Taken from Issue 4 “Pride”
Tony Hawk… A collage of fish-tails, competition trophies, gifts from rock-stars adorns the wall behind him – a shrine to forty years of “living the dream.” If Alva, Peralta, Adams were the grandparents of skateboarding, he is the father – a soaring benevolence who’s put his fame and fortune into guiding skateboarding along the right path. When he’s not building skateparks across the US with his Tony Hawk Foundation, supporting Skateistan, or running things over at Birdhouse, he’s looking after his kids: Riley, Keegan, Spencer and Kadence. I’m one of their generation, so it’s surreal to be sitting opposite the guy who – through video-games, films, X-Games commentary – taught me what skateboarding was in the first place. But things have come a long way since Hanger, and I can’t say I identify with the old ways all that much anymore. So what can we make of skateboarding today – and is daddy still proud of it?
Words by Oisín Tammas
Photos courtesy of Tony Hawk
What’s on your mind today, Tony?
Ah, wow. I’m still skating a lot, a bit overwhelmed with my schedule. I’m doing a lot of speaking gigs, a lot with the Tony Hawk Foundation – other than that, just raising my kids really.
Yeah, I saw you were teaching Kadence to drop in?
Yeah, [laughs] she’s been skating recently. That was an unexpected moment. I was just filming it for our own reference but it blew up online! I think she was a bit overwhelmed by the response.
Kadence Hawk Pro Skater – you heard it here first!
I think she enjoys it more as an activity for us to do together. She doesn’t have so many friends who skate, she doesn’t get into it as deep as my other kids.
And the Tony Hawk Foundation. Word on the street is you’ve been building parks in Michigan.
Yeah with the Ralph C. Wilson Foundation we’re doing skateparks in the Midwest. We use their funding and give them suggestions, through our resources push them in the right direction. We don’t really have many partnerships with the Foundation because we have to implicitly trust the people we’re working with – but we do also partner strongly with Skateistan.
Why the Midwest?
There are so many challenged areas. We definitely have an affinity with it because my wife is from there, but it’s a classic case of the community rebuilding itself. Not just gentrifying, but starting from the ground up.
“Skateboarding is far too diverse to say what is or isn’t the attitude of a skater.”
There are plenty of skaters in the area but what is lacking is the infrastructure. In terms of the economic challenges that cities of industry are facing – they need something for the kids to do.
How many skateparks have you built now?
We’ve helped complete over 600. It’s not that we necessarily fund them all, but our resources help with those tipping points: getting it validated, getting it finished up. Our seal of approval can help get parks through those important stages.
That’s more skateparks than most countries have in total!
Yeah, I mean the ultimate goal is do something on an international scale. While that sounds like a simple thing, it’s very difficult because you have to be incorporated as a non-profit in all those different countries and we don’t have the funding at this stage. We could spread ourselves too thin, but I’d rather have our international partnerships secured before taking that leap.
Are there ways in which you can already work internationally but from afar?
We give plenty of advice and resources to anybody who contact us, whether from Europe, Australia, Africa. We have so much experience, so that is valuable in itself.
Do you think that, no matter how many skateparks you build, people will always gravitate towards the street?
There’s a certain population who are drawn to that, but by and large people love skateparks. Even the most experienced skaters still go to learn new tricks without being worried about getting kicked out. They’re fundamental.
Is skateboarding still seen as rebellious with how much mainstream support it gets today?
Skateboarding is far too diverse to say what is or isn’t the attitude of a skater. All kids get into it for different reasons. Now, you know, being an Olympian could be a legitimate reason to start skateboarding – so I don’t like generalising.
Some people like what it brings to them individually, some like the feeling of community. Some people connect at skateparks, some connect online. And this can happen whether a place is designated for skateboarding or not.
I think that’s true, but sometimes it can seem like more of a uni-dimensional culture. We’ve definitely seen many groups who felt marginalised or rejected in some way by skateboarding’s “core”.
Yeah, I mean I’ve been skateboarding for forty years now. I’ve seen it change dramatically in that time. Definitely in the early years it was considered more of a male-dominated sport, a boy’s club. That has shifted in the last fifteen years, it’s far more inclusive, far more available – to womxn, for example. There are more resources, more events, it’s definitely not as equal as it should be. But it’s changed a great deal, and while I’m sure there are still remnants of that boy’s club attitude, even looking at how my daughter was inspired by Lizzie Armanto and some other younger girls, it’s clear how inspirational these people are today. It wasn’t just my influence on her, you know?
It’s happening at every level with womxn in skating. There are these crews like Skate Witches, Brujas; and then in the competitive eye: Leo, Jenn, Mariah – they’re all supporting each other so much. It stands out from, say, men’s SLS: headphones in, take home the Gold.
I agree, but then in looser format competitions you see the same comradery between everyone – male or female. As I say, I don’t like to generalize between factions of skateboarding. For sure, Street League is strict, it’s funnelling them towards the Olympics. But then the Vans Park Series, the vibe is more akin to that unorthodox, no rules, skating.
Sure, but they are definitely at different points in their lives, and I think that means the attitudes are different.
Yeah, sure. But in some womxn’s competitions the vibe is pretty competitive! But I understand what you’re saying: they’re on the rise, finding their way in terms of careers in skateboarding.
For the most part, I think they’re also trying to pull each other up too, rather than just focus on themselves.
Yeah, and their lifespan has been accelerated by industry support.
Take Leo, Nora – Nike and Adidas respectively have invested a lot in promoting their personality, their skating and their…”value”?
Yeah, and it’s about time. It’s about time that womxn’s skateboarding becomes more than just a novelty or a matter of aesthetics. You know, that pretty girl cruising down the boardwalk thing.
“There are always going to be those idiots who just want to troll, talk shit, hide behind anonymous profiles. If you can endure that, you can rise above it.”
These people are truly talented and they should be shown for their talent and their drive, not something so shallow.
Take Sky Brown who will soon to be skating the Olympics as part of Team GB. This is unprecedented skateboarding from somebody so young, and it’s interesting to see whether those gender-divides in competitive skateboarding will still be relevant with such high level of skateboarding from everywhere, including non-binary folx.
I like events when it’s all inclusive, everybody just skating together. There is an advantage in terms of experience with some of the male skaters, especially in the bowl events, but at the same time I love that there is this push for equality. Prize money is finally being equalised, and I think it’s a great time for somebody to start skating who doesn’t fit that stereotypical outcast skater male.
Being deep in the “halls of power” of the industry, do you see people taking notice of these sorts of movements?
Yeah, I mean you can see it just by the type of coverage these things are getting. Look at the last Nike campaign, the girls were front and centre. That in itself shows that this is serious and that there’s support.
We recently worked with Cher and Peach, two transgender skaters, to put together a double-part called Strauberry Peach. We saw you actually liked it on Insta, have you been keeping up with them?
Things like that definitely catch my eye, yeah – @BlondeMohawk?
Yeah and @Cher_Strauberry. Plus Unity Skateboards. These movements are really important, but I think there’s still an aversion in some areas of skateboarding to that.
I think it’s more inclusive than ever, as is society, but skateboarding in particularly prides itself on being outside the norm, so I think it’s more welcoming.
I think that’s a generalisation too…
There are always going to be those idiots who just want to troll, talk shit, hide behind anonymous profiles. If you can endure that, you can rise above it. I mean, just on the subject of inclusivity generally, I personally received a lot of hate when I was a kid – for my style of skating. It was all tricks, people thought I was a robot, I got made of fun of to my face and in magazines. After living through that sort of insult offline, it’s not hard to see how it can navigate through social media. It’s just noise though. If you can ignore the haters and be yourself, you will find support – and that support system will be louder than any troll.
Are there some people who have a responsibility to amplify that message to those who feel hated?
I never like putting responsibility on anybody who has been successful. It’s up to them if they want to be an advocate or a spokesperson. A lot of the time it’s too much pressure to put on somebody who may have just fallen in love with skateboarding because of what it brought to them personally. But at the same time, I commend any one who uses their voice to affect change. I think many of the girls are aware they have that responsibility and are more subtle or nuanced with it, and do use it. That’s hugely important.
Can you give an example?
Well, my daughter respects Lizzie a lot for her skating, as I say. And I try to show her somebody like Leo, who – while not overly political – definitely presents themselves well. Leo represents hope for people who feel like they can’t be themselves because they’re different in their sexuality, or whatever it is. In these cases, neither one is overtly trying to be polarising, but they’re strong in their opinions and what they put out there.
Sometimes if you’re part of a movement like that, the pressure comes whether you choose to accept it or not. It can’t be easy. But Leo’s incredible.
Yeah, Leo has that – but at the same time isn’t trying to be bipartisan or tear other people down. I think the bottom line is that with these skaters, they let their skating do the talking.
And Leo’s skating definitely talks: beauty on a skateboard.
Leo rips – seriously rips. And seeing that progression through the eyes of the X-Games is always been exciting for me.
“Skateboarding speaks for itself.” It’s an interesting point. But is it always true? Tricks can change the world of skateboarding. Like the 900, what was the difference between that and landing, say, the 720?
Yeah, I landed the 720 in a backyard in Sweden with like 3 kids watching. Nobody cared. The 900 felt the same for me, but afterwards people were recognising me in the airport, even people who didn’t skate.
But if skateboarding truly speaks for itself, why is it that so many 900-level tricks get posted on Instagram everyday, but we don’t necessarily consider it a turning point in skateboarding like we did the 900?
Yeah, I think it’s just diluted. The X-Games was the only medium to show skateboarding back then. They weren’t even allowing skate-endemic photographers to be there, it was exclusive and so many kids watched in the mid to late 90s. Nowadays we are inundated with media, channels, content. It’s very, very hard to get noticed in that space. You’re right, there are definitely people doing stuff that we thought utterly impossible 10, even 5, years ago.
It doesn’t even look real. To think these people are not getting recognition is disappointing. At the same time, you do have to hustle. Keep pushing yourself, putting yourself out there. Professional skating doesn’t fall in your lap, you have to work for it. That’s something people often don’t want to accept. You have to be disciplined, you have to do it when you don’t feel like it, you have to be approachable. Otherwise, nobody is going to care how good you are. You’ve got to step up. Don’t complain about the park, you’re a professional. As clinical as that sounds, it’s the truth. The ones who get to work are the ones who are successful.
And then there’s also something about that dilution which gives credence to something more than just technical skill. Tricks aren’t everything.
Yeah, you know as well as I do that if something is truly special it gets shared all over the place. And a lot of the time that is a stepping stone.
It’s opening a door, but they have to walk through it…
That’s it. If they’re a one hit wonder, it’s gone.
Some people, like Ryan Lay, are skaters who showcase so much more than their own abilities – it proves that a skate-career has so many different pathways these days.
Sure, you can have a healthy balance though. There are plenty of people who want to use their skill for a greater good, I applaud that. There’s a sea of talent, you have to find your niche.
And as you said, so many different reasons to get into it in the first place. What do you see in skateboarding today that reminds you of why you started?
The excitement of kids learning the most basic tricks. Seeing my daughter drop in recently made me so proud; the empowerment she got from that, it shifted her attitude. And I don’t just mean towards skateboarding, I mean towards her whole life. She was very afraid of many irrational things in life, this has helped her understand that she’s in control of her destiny – her fears are something she can manage. And at the parks, when I see a kid land their first kickflip – that’s it! For me it was landing an aerial above the coping, but it’s the same.
It’s funny, today an aerial seems so much more challenging than a kickflip considering most of skateboarding is happening on flatground.
Yeah, it’s hard to explain to kids where skateboarding came from. When I grew up, all the cool kids were skating pool or vert, and the guys skating freestyle were considered nerds. It was like dancing. I don’t say that in an insulting way, but they were nerds – Rodney [Mullen] himself would admit that. Nobody was jumping downstairs, nobody was using ledges or rails. But for me it was pool skating, and the big mark of a pool skater was making it to the coping. My whole world opened up after that. I think that’s analogous to kids doing their first kickflips today.
And kids who are learning to skate outside of the Western culture – at Skateistan or Free Movement Skateboarding, for example – may have benchmarks we don’t even fully comprehend. We forget sometimes that our culture is not necessarily inherent to skateboarding everywhere.
Yeah, exactly. They have totally different reference points.
Skateboarding could look totally different in, say, ten years as a result of this skate charity movement.
There’s this skatepark in Uganda which has been around for six of seven years, but there are no instructors, no influencers in that way. These kids are just making it up as they go along. I’ve seen some pretty unique styles of skating out there. But then in Skateistan, where for the most part the instructors are embedded in the skate industry or have the classes follow a certain route through trick-learning – their project model is of education, and I think it’s the best.
What was it for you that first made you want to support Oliver and Skateistan?
I saw his first project: getting kids to skate in a fountain once a week. He’d just show up with boards and let them have a go. That in itself was enough for me. I had never seen skating in the Middle East, I couldn’t imagine a place so war-torn could ever foster skating, but he wasn’t going to let that stop anybody from doing it.
“Seeing my daughter drop in recently made me so proud; the empowerment she got from that, it shifted her attitude”
I saw it grow so quickly, the support come in – I loved that Oliver was so passionate. It’s actually hard to explain… He’s so green to fundraising that it actually helps him, because he’s not steeped in these antiquated ways. He’s a skater at heart, and that shines through. I love watching him in these huge philanthropic events, always staying true to the core of skateboarding’s empowerment.
He told us that he actively didn’t introduce the Western skate culture in order to allow for the act of skateboarding to speak for itself. Turns out it’s now an activity that more girls do than boys do, without those preconceptions.
It was introduced as an activity rather than a sport because womxn there aren’t allowed to do sports. Leaving out that, and this boy’s club element, was a masterful move. It’s spread to their work in Cambodia, South Africa; the gender-ratio is equal or more girls. That’s far more progressive than where I live in California.
Skateistan became the example to charities later down the line like SkatePal, Free Movement Skateboarding, Womxn Skate The World. The lineage keeps going…
I hope so, I hope Oliver was the catalyst for all that – he should be.
At the first Pushing Boarders Conference last year, we saw the ‘Globally Stoked’ panel gather that lineage to discuss it – and you were mentioned as a catalyst too.
Well, thank you. It’s the work I’m most proud of, for sure.
What in skateboarding generally are you most proud of today?
Anything that provides facilities to kids who are challenged, who have the desire to skate but not the support system. And, on a global scale, things which communicate skateboarding through various means – video games, philanthropy – as positive. When I started there was no hope for a career in skateboarding. The “dream” we have now didn’t exist. In that sense, I am proud that “living the dream” is a reality, and that kids from all walks of life can go after it. I have a great sense of pride that I had a hand in that.
You could argue that having Elissa Steamer in the early Tony Hawk’s games was the first suggestion that womxn might be able to chase that dream too – all those years ago.
Yeah, when I chose the list of skaters for those games I wanted to make it as inclusive as I could, and have the people who I felt would endure the fame and keep pushing skateboarding forward. It ended up being less inclusive than I would have preferred, but I hear a lot that our video game series got many girls into skating because of Elissa, maybe African-Americans because of Kareem, because of the soundtrack. I never imagined it would have that much impact. I thought it was a good game, I thought skaters would appreciate it, but I never imagined it would be this catalyst for a whole new generation.
Some of my earliest memories are playing THPS. Growing up in the UK before social media, before the internet really kicked off, it was that game series which told me who the “A-List” skateboarders were.
And if you look at that list, most of those people are still pushing the limits. I’m proud of those choices – they’re still on top of their game, twenty years later.
What are you least proud of in skateboarding right now?
[Laughs] I don’t exist or move forward with a ton of regrets or ill will towards what’s happening. I don’t like that in some ways people associate skateboarding with irresponsibility or drug culture. I don’t think that’s a fair representation of it to the non-skater. I think that skateboarding is way too diverse for that.
Could you say though that the rockstar-level fame that came off the back of things like THPS actually caused that? I mean, I adored Bam for his rebellious, irresponsible lifestyle. And it could be argued that gave way to addiction for him… Fame gets the better of people.
Yeah, but that happens in any situation where people are entrusted with fame. I got lucky that I, not escaped, but didn’t fall into that trap. I had a taste of it in the 80s and I knew how fleeting it was. I lost that success, especially the income, and when I got it back I wasn’t going to take advantage of it.
I got lucky to live through a wave of success, then failure. And some of the people coming up on the second wave really did go under – it’s a drug: fame. It’s intoxicating. Everybody wants you, they invite you to all the parties… you lose sight of what got you there in the first place.
How can you deal with that?
I guess, when you realise how much discipline you had for skateboarding in the first place, that you applied so much perseverance to getting better at it, at mastering your skills – if you can shift that discipline to your life, to your compulsive behaviours, to your choices, that will benefit you. I’m not saying it’s easy to do, but that’s exactly what I did in the last ten years. I was getting invited to every single event, I had a level of fame I never thought possible. To escape those distractions, to really focus on what’s important: family, doing what you love, presenting skateboarding in a positive way – that took discipline. That’s the basis of recovery too, in Bam’s case. If he’s able to focus, I believe it’s going to work out for him.
All love to him, and you. Right, to tie up: what outside of skateboarding are you most proud of?
My kids. There were so many opportunities for them to lose their way too. With my success and my distractions, and being able to be much more present for them I see them motivated to have their own success, whatever that may be. That I can still be there for them, not by setting an example, but by nurturing them actively, that’s what I’m most proud of in my life overall.
I think you’ve nurtured skateboarding in exactly the same way, and on behalf of SKATEISM I’d like to say thank you for that. Big love, Birdman, big love.
