's gonna happen. And that's what excites
Speaker 1: me now is this sort of global interests of skateboarding
Speaker 1: where these kids from the most unlikely places are gonna
Speaker 1: feel that passion. So what's a typical day like for
Speaker 1: you now? Uh? Well, I try to uh, I try
Speaker 1: to limit my travel as best I can, or to
Speaker 1: include my family when I do. I've I've really you know,
Speaker 1: made a very conscious effort to be more present for
Speaker 1: them in recent years. And so a typical day is
Speaker 1: waking up, getting the kids off to school, taking uh.
Speaker 1: In any given day, there's usually two to four teenagers, um,
Speaker 1: and then we have four teenage boys. My oldest son
Speaker 1: lives on his own, and then my daughter is uh,
Speaker 1: she's nine, she's with us most weekends. So it's kids,
Speaker 1: our houses. Kids. It's just it's super fun. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's always lively, you know. Um. But but that's what
Speaker 1: it is. I'm you know, I'm taking I'm usually I
Speaker 1: used to call myself just kids chauffeur because it's just like,
Speaker 1: all right, wait now that a lot of them are driving,
Speaker 1: which is the best the best, um, And so I
Speaker 1: take one of the school I usually will go to
Speaker 1: my office not long after that and try to do
Speaker 1: whatever business I need, emails, interviews, you know, just dealing
Speaker 1: with licensing stuff, for scheduling stuff. And then I try
Speaker 1: to skate my ramp before school gets out so that
Speaker 1: I can pick up my kids from school and I
Speaker 1: can beat what I call the X Games Finals crowd,
Speaker 1: which is basically all the best skaters around my area
Speaker 1: love skating my ramp because it's the It's original Hucksham ramp.
Speaker 1: It really is the best built ramp in the world.
Speaker 1: Cost me a million bucks a better be but um,
Speaker 1: but they all come to skate and their sessions are
Speaker 1: so heated, and you know they're they all have that fire,
Speaker 1: they're all competing. I don't like, that's not my scene anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't want to fight for a turn on my ramp.
Speaker 1: So I have that we called the old Man session,
Speaker 1: usually around around eleven or twelve, and then you and
Speaker 1: other any other buddies go out, yeah, like a couple
Speaker 1: of friends that are you know, my of my generation
Speaker 1: will be skating and they're they're all still skating really good.
Speaker 1: It's just that's our scene because we're gonna get kids
Speaker 1: from school, right and so your kids, you know, Riley's
Speaker 1: a professional skater. The other kids are driving, they're going
Speaker 1: to be out of high school. What do you want
Speaker 1: them to be? What do they want to be? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: one of them is already h he's at the Berkeley
Speaker 1: College of Music as of this year. My son Spencer,
Speaker 1: and he's he's loving it. He does his own E
Speaker 1: d M type of stuff. They all play music. Uh.
Speaker 1: My other son, um, he is he's a hip hop
Speaker 1: I mean he's a hip hop encyclopedia. Um. He wants
Speaker 1: to study doing something not making him up, but producing
Speaker 1: like a line or management or something within that realm,
Speaker 1: because he really does have an ear for it and
Speaker 1: and uh he has an eye for the creativity of it. Um.
Speaker 1: One kid is really into computers, like designed his own
Speaker 1: VR type of stuff, and so he's kind of go
Speaker 1: in that direction. The other one is, Wow, what is
Speaker 1: he he? He uh, surfs, he skates, he plays piano.
Speaker 1: He's like a maestro piano. They're all they all are
Speaker 1: very creative, but you know, kind of within the same worlds. Okay,
Speaker 1: skate and punk go together. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: hip hop? I love it. I love that it's like
Speaker 1: urban and it came from the streets, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was very infused in skating in the in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Skating and hip hop we're we're kind of hand in
Speaker 1: hand because they came from the same milk um and
Speaker 1: a lot of skater you know, a lot of rappers
Speaker 1: are skate. That's like, that's their activity. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Bob left That's podcast. If you want to
Speaker 1: see Tony with me at tuned in studios, check out
Speaker 1: the tune in Instagram account at tune in for some
Speaker 1: picks and videos from behind the scenes. If you simply
Speaker 1: can't get enough, I want to know more of my
Speaker 1: thoughts on the future of the music industry, technology and
Speaker 1: current events. You'll want to subscribe to my newsletter. Find
Speaker 1: and subscribe at left sets dot com. Now I'm not
Speaker 1: shameless promotion. Let's dive back into the interview. So at
Speaker 1: this point in time, what personally do you still want
Speaker 1: to achieve? Um, you know what, I don't. I never
Speaker 1: I've never made any lofty goals like that, like I
Speaker 1: gotta do this. Um, I'm just enjoying the ride now.
Speaker 1: I really like, I love I love that I still
Speaker 1: get to skate, like I literally do skate for a
Speaker 1: living in some ways still, Um, and I'm very proud
Speaker 1: of that. I'm gonna be fifty this year and I'm
Speaker 1: a pro skater and I still feel somewhat relevant, so
Speaker 1: that that's unbelievable to me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And and just sort of enjoying the opportunities to come
Speaker 1: with that a lot of unexpected A lot of them
Speaker 1: are ones I never imagined, but um, but I really
Speaker 1: enjoy them and and embracing them and and being up
Speaker 1: for the challenge. Like I do a lot of public
Speaker 1: speaking now, and that's not something I ever like. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't think skateboard was the springboard to public speaking.
Speaker 1: But what kind of gigs do you do? Corporate events
Speaker 1: or like text summits and stuff, And you know, usually
Speaker 1: there you know, we had like a little conversation about
Speaker 1: that once, But usually they're looking for inspiration. Do you
Speaker 1: give them inspiration? What speech? It's usually follow your passion
Speaker 1: for the most part, but a lot of times I'll
Speaker 1: tailor it like I've I've done it for long enough
Speaker 1: that I can kind of guide it a certain direction
Speaker 1: if they need me to. So, you know, one was
Speaker 1: more geared towards social media. One was more um adapt
Speaker 1: to the market place and um, I try to focus
Speaker 1: on those elements, but the easiest ones. And when I
Speaker 1: can just answer questions. Right when you go to a gig,
Speaker 1: do the group he's come up after no matter where
Speaker 1: you are, the year old skaters saying blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, they want to talk stuff. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: it's well, the fun thing about that is when you
Speaker 1: were a skater in the eighties, it was a very
Speaker 1: you thought it was a very exclusive club, and it
Speaker 1: was in a lot of ways because it just wasn't
Speaker 1: that popular. But once you're in, you like, you loved it,
Speaker 1: and you you hold on to every magazine and video.
Speaker 1: And now that generation of news are mostly dads, and
Speaker 1: so they come up to me and they're like, I
Speaker 1: love my kids skates, and I tell them about Christian story,
Speaker 1: you guys, and for good and you know the fact
Speaker 1: that they have this in and they're still excited about it.
Speaker 1: It's it's really fun. Like I, I can't, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that that we've come this far and that it's
Speaker 1: still it's still that relevant, but also that that it
Speaker 1: inspired so many people back then. Okay, going back to
Speaker 1: your own think, I mean, listening to your story, you
Speaker 1: definitely went you know, this is like the people of
Speaker 1: the d M world. It goes up and it crashes.
Speaker 1: It goes up and it crashes, but you're victimized by
Speaker 1: that with no fallback position. So are you basically saying
Speaker 1: that it was luck that skateboarding came back, or you're
Speaker 1: so passionate, or you're a unique individual that would succeed
Speaker 1: in anything. How do you put that together? I think
Speaker 1: that I had the well, I had the advantage of
Speaker 1: not ever in the beginning, the goal was not fame
Speaker 1: or fortune. That was never the driving factor of what
Speaker 1: I was doing because it didn't exist and there wasn't
Speaker 1: just wasn't the the idea. The idea for me, it
Speaker 1: was just to keep getting better at skateboarding. So through
Speaker 1: the more difficult times and the more challenging times, that
Speaker 1: was still my motivation and I wanted to keep skating
Speaker 1: however I could. So I was doing odd jobs and
Speaker 1: and this and that, just so that I would have
Speaker 1: some time to skate ad jobs, not skateboarding games on skateboarding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had some video editing equipment, so I used to
Speaker 1: like edit videos for really this is when in like
Speaker 1: your early twenties. I uh, it was the only time
Speaker 1: I actually got borrowed money from my parents was to
Speaker 1: buy this this three quarter deck editing system that was
Speaker 1: run through my computer through a video toaster, which was
Speaker 1: one of the first home Yeah, I had an Amiga,
Speaker 1: and so I had the advantage of doing graphics with
Speaker 1: this video ating system. And so I mean I did.
Speaker 1: I did a couple of like I don't want to
Speaker 1: say big time stuff, but you know, legitimate jobs. Well,
Speaker 1: what percentage your income was based on video? Very little?
Speaker 1: And did not pay my parents back the food that way,
Speaker 1: but it was paying the bills at the time. No,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, being in the ski world. You know,
Speaker 1: you wake up one day, it's very hard to make it.
Speaker 1: Skiing is not like we say the people from California surfers.
Speaker 1: They could live on the beach. You have a board,
Speaker 1: that's it. Where if you're living, uh snow country. You
Speaker 1: gotta have a roof over your head, gotta have a pass,
Speaker 1: gotta have a women And eventually some people turn to
Speaker 1: dealing drugs. Other people quit, other people got to work
Speaker 1: for the industry. Other people get straight jobs. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to survive. It's not as simple as saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a dream and it worked for you, okay,
Speaker 1: and I think that has something to do very special
Speaker 1: to you. But I I'm weary. Well, I knew when
Speaker 1: I knew when to sort of pull back on the
Speaker 1: focus of my own, say, career in skating, in order
Speaker 1: to nurture, say, my company that I started. So what's
Speaker 1: the status of the company today. Uh, well, we've ben
Speaker 1: gon twenty five years, Birdhouse and that same three guys. No.
Speaker 1: I ended up UM buying my partner out about ten
Speaker 1: years ago, so it's just my inst but we do
Speaker 1: have we have four employees. For the most part, we
Speaker 1: have a team of about ten skaters who you saw
Speaker 1: when we video premiered our video UM And when I
Speaker 1: took it over from my partner, it had kind of
Speaker 1: lost its focus because he was distracted with doing a
Speaker 1: lot of other brands, and I said, I want to
Speaker 1: put Birdhouse back on the map, and that's pretty much
Speaker 1: what I've been doing for the last i'd say eight
Speaker 1: years with Birdhouse UM culminating in this video we just
Speaker 1: made and finally getting us back on track to sell skateboards.
Speaker 1: And so at this point in time, the last at
Speaker 1: this point in time, the last kenter ten years, is
Speaker 1: Birdhouse a profitable business? Uh? It is, but only because
Speaker 1: I will do UM sort of exterior licensing and sometimes
Speaker 1: not even a the Birdhouse brand, but just of my
Speaker 1: name to keep the ship afloat. So for instance, I
Speaker 1: have this uh Tony Hawks Skatepark series of skateboards that
Speaker 1: are more UM entry level skateboards that we sell at
Speaker 1: box stores. Those royalties go to Birdhouse in order to
Speaker 1: keep it going and pay the salaries of my skaters.
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, because they don't want
Speaker 1: Birdhouse at that level, but I don't mind my name
Speaker 1: being at the right exactly. So your main business enterprises
Speaker 1: today are Birdhouse. Uh. Birdhouses is still tricky, but it's surviving. UM,
Speaker 1: it's licensing, it's licensing our clothing line, Tony Hart clothing,
Speaker 1: UM endorsements. I have an endorsement with many USA. UM.
Speaker 1: And honestly, like, with the success of social media, that's
Speaker 1: become a source of income, which I never imagine at
Speaker 1: UH doing doing sponsored posts or campaigns things like that.
Speaker 1: You know, I was, I was there very early on
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Um and Uh. In fact, you wrote about
Speaker 1: one of my things I done on Twitter I miss
Speaker 1: like ten years ago, uh, which is how I learned
Speaker 1: about you. And and I just was trying to make
Speaker 1: it fun. You know, I knew that it was it was,
Speaker 1: it was far reaching, but I was just trying to
Speaker 1: make it fun for the people because I didn't want
Speaker 1: them to just think like, oh, hey, I'm hungry, Look
Speaker 1: I got coffee, Like what who cares? Is it's just
Speaker 1: your intern voice and now. And I was just trying
Speaker 1: to think of like what would I want to read
Speaker 1: from someone or what would I want to participate in?
Speaker 1: And so through that I had success. I got a
Speaker 1: lot of followers on Twitter obviously, and then through Instagram
Speaker 1: and through Facebook, and suddenly, before I knew it, I
Speaker 1: had this sort of business opportunity. And it's not really
Speaker 1: why I do it. It never has been, but it's
Speaker 1: suddenly it's like, wait, you'll pay me to what really
Speaker 1: and I don't really have to change my voice. That's
Speaker 1: the only stipulation I have. Like, look, if you want
Speaker 1: me to do this, I have to do in my
Speaker 1: own terms. I'm not just gonna put your marketing you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking point out there like I'm gonna make it
Speaker 1: my own voice. So although no one calls anymore, is
Speaker 1: the phone still ringing? The opportunities? Could the opportunities continue
Speaker 1: to come in at the same level they do? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And and like I said, when I when I do
Speaker 1: get an opportunity, I embrace it and I try to
Speaker 1: make it something fun and it usually ends up playing
Speaker 1: into something else. And who's fielding all those Uh? Well,
Speaker 1: I do have people at my office, so I do
Speaker 1: have um my sister is still my business partner, but
Speaker 1: I have a you know a few people in my
Speaker 1: office where they answer the phone and they do my schedule.
Speaker 1: And okay, but your story listening to it now for
Speaker 1: the past hour, you always say yes, is that true? No? No?
Speaker 1: In fact, once I got that level of success, especially
Speaker 1: with the video game, that was the finally the time
Speaker 1: where I was allowed to say no because I was
Speaker 1: I was coming. I wasn't struggling to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do every single thing. And even now,
Speaker 1: I mean for sure, nowadays I'm saying no, way more,
Speaker 1: just so that I have my own time, so that I,
Speaker 1: you know, have control of my life and I'm with
Speaker 1: my kids. Um. But it but it's a difficult. It's
Speaker 1: a difficult transition to make, you know too. Where it
Speaker 1: suddenly it's like, wait, what you want to do this? No,
Speaker 1: I don't what. It's not gonna you know, that's not
Speaker 1: gonna change what I'm doing or the reach that I have,
Speaker 1: and it's just gonna take up more of my time,
Speaker 1: like getting there and doing what you've been up and
Speaker 1: down financially this Wait, do you have any fear that
Speaker 1: you're going to run out of money? Or you feel Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm set and it will continue to be opportunities. I
Speaker 1: I'm not set in the sense that if I stopped everything,
Speaker 1: I could just live off my savings necessarily. Um, because
Speaker 1: I still want to provide for my kids into their
Speaker 1: adult lives, you know, or at least have them not.
Speaker 1: I don't want them to want for anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want them to struggle with you know. I want them
Speaker 1: to be productive and to take pride in their work,
Speaker 1: but I don't want them to feel like they're going
Speaker 1: to start UM. So yes and no, I mean yes,
Speaker 1: I would We could live modestly throughout our days and
Speaker 1: be fine. UM. But but I do feel like there
Speaker 1: are other there are other things that are that are
Speaker 1: still would be fun to accomplish. UM. I would love
Speaker 1: to UH. Our clothing line has has lingered in the
Speaker 1: US for a long time. It was exclusive to calls
Speaker 1: for almost ten years, and I would love to see
Speaker 1: the international potential of that. Because our clothing line was
Speaker 1: started by my siblings and I because we all had
Speaker 1: kids and we couldn't find cool clothes for our kids.
Speaker 1: That was that was it. That was the basic concept,
Speaker 1: and we started making cool clothes for toddlers, and then
Speaker 1: it started getting into young men's and then we had something.
Speaker 1: We had a legit clothing line, and Quicksilver bought the
Speaker 1: I P then UH Cherokee bought it, and that that
Speaker 1: now gives us the opportunity to take an on a
Speaker 1: more global scale. Just going back, one final thing, if
Speaker 1: you look at your success, which has been over decades
Speaker 1: and multifarious, what do you think the key element is? UM?
Speaker 1: I think the key element for me was um for sure, perseverance,
Speaker 1: but also um not being detracted or or um discouraged
Speaker 1: by the naysays, not listening to them. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I had plenty of that early on. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: set me up so well for so many different things
Speaker 1: in life. But I had so many naysayers early on
Speaker 1: in my skating career and and sort of found my
Speaker 1: voice and you know, became successful with it that once
Speaker 1: I started getting sponsors, the big sponsors, and people were like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're selling them whatever, you know this, I'm happy with
Speaker 1: what I'm doing. I'm proud of what I'm endorsing. And
Speaker 1: then came social media with hate like you've never known,
Speaker 1: and I was ready, you know what I mean, I
Speaker 1: had been through these different waves of it. My shell
Speaker 1: was tight. Okay, so somebody says something negative rolls right off,
Speaker 1: you know, absolutely, Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes it
Speaker 1: stings a bit, but um, I'm sure you have haters
Speaker 1: like I have who hate multiple times a day every day. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then it's just like but then if you go
Speaker 1: to their feed, that's all they're doing is just yelling
Speaker 1: at people, and it's just like, well, I'm not. I'm
Speaker 1: not exclusive in your hate, so I don't take it
Speaker 1: as as harshly. It's only when they talk about my
Speaker 1: my kids when I will not get involved. I just
Speaker 1: deleted because they don't need that. They don't they're not
Speaker 1: they're not participating in this. They're not certain lines that
Speaker 1: are very similar. One thing. I'm definitely not as a naysayer. Certainly,
Speaker 1: there's so many people with a profile who are essentially nonverbal.
Speaker 1: Musicians are most famous for that. But you can certainly
Speaker 1: tell a story. It's been very edifying and interesting. I'm
Speaker 1: sure my audience will love it. Tony, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for coming. Yeah, thanks for having me, and thanks for
Speaker 1: writing about the Birdhouse video. That was Okay, it was great.
Speaker 1: It was great. Kind I mean, that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that's a big cultural change. You know, we live
Speaker 1: in this society right now where the self anointed media
Speaker 1: elite is frequently out of touch with what's going on.
Speaker 1: And one of the interesting things I saw, primarily in
Speaker 1: as we would say, you know, X games or sports
Speaker 1: of that ilk was the community spirit. When I grew
Speaker 1: up as a baby boomer, people wanted to win, and
Speaker 1: there were the winners and the losers where if you watch,
Speaker 1: you know, a skate competition whatever, they'll rally all around.
Speaker 1: You know, the winner will be with a loser, will
Speaker 1: all be a sense of community. And I learned that
Speaker 1: from skating, and then it evolved even amongst a millennial generation.
Speaker 1: I mean in my when I grew up and I
Speaker 1: was going to school, people would raise her hand, want
Speaker 1: to stand up a lot of people. I don't want
Speaker 1: to stand out. I want to be a member of
Speaker 1: the group, et ceter up. So there's been a huge
Speaker 1: cultural impact. And it's also interesting because people your aged
Speaker 1: ten years younger than myself. Uh, you know, I go,
Speaker 1: I goes, you know, I hang with these people and
Speaker 1: skating is such a big part of their culture. People
Speaker 1: don't realize this. Like this guy, Ian Rodgers presently works
Speaker 1: for an l M v H l V you know,
Speaker 1: Louis Vattone LVMH used to work for Apple and Beats whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, big skater Okay, And I know this guy okay,
Speaker 1: my friend Mark Writer who works with Metallica, big skater.
Speaker 1: And we go with Joel Gomez who got started. It's
Speaker 1: amazing what a culture and how it intertwine. Now another
Speaker 1: thing you're doing. Although I said we were ending here
Speaker 1: is you're also your foundation is building skatepark. So tell
Speaker 1: us just a little bit more about that. Uh So,
Speaker 1: we started the foundation UM about fifteen years ago and
Speaker 1: the goal was just to help people get through the
Speaker 1: process of getting a skatepark. It wasn't our it wasn't
Speaker 1: our intent to just pick a city and say the
Speaker 1: city needs apart. It was more it was more um,
Speaker 1: looking at communities that are trying to get something going
Speaker 1: for themselves and giving them the resources necessary for it.
Speaker 1: So giving them funding but more is importantly the guide
Speaker 1: to getting through the red tape to city council meetings
Speaker 1: and petitioning and all that stuff. UM. And we've learned
Speaker 1: a lot through the through the process, we've gotten you know,
Speaker 1: the supportive of larger philanthropy in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: And so we've helped to develop almost six skateparks now.
Speaker 1: So what is the biggest challenge building the skatepark other
Speaker 1: than them really usually the approval process, getting getting either
Speaker 1: the city behind it or the location. UM, the funding
Speaker 1: can be a problem. And usually with our with with
Speaker 1: our grant and our endorsement, that will get them a
Speaker 1: lot more in matching funds and and maybe even there'll
Speaker 1: be the tipping point for them getting it approved completely. Um,
Speaker 1: it's definitely the work I'm most proud of and and
Speaker 1: I you know, I enjoyed and selfishly, I just get
Speaker 1: more places to skate. And then what's the liability issue today? Well,
Speaker 1: the skateboarding was added to the hazardous activities lists about
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. Well maybe a little less, but that
Speaker 1: was right around the time we started doing it, and
Speaker 1: that allowed people to build skate parks in public areas
Speaker 1: and not have them monitored because skating is at your
Speaker 1: own risk. Like it actually fell under the same stipulation
Speaker 1: as skiing. So ski you get hurt, can't blame anyone. Nowadays,
Speaker 1: skate you get hurt, you know, and that's working out,
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it it gets weird because if they
Speaker 1: do a skate park and they want to enforce pads, um,
Speaker 1: which you know I encourage, specially for beginners, if they
Speaker 1: if they want to enforce pads and someone is skating
Speaker 1: without pads and they get hurt, then they are liable
Speaker 1: because they weren't enforcing it enough. And it gets really
Speaker 1: it's just you knowable somebody such a nightmare. Okay, well
Speaker 1: we're not gonna get hurt here in the studio. Thanks again, Tony. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is Bob left Sex. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for your time. Much like the Left Sets Letter, I
Speaker 1: want to hear from you. You can email me at
Speaker 1: Bob at left sets dot com and let me know
Speaker 1: what you think. I appreciate your comments. Be sure to
Speaker 1: subscribe on tune in, Apple Podcasts or your podcast player
Speaker 1: of choice if there are apps were not available, and
Speaker 1: let me know we'll get them there. Remember, distribution is king.
Speaker 1: And if you're not a subscribe to the Left Sets Letter,
Speaker 1: visit left sets dot com and subscribe for regular newsletter
Speaker 1: updates on a wide range of topics, including those not
Speaker 1: covered here. Me reas don't know me exactly why must
Speaker 1: be its out of the season fling