Tony Hawk

44:07Yeah. If I were to show you my board, you would not know which is the front or the back. Is there a front and a back? There is, yeah. I just know because it's very subtle, but I've been riding the same shape for like 20 years, so no. Do you think of skateboarding as competitive? I think there is a sector of it that is competitive, sure. when I was growing up, the only way that you were going to get any recognition, sponsorship, support was through competition. There was no YouTube. The magazines didn't care what you were doing unless you were competing. Tell me about a competition. I've never seen a skate competition.

44:44Well, basically, my era was pool competition. So there would usually be a main pool at every skate park. That's the competition pool. At Del Mar was the keyhole. and then you would go there would be whatever however many people in town 100 skaters you'd have prelims and they would cut it down to maybe 16 people then you'd have semi-finals and then they would cut it to eight and then eight people would generally get three to four runs 45 seconds each if you bail you can get back up start again but if you fall you're not going to win you get marked way down and you got to do something like you know just pull some brand new move out of your ass if you fall and to even be considered back in the lineup it was supposed to be about your style your airtime trick selection and when it came down to it in our day it was just kind of like who's the coolest yeah and who was the coolest christian wasoi yeah right and so to combat that i had to come up with the craziest shit trick wise because they hated my style they didn't you know i was bony cock like i was the nerdy kid that was just trying to maneuver my board and looked awkward doing it so i had to do like mctwist but do a variation of mctwist like throw my board another 180 grab it a different way and that was the only way that i was going to get seen so do you say what christian was doing was easier for him to do than what you were doing it wasn't that it was it was just more that he looked so smooth yeah he was amazing like you know he could go twice as high as any of us and do some of the hardest tricks too i'm like he it's not lost on me like christian he had the moves just for instance his lean air would count for probably one of my harder tricks.

46:45Yeah. I can do lean airs, but they didn't look like him. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. So you had to do something over and above. And I have to hide it from the judges. Because if they saw me do it in practice. Then they wouldn't be impressed. And if I didn't do it, they're like, what about that trick we saw? I see. And I would get marked down. I see. So they were judging me against what they thought I was capable of. Yeah. So it was tricky. But I mean, whatever, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Like all that just fueled my fire to keep getting better and better and better. Yeah. Would you ever get there a day earlier to practice something in the place where it was going to happen?

47:23I would practice it not in the place where it was going to happen because everyone shows up a day or two early. I see. And that's when you're under the microscope. But how different is it from place to place? Well, at some point it evolved from pools to ramps. So the ramps were a little more reliable in terms of being similar to each other. You know, they were all wooden and they were generally... Better to fall on wood, seems like. Yeah, I think so. I prefer falling on wood than concrete, for sure. It seems like it. It's funny you say that because they're having an event at this sort of legendary concrete bowl.

47:58They're having it in January and it's going to be the last one there. And they're having a legends division and everyone's like, you got to go. And I was like, I do not want to fall on concrete. am I? It's not a matter of if I'm going to fall, it's a matter of when I'm going to fall.

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49:51Tell me about your shyness when you were young. How would you experience it? I just didn't feel like I belonged. So I just would be very... Just quiet and reserved? Yeah, just introverted. And then when I started skating good, that was my voice. And so I used that as much as I could. and then people thought I was arrogant because I wasn't talking to anyone and I'm just doing all these crazy tricks and I was like, I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know, you know. And I think I broke out of it eventually because Stacy Peralta said, look, you know, there's all these kids here. They literally bought a scaper with your name on it.

50:32They're staring at you like, go talk to them. Like, I'm not even comfortable in my own skin. How am I going to talk to these guys? Yeah. And eventually I just kind of learned to move through that discomfort and be available and be interactive. Would you think of Stacey as a mentor for you? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Tell me about sponsorships. How do they work for skateboarders? Usually it's a contract, like an annual contract. In the case of there's a strange disconnect with skateboard companies, actual like who make manufacturers skateboards because they are not the biggest in the industry like in terms of sales so hard goods are the hardest to maintain a legitimate business with you are officially a pro skateboarder if you have a skateboard with your name on it but the irony is that that's not going to be what makes you money it's it's if you have a shoe deal energy drink deal car sponsorship or your competition earnings but the skateboard company is is the very least of your income but you're identified through that it's very strange you can't get the sponsorships without being uh you can i mean there are there are people that do it for sure they're more focused on competition yeah but the ones that are that are like vying for skater of the year for thrasher they're out in the streets they're getting the craziest footage they definitely have a skateboard sponsor tell me about the culture of skateboard shops well that was the hub i mean that was where you would go to find your crew to talk shop to watch videos and they typically be places that only sold skateboards or would they sell other things it depends on the era generally it would only nowadays well i would say through the 80s 90s only sold skateboards for sure.

52:27But in the early days, yeah, it could be just sporting goods and they had a little skate session in the back. And also, they're the ones that support the local scene. You can't dismiss them. Like even if their online sales have affected their business and whatnot or they're struggling, they usually are the ones that people look to to put on local events, to get teams to do demos. When I talk to people about those 80s and that era and doing demos, the first thing they say is, oh yeah, I saw you guys at this shop. The shop is what they remember. Is there a crossover between skateboarding and X Games?

53:02I think that there's a synergy in that we use the same terrain. Yeah. For instance, in the early 90s, I wasn't getting a lot of jobs as a vertical halfpipe skater, but I would get invited to be a special guest at the Rollerblade demos and the BMX shows at the state fair, and that paid my rent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was the special guest at Matt Hoffman's BMX show for the Michigan State Fair for two summers in a row. And would it be like BMX scene in some ways replaced the skateboarding scene or not really? No, not really. I think in the early 90s, inline skates did for sure. Inline skates? Yeah, rollerblades.

53:43But you can't do tricks. Not really. But they did skate ramps, and they were selling tons of these rollerblades so people would come see and pay to see those shows. So I did shows like I was, again, special guest at Six Flags Parking Lot St. Louis for a whole summer in a rollerblade live show. Yeah. But you would skate? I would just skate, yeah. Because there were some people that they knew my name from the 80s. Yeah. So it's like, yeah, I remember that guy. And I could do all the tricks, so you know what I mean? Like people want to bash inline skating, rollerblading, whatever. I was like, dude, that was, I'm so thankful that they were around back then.

54:26When did your connection to video games start and how? Around 1997, a guy approached me because he had a crude engine for a skate game that he had coded on his PC. And he said, hey, I think we could do a skate game. Do you want to go with me and pitch it to different publishers? And so he and I went to a bunch of different meetings. We went to some software studios. We went to actually Nintendo. And I mean, I remember one quote was, skateboarding is not even popular. Why would a skateboarding video game be popular? And I said, well, skateboarding games were popular. We had 720. We had Skate or Die.

55:09Like, I think now that we're at a different stage of video game and home consoles, we could do something fun. And even if people don't skate, they would like it. It's like, no. And then about a year later, less than a year later, I got a call from Activision. They said, hey, we heard that you might be working on a skateboard game. So I tried, but it didn't work. And they said, well, we are working on a skateboard game. We just did a game called Apocalypse featuring Bruce Willis, which is the first time there was like a name and likeness in a game. I said, it didn't do very well, but the engine is perfect for skateboarding.

55:45And so we want you to come see what we're doing. and I went up to Activision the next week and they handed me a controller and I started playing this game that was Bruce Willis on a skateboard with a gun on his back, skating through a wasteland and immediately I was doing ollies and kickflips and grabs and I was like, oh, this is it. I just knew instinctively that this is the game that skateboarders will want to buy a console to play. Yeah. And to me, that was the biggest success. Like, if it's good enough for skateboarders that they like what they're seeing, then that's a win. Yeah, it sounds like falling doesn't hurt as bad in the video.

56:27Oh, yeah. It is hard to watch, though. There are some animations of, like, my knee popping one way that I can't watch it happen. I have to choose a different character. You talked about breaking your leg. And as someone who's suffered so many injuries over the years, tell me in that moment when you realize what's happening what's the thought process is it oh no or is it okay there goes two months what do you it's that like how long is this going to take yeah it's just how long is it going to take yeah yeah and the only reason how long it's going to take is because how long is it going to take before he can get back yep yeah that's it it's not well it'll be painful for two months that's not part of the thought no i mean that's a given It's just getting back.

57:12Yeah. Getting back, yeah. Or, you know, did I damage this so completely that it's over? That I can't get back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, is it? I don't know. But, you know, when I woke up the next morning from the surgery, like, oh, we got to run back in place. And I was like, okay, here we go. Let's go. Yeah. But that was my fault for thinking that way. What's the longest you've ever gone without skating? It was during that time. It was probably... the second time around I didn't skate for about three months and then when you get back is it always like ah i'm back yes or is this um the first go around of my broken leg i thought it was going to be like that and it was just so painful and so weak that's when reality hit me i was like oh this i'm never gonna get back to where i was i see but now but now i'm i'm i would say you know i'm like 80 90 of what i was before that and And if that's where I live, it's fine.

58:11Yeah, yeah, yeah. How popular did the video game get? It was the biggest game. It was insane. When the fourth game came out, the first three were still in the top ten of sales. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. How long was it between iterations? We came out each year up until 2002. So in the fourth year, one, two, and three were all in the top ten. That's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And then the consoles kept getting better. so then we're out i also love the fact that nintendo's like god no one's gonna like this yeah well it wasn't it wasn't exactly nintendo that said that but because because someone said it yeah yeah but yeah you're right it's just that much more interesting when the powers that be the experts yeah say it's a bad idea yeah and then but also it took everyone by surprise i mean even the designers you know we were just kind of going rogue like picking music i was just picking the soundtrack to my skating years so we got dead kennedys and primus and great you know i mean and they were all happy to lend a song because it was like you guys want our music okay yeah sure and then all of a sudden the soundtrack took on the life of itself and people credit that for getting them into punk rock or ska or even hip-hop.

59:30Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. There are four cover bands that only play songs from our video game on different continents. Amazing. Yeah. It's amazing the power of music in that way. I think if it wasn't for The Clash, I don't know that any of us would know any reggae or ska. That's when people say, what starts with The Clash and Gang of Four, and then everything fans out from there. Yeah. Gang of Four, incredible. So great. I've seen them live two times. Once at Irving Plaza and once at Roseland. Wow. Unbelievable. What a great band. I remember speaking of something like that, like I remember I saw Nirvana right after Nevermind came out in 1990 at a small venue in Houston because there was a skate event in Houston.

1:00:20And then everyone's like, Nirvana's playing tonight. So all the skaters go to the show. and I remember as they started thinking like, this is the coolest place you could possibly be in the world right now. Yeah. And it went crazy. And I remember Jack Black told me that same thing about seeing Devo in 1980, where he's like, this is the greatest place anyone could think of to be right now. Amazing. In the presence of this band. I saw Devo in Boston in this theater. I don't know what it was called, but like an old movie theater. and it was one of the greatest things I've ever seen in my life. I know that place because...

1:00:58In Boston. You had to like walk through an alley to get to it, even though you get to it and it's a big theater. So when I was on tour in Boston, on Bonesbury tour, the Damned were playing there. Great venue. And I was so excited. Yeah. And I walked in, they're like, it's 21 and over. And I was 20. And I was like, come on. Yeah. And they're just like, no, it's not an all-day show. I never got to see the Damned. Well, I didn't get to see them until 20 years later, but I still like, I remember exactly that moment was in slow motion to me. I saw the poster. I knew I was staying there tonight and I was like, one ticket.

1:01:31Yeah. Like, no, bro. In the history, we got to the point where it was 92. You start your own company. What's the next uptick in skateboarding? X Games. X Games started in 95. It was still kind of a, it was a little scattered. It was a little wonky just with how they presented our sports because it was like, they're extreme. Woo, camera angles like this and mohawks. And it was like, dude, that's not what it's all about. But they kind of found their groove, I'd say, in 97, 98. What percentage of the X Games is skateboarding? Is it like a third or a fifth? I would say it was more like a fifth then.

1:02:11Yeah. It's about a quarter now. But all the other sports have shifted. Yeah. Because back then it was like bungee jumping and sky surfing. eco channel I just random stuff do you think of yourself as a daredevil I think so yeah yeah I mean when I was a kid I want to go off the high dive and yeah for sure bounce on big trampolines and all that stuff is it that you like that adrenalized feeling yeah yeah but not so much that that I'm throwing caution to wind yeah i like the idea that i am capable of this yes and yes it can be risky and yes it's a little out of my comfort zone or skill level but i know i can figure it out has there been anything besides skateboarding that you've dedicated yourself to in that way well parenting i suppose yeah which i had to learn kind of the hard way through my years of success where it was like oh you have to prioritize better and choose time with your kids more so than whatever you think this other thing is important and that took a while i mean definitely took longer than it should have what's the current state of skateboarding pretty solid very international tricks still evolving still evolving how often do you see something where you feel like i can't believe Absolutely.

1:03:44I mean, it took me 10 years to make a 900, right? 10 years of my life, getting beat up. You were the first person to do it. Yeah. And you were the only person to do it for a while. For a couple of years, yeah. Then a few people learned it. Then Tom Schauer did a 1080. I don't know, maybe 10 years later or nine years later. Then Mitchie Brusco did a 1260, you know, as the ramps got bigger. And they're like gymnasts. It's crazy. I just watched, this is last year at our event, Verd Alert, we have a big Verd Contest with my ramp. We bring it to Salt Lake City. I watched a 10-year-old do three 900s in a row.

1:04:24In a row. 10 years old. 10 years old. Yeah. In his run. Like, that was part of his run. Doesn't hurt as much when you fall on your 10. But I mean, I can't believe I get to live in that timeline. Yeah. I was the one commentating. Like, I get to witness this. I get to call it. I get to try to explain the difficulty of that, even though I didn't. So cool. So cool. Yeah. And do you think it's that humans are evolving? Sure. I think it's just we see what's possible, and so that is a goal to start with. It's like the six-minute mile. Once it's broken, then a lot of people can do it. Absolutely, yeah.

1:05:02When I started skating, no one did 540s. Yeah. So 900 was impossible until it wasn't. Right. And now that it's not impossible, other people can do it. Like, now you skate ramps, it starts spinning. Unbelievable. Yeah. It's really interesting. Yeah. And it continues. That's an example, though, of, again, just an iteration, because it was a 720 before there was a 900, right? Yeah. To put it in context, I did the first 720 in 1985 on a ramp way outside of Stockholm in this little town by a lake with three people watching me. Did you intend to do it? Yes. Or did it happen? No, I tend to do it because the ramp was a little different design and allowed us to go higher.

1:05:48And so I was doing 540s a lot back then. And I thought, well, maybe this is the ramp to go one extra spin. I learned it in like half an hour. There were three people watching me. No one cared. I mean, it was cool. Yay. So is that often the case where there'll be something in the environment that sparks you to do something that you couldn't do before? Because you were reacting. I was. You didn't decide in advance, I'm going to do this. I didn't go with that intention. No, but you saw the opportunity based on the real world conditions. Yep, yep. Is it typically that way? I would say it's half and half.

1:06:27Yeah. It seems like it would be easier if you got that glimpse than just, I have an idea, I'm going to make it happen. And if you get a glimpse, oh, the speed or the height that I'm going now makes it easier to do this thing that I couldn't do before. You see the opportunity is different than a theoretical idea in space that you're going to push to happen. Sure. But it's interesting, like going from that, that was 1985. I didn't make a 900 until 14 years later. Yeah. To do that extra 180 took that much time and effort. Do you remember when the 900 happened? What was different about, what allowed that to happen?

1:07:09There were a few things. One, that the ramp was built much better than most ramps at the time because no one had the budget to make great ramps, but ESPN did. And in the past, whenever I tried to make it, I would fall forward. And one time I actually broke my rib around 1996. I had all the pieces to the puzzle. I'm doing it. Here it goes. And then I fell forward, broke my rib, had to go pick up my son in kindergarten. and like couldn't breathe. No one was paying me to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was all just for the passion of it. Yeah. And then... How long was it before you tried it again?

1:07:46About a year. But I could not get that commitment again because I didn't, you know, for what? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to go through that again. And so I actually had a ramp built that was bigger than most ramps. It was in a bullring. It was in Tijuana. It was like, oh, this is going to be sick. And I was doing all these other tricks and I was like, I'll do 900 on this ramp. And then when I finally got to it, I was like, I can't. I don't want to get hurt again and be stuck in Mexico. Yeah. So the key to it was at the 99X Games during the Best Trick event, I started trying it because I had done my best trick in the event prior to that, which was a 720 variation.

1:08:25So I already had that. And it was like, what's next? Well, what's next is a 900, you know, impossible. So you've never done it. Yeah. The one time you tried, you broke your rib? The one time I really committed to it, yeah. And now you're going to do it in competition? No, I just started trying it because it was like, here's the next thing that I would like to do. Here's the next stage of spinning. It was kind of like for this crowd, because we never had a crowd like that. It was just kind of like me, like, yeah, check it out. This is what, you know. And then after about my third attempt, I had a super good spin.

1:08:58I had way more speed than I usually had. and I was like, well, if I'm ever going to really try again, it might as well be here because I don't mind getting hurt here. And so then I started fully committing to it. And when I did commit to the first one, I fell forward again, but I didn't get hurt. And there was something that happened there where it was like, you have to shift your body weight mid-spin. That's the key. So the next one I tried. And you could have never known that until you did it. Until I did it. Unsuccessfully. Until I did it unsuccessfully and took the hit. Yeah. But took the hit that wasn't so debilitating.

1:09:41Yeah. That allowed me to get up again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the first time I got hurt and broke my rib, I didn't drive away going, man, I got to figure out how to shift my weight. I drove away and going, fucking trick? I'm never going to do that trick. Right. I hate that trick. Yeah. in that context i just thought okay shift your weight so then the next one i did mid-spin you know there's a lot to think about yeah because you can't see anything when you're spinning that fast shift my weight to my back foot and when i came down i fell backwards it was kind of a hard slam but i was like that's it like i fell forward i've fallen backwards split the difference and i made the next one yeah and is it that intellectual where you're programming yourself to do it yeah just making these tiny adjustments every time and banking them so you must have great sense of your body in space because you're flying and spinning while this is happening yeah after a while you do yeah that's amazing what i'd learned in those years in the years after where watch what you wish for because then once I learned it anytime I'd go do a demo anywhere it's like 900 come on let's see it like oh it's gonna take everything I have to do that yeah yeah did you ever do it more I did yeah I ended up doing it like 30 times yeah did it get easier or never

1:11:09it got easier to get to that stage of knowing i can do it yeah so for instance at x games i think it was like 11 attempts after that it would usually take me less than five or six to get there yeah but it always took a lot it was never first try yeah yeah but what i learned in those years after is that as soon as you snap if something's off don't stop spinning and i've told kids that who want to learn it like look if you go and you miss your board or whatever do not open up because you're going to open up and you're not going to know where you are and you're going to be way further out of the ramp than you usually are and you're going to get you're going to get hurt yeah like there's no question so by continuing to spin what happens you come back around the wall and you can get to your knees i see it's like you're so far off the wall but you kind of your your spin and your trajectory brings you back to the wall if you keep spinning yeah do you ever spin where your back is to the wall instead of your knees the first time i ever tried it yeah because i didn't know how fast to spin right i did that in 1987 that's what prevented me from trying it after that because I literally land on my back like, oh, but if you open up.

1:12:30Is there anything you can think of that I may have done at some point in my life, something physical that everyone can do, but that takes some practice to be able to do it? How similar is it to learning to ride a bicycle, what we're talking about? It's kind of like if you've ever tried to do a flip off a diving board. that can seem like the scariest thing in the world. And once you leave the diving board, if you panic, you're going to end up on your back, right? Yeah. It's the same thing. If you go up to for 900 and something goes wrong, you panic, you open up, you're going to land on your back.

1:13:11Yeah. One body motion is much more extreme than the other, but it's the same outcome. I see. If you learn something like keep spinning, can that same idea apply to other tricks? Is that knowledge base deeper than that trick or is it just that one? That one's kind of on its own in terms of what it takes to get there. What are some of the ones that are more general like a technique you use when it's going wrong that ends up having good effect on a lot of things? That's hard to answer. I would say the things that you do up on the lip where you're getting your board and you're grinding with your trucks and you're grinding with the middle of your board.

1:14:04It's very easy to get lazy on that stuff and your board will hang up on the top and you think you're going to be in and then next thing you know, you're on the flat bottom. Yeah. Right? We call that hanging up. Yeah. There are very subtle feet maneuverings where you can avoid that. And you can use them for almost any lip trick. Oh, good. So you learn them from the basic ones, but you get them so dialed that you know if you get in some certain position and, oh, shit, your board's over the coping, you have that backup skill set. Does the board ever hit you, fall on you? Yeah, I mean. But it's not a big deal.

1:14:42I mean, it sucks, but yeah. I definitely have scraped up my knuckles too. I mean, all this, my shin, that's my skateboard. Yeah. Is there some piece of equipment that you can imagine that would allow gains in skating that have never happened? That's how people got to do 1080s and 1260s is that. What do they have? Foam pits and bigger ramps. So it's just, you can fall much easier. You can fling your body. You don't have to worry about opening up or spinning if you're flying in a foam pit. I see. Past the foam pit, is there anything that can take it further? I don't know. I don't. People try to develop harnesses and things like that.

1:15:28And I'm still old school. Like, you know, I learned in the school of hard knocks. I learned on concrete. All this stuff. So I don't really have a gauge where it's like, yeah, go try that easy way in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who would you say was the most influential skater on you? Eddie Alguera Because he was the most innovative skater At the time when I was coming up And he got ridiculed because They called him a robot Because he was learning tricks And I was like That's me I want to do that I want to learn tricks Yeah I learned his signature trick Frontside rock and roll When I was like 11 And they moved me up two divisions as an amateur because I could do frontside rocker nails.

1:16:13I couldn't do anything else. But they were like, oh, that kid can do front rocks, put him in 3A. And I was like, okay. I say it a lot. He was in the right place at the wrong time. He was like the most innovative skater at a time when skating was in its lowest point. Yeah. Is there any training you can do outside of skating that makes you a better skater? I would have said no a long time ago, but these days at my age yeah for sure I mean I work out three times a week doing strength and conditioning and stretching and it helps my skating just in terms of my endurance mostly yeah with my leg it's unlocked some some positions that I can now get back into that I couldn't when you were younger do you feel like I was younger it was the antithesis yeah working out like that's for jocks yeah jocks hate us yeah i'm not doing anything that you know what i mean i'm not gonna do anything that football or baseball players are doing you know i got away with it for a long time because i could like i was i was lanky and i was skinny and i was flexible and so i could just show up to any ramp cold turkey and do a bunch of crazy shit how much of skateboarding is feel?

1:17:32I'd say it's half feel, it's half visual. Have you ever skated with either blindfolded or eyes closed? No. Would it be possible or no? Yeah, I mean, there are blind skaters, but I rely on watching my board and seeing the coping. And so much of what I do is watching the edge of the ramp and my relation to there. So I need that visual. At all times? Mostly, yeah. If I'm spinning or if I'm going to be blind to it, I know the feeling of where I am in the air, too, and what needs to be adjusted to make it work. Does it feel good when you're going fast? Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Did you ever get into skateboard videos?

1:18:15Sure, yeah. I mean, the first thing I did when I started Birdhouse was make a video. Oh, cool. We sold it for$5, and we asked people to mail$5 to us in the mail, and then we sent them a VHS. in 1992. And were videos the way that people learned, saw new moves and... That time, yeah, for sure. How big was the tape trading world? It was big. I mean, I don't know how many we sold. I think we only made 500. Yeah. But... But they were influential. To this day, people will say, dude, Feasters, I remember that. Yeah, they got passed around. They would break. Tell me about the skate park project. That is my foundation for public skate parks in underserved areas.

1:18:58We've been doing it for 24 years now. And it's definitely my proudest work because I saw skateboarding on the rise, obviously in the early 2000s, mid 2000s with the success of the X Games and our video game and skating was just everywhere and there were no facilities and cities were not providing. I just thought if there's something that I can do to give back to this world, it's provide skateboards because my skate park was my salvation as a kid. It's where I spent all my time, where I met my closest friends, where I learned my skill but also just felt a sense of belonging. That's what it was.

1:19:37Like, we were the nerds and the outcasts. Like, we were the misfits. And the skate park was our happy, our safe place. So how do you get it to happen? Through having a voice and a name that city councils would recognize and advocating for the kids in the areas that are trying to get it themselves so i'm not taking credit for it i just became a conduit for it yeah and it was like these kids need a skate park listen to them you're giving them tickets every day because they skate wherever at the mall they skate they're like they're not going to quit skating yeah and if you provide a skate park people want to come to your city how do you know where to go to advocate for a skate park Oh, I mean, at some point you learn the process, the city civil process can actually work.

1:20:25Like if you work the system, you can make it happen. Is it pretty similar place to place? Kind of, yeah. I mean, it requires city council meetings, petitions, hearings. But sometimes it's like, hey, this guy has this land, he'll donate it. Well, that's one huge hurdle to get over. Yeah. Or we only need this much more to reach our goal for funding. And it's like some wealthy person in that area had a deep history with skating. And they're like, I got it. And then we're the ones that can connect those dots. Great. To date, we've helped to fund over 900 parks. Amazing. Yeah. It's a huge number. Huge.

1:21:07Huge. And globally or mostly in the States? In all 50 states. But we have a partnership with Skatistan, who they provide skate parks and educational facilities in South Africa, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Jordan. We help them with their projects because there's no one I would trust more. How would you say besides the fact that you've dedicated your life to it, it's provided for you and your family, how else has skateboarding changed you? it's given me a sense of confidence that i don't think i would have found anywhere else and an identity everything that i do almost inherently is connected to skateboarding even with my kids in a lot of ways and so i identify with it but i identify with it proudly and for instance like when i was in when i was a freshman in high school i was a pro skater right I was the top amateur skater I was about to go pro I had to hide my skateboard before I went to school like I would hide it in the bushes near the bungalows because I would get harassed at school with it like I would get bullied or he would steal it or they would like beat me up or put me in the trash can or whatever like that was going to happen and then I would go through the day and try to be low-key and out of everyone's way and then go get my skateboard at the end of the day and skate home and then go to the skate park and be there until closing learning all these tricks and it wasn't that i was embarrassed to be a skater it was just hard to identify like that it was dangerous yeah and and nowadays like i'm old as fuck and i like go on a plane and i put my skateboard up in the overhead bin in first class take up space for other people and i'm like this is me this is who i am you know take it or leave it yeah and so i just mean like it's become so it's an extension of my body now and it's something that i am very proud of yeah i'm so glad that you get to continue doing it at the level that gives you that feeling of joy it's amazing yeah amazing i am so i'm living the dream like i'm so lucky when you were 14 could you have imagined the grown-up you doing this no i mean it's unimaginable when i was 24 i made the washed up skater list in big brother yeah i was washed up at 24 yeah still learning tricks but for what yeah because nobody else cared i mean i did i would i still do no but that's the beauty of it is your dedication is what allowed the whole thing to happen that's something that i it's hard for me to accept, but I'm hugely proud of it.

1:23:56You know, if I did anything to raise the profile of skating or if someone got inspired by me and my dedication or stubbornness, it's the best thing that I could hope for. What's the last trick that you were committed to doing that took a long time to get to? I did that trick, the impossible. I did what we call a front foot impossible. So you take off and you use the other foot to wrap the board around so it's like a two-part process it makes it take more time yeah and then i did it to a backside air i had never done it and i had to do it i had to do it really high to have all that time to do it and i had to set up with my feet in an awkward position so when you do tricks aerials to get speed there's kind of a standard aerial that you do that's just functional it's just forgetting speed yeah i couldn't do it like that because i had to have my foot in this fucked up position and it was in the way of my hand so i had a different type of air and i kept trying it trying it like got close a couple times and finally set a date this is it we're getting to some film yeah i had a tiba jefferson there shooting a sequence of it and i made it but it was it was so fucking hard is that the only time you've ever do it yeah yeah yeah i landed one and fell on how many hours would you say it took to get to be able to do it just focusing on that trick it was probably a year of off and on attempts yeah like an hour at a time so so you knew it was possible you just hadn't done it yet yeah and it was just as hard as i imagined to do like probably harder than i imagined because the one time that i did try to make it i thought i had it and then i just fell backwards across the flat and it was like fuck if i can't make it like that yeah and then the was there a breakthrough or it was just no it was just just gliding towards it inching towards it and then finally landing one went up on the deck just collapsed like that's it i'm done are there any tricks that have taken a really long time to learn but once you learn them you can do them like it's nothing yeah how does that happen you just get more confident with it back in the day we learned tricks to have them in our repertoire so like in bones forget days if you learn the trick you're gonna keep doing that trick going forward yeah it's only in the last 20 years or so where it's like that trick is so hard i'm only gonna do it's a one-time only it's a one-time thing yeah yeah but for sure like there been some other tricks that i've learned fairly recently and it was like i could throw that in there like that's a pretty cool one yeah what gets you excited about learning a trick just the fact that haven't seen it done before and you can do it yeah or even if it's something that has been done yeah but someone else but i've never done it like that's exciting to me yeah yeah and that that buzz when you land something that you've never done that buzz like that's that's the dragon does watching skateboarding excite you as much as it always did it probably excites me more now Because of the possibilities now because because I'm seeing what's next.

1:27:15Yeah You know in a lot of ways I was trying to help create what's next especially through those 80s and 90s But now it's way beyond what I'm doing. And so I just watched it like I never imagined and you're astounded by what you're Astounded. Yeah, it's the craziest thing you've ever seen There are tricks that Bob Bernquist has done and he's more of a generation of like 90s era but there are tricks that he has done that i'm convinced no one else will ever do for instance we're in the weeds here but yeah he did a frontside 540 which is not usually you do backside mctwist mctwist is a is a 540 there's a trick called a nar jar what's that so a body jar is when you go up in the air and then on the way down you land on the tail and it's very risky because if you're trying to land on the tail it's a good chance you're going to miss and your trucks are going to go over and you hang up and you're down if body jars go wrong you're getting ko'd you know i mean there's no there's no safe way out yeah of a bad body jar yeah a gnar jar is a 540 and then on the way down you come down on your tail it's the gnarliest of jars right yeah there's like four people in the world that have ever done it yeah and to this day i'm like but when you see it it's just like terrifying it's terrifying oh well i mean even to watch it because you know what can go wrong as a skater yeah other people see it and they're like oh that was cool 540 hit his tail and i was like oh bob did it front side are there things that you ever see in street skating that are like astounding to you yeah the way that people can just pinch into a rail and just stay on a rail now and and they're on a rail and then they're setting up their other foot for what is going to happen when they come off that shit like i it's so far beyond me i cannot believe it it's wild it's wild it's what we put in our video games so that you could skate in a fantastical way because we never thought that stuff would be possible yeah and now a lot of the skaters now grew up playing those games and they can do it they can do it unbelievable unbelievable unbelievable i think sci-fi works that way too you read things in sci-fi books that that are impossible but then 20 years later the seeds 20 years later, it's better than it was in that version of it.

1:29:37Yeah. Yeah.

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