by Tony Hawk
CONTENTS
COVER
HALF TITLE PAGE
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
PREFACE
Family Trust
CREDITS
Photo Credits—Text
Photo Credits—Insert
HOW DID I GET HERE?
1: TOUCAN SAM TEACHES ME A LESSON
Stuck Between Coach and First Class
Rule Number One: Don’t Make Lists
2: BUILDING A BETTER BIRDHOUSE
A World of Hurt
Heelflips on the Titanic
Bootleg Braggadocio
3: HEY KID, WANT TO BUY A HOODIE?
Going It Alone
Breaking Rules
Looking for a Suitor
Going to the Masses
4: “IS TONY HAWK A REAL PERSON?”
From Apocalypse to Genesis
Birth of a Genre
Kicking the Reset Button
5: WHAT THE HELL IS A HUCKJAM?
The Million-Dollar Napkin
“Zoom!” Say Gnarly Disaster Boy
Trial by Fire—and by the Loop of Death
HuckJam Happy Meals?
6: “EXTREME” IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD
When Not to Trust Your Gut
The Last of the Flimsy Pink Backpacks
The Wise Old Adolescent
7: THE DENIM DEBACLE
How to Build a Buzz
Bye-Bye Blitz
Buying Back Birdhouse
8: FINAL CUT
Blackjack, Brawls, and the Pensacola Nine
“Can You Teach Me How to Ollie?”
My Dad’s Home-Movie Hobby Pays Off
Dust Devils and Big Gaps
Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now
9: HASHTAG IS NOT A DEATH-METAL BAND
Some tweets from 2010
www.talktofans.com
Unheard Music
10: HOW TO NEVER GET A MOVIE MADE
Supreme Existential Strangeness
False Promises, Fast Cars
Tom Cruise Gets Mushy
Going Indie
11: STINKY DIAPERS IN FIRST CLASS
April 12–15, 2004: Sport for Good Foundation, Sierra Leone, West Africa
July 1–7, 2004: Adio Tour, England
August 27–29, 2004: MTV Video Music Awards, Miami, Florida
October 2, 2004: Andre Agassi’s Grand Slam for Children, Las Vegas, Nevada
October 3, 2004: Stand Up for Skateparks Fundraiser, Studio City, California
April 22–24, 2005: Black Pearl Skatepark Grand Opening, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
June 10–12, 2005: Disneyland, Vegas, Arkansas, Home, Spokane, Various Events
July 8–31, 2005: Boom Boom HuckJam Tour, Home, DC, MO, IA, MN, WI, MI, OH, NJ, PA, Toronto, NY, MA
September 9–18, 2005: Secret Skatepark Tour, OR, MT, IN, Cayman Islands, GA
August–November 2007: France, Germany, NYC, NC, LA, SF
December 2007–February 2008: Compton, Vegas, Woodward, Hawaii, Whistler, LA
March–June 2008: Russia, Japan, Vegas, Hospital!
May 12–16, 2010: Woodward Skate Camp Opening, Beijing, China
Tweets, 2009–2010
12: GIVING BACK
Doing the Charitable Thing
This Ain’t No Soccer Field
Celebrity Backscratching
Flipping Flapjacks and Mowing Lawns
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PLATES
INDEX
HOW DID I GET HERE?
Copyright © 2010 by Tony Hawk, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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PREFACE
This book would not exist without my sister Pat, who has been my navigator through this uncharted territory of mixing professional skateboarding, licensing, mainstream sponsorship, event planning, film production, and philanthropy. We have learned together, but she has kept the businesses running smoothly when everything else seems to be spinning into chaos.
It’s funny: As I began to embrace the idea of doing this book, she started realizing what a daunting project it would become. We complemented each other in that respect, and it is a perfect metaphor for how we work together. I throw the unreal ideas out there, and she makes them reality.
Nobody could have helped more with the actual writing than my brother Steve. He can craft disjointed facts, cryptic time lines, and nonsensical stream-of-consciousness e-mails into stories that are truthful, humorous, concise, coherent, and honest. He tackled this project with limited time and hit every deadline while still giving me a chance to have final say. We are so lucky to have an accomplished writer and editor in our family, but he would have been my first choice even if we weren’t related. He gave us the best voice to explain this story.
Thank you to my sister Lenore, who has handled most of my fan communication for the last several years. It is never easy, especially with so many heartbreaking stories and pleas for help, but she approaches it with the utmost respect, dignity and patience. She is a Make-A-Wish foundation in her own right and deserves a humanitarian award of epic proportions.
Thanks to my mom, who allowed me to follow my passion and do something different even when my future in skateboarding looked bleak. She believed in me when very few others did, and always welcomed my unique brethren with open arms. It’s no wonder that all of my friends wanted to stay with me during our formative years; many of them considered her their second mom.
To everyone at Tony Hawk, Inc. (THI), 900 Films, Shred or Die, and the Tony Hawk Foundation: Thank you for your collective genius and hard work. We pave new grou
nd almost daily, and you make it seamless. Best, you all make it so much fun that it almost never feels like work. It’s almost impossible to define any one person’s role, because we all do a bit of everything. I wouldn’t want it any other way. I hope you agree.
Above all, I want to thank my family: Lhotse, Riley, Spencer, Keegan, and Kady. The projects, businesses, and successes detailed in this book would not have been possible without their love, support, patience, and understanding. Sometimes my life seems fantastical and other times too hectic, but they have been there for me even when my time with them is severely impacted. Thank you for allowing me to live my dream. I love you and I hope that my career helps to give you a better life than you ever expected.
—Tony Hawk
September 2010
Family Trust
I was a senior in high school when my 43-year-old mom, Nancy, announced that she was pregnant. My sister was a junior in college and my younger brother Steve was in middle school. My baby brother, Anthony Frank Hawk, was born on May 12, 1968. Thirty days later, I left for college. I lived at home with my new brother exactly one month.
Within a few years, my sister Lenore became a teacher, I went into the music business, and my brother Steve went on to college to become a writer. The Hawk siblings had all left home—everyone except our little brother. Our middle-aged parents were living an unexpected, late-life chapter of their parenthood. Soon they were spending their days carting their youngest child to skateparks and contests. Every day. The kid had talent.
Fast-forward to my own “I’m 45 and pregnant” story. In 1995, I left the music business to get off the road and raise my newborn twins, Hagen and Emily. Four months later, Tony asked me if I would help him at his fledgling skateboard company, Birdhouse Projects. My title would be “Tony Hawk Promotions.” That turned out to be an understatement. I had worked with a lot of famous musicians, so I thought it would be fun to do something new, maybe even help foster a different kind of pop star. Skateboarding felt a lot like rock ’n’ roll to me, so it seemed like a good fit.
Also, he knew that he could trust me to look out for his interests. And it helped that I really liked the boss.
Within a few years, I left Birdhouse and helped Tony start Hawk Clothing and Tony Hawk, Inc. He was CEO; I headed up operations. We slowly built these companies from the ground up, while Tony’s fan base continued to grow and grow and grow. I contacted several of my colleagues from the music world, and together Tony and I put together a trusted team of agents, lawyers, and accountants—along with an invaluable publicist. Most of them are still with us. We also began to build our staff at THI.
I’ve been working with Tony for 15 years now. Together with our talented team, we have created a fun, ever-expanding business. Tony’s personal passions are family, friends, and skating. He’s an extremely creative and intelligent guy, and generous to a fault. He comes up with incredible marketing ideas, stunts, events, and a myriad of projects. My primary job is to organize funding and help coordinate the production and marketing surrounding these concepts. And many times, even if I can’t help raise the money, we do it anyway.
By 1997, the company had grown to the point where we needed our own building. We’d started Hawk Clothing in my family’s garage in San Juan Capistrano, California, but eventually moved to a proper warehouse in nearby San Clemente. As we added more departments, we rented more space. By 2003, we were leasing editing bays for the film production company in one building, running the Boom Boom HuckJam tour from a different space, and coordinating licensing deals from still another office. We also leased a half-acre of land for Tony’s ever-weathering, pre-HuckJam vert ramp. Birdhouse skateboards, meanwhile, were being produced and shipped out of a warehouse 25 miles away. Once we launched the HuckJam tour, with its million-dollar ramp, we decided it was time to consolidate and build a facility that could house not only the massive ramp, but also the offices and studios needed for THI’s growing staff.
Out of sheer necessity, Tony purchased a large lot in an industrial park near his home in northern San Diego County and built a state-of-the-art facility to house his many enterprises. The THI facility holds offices for all the departments, includes a skatepark, the HuckJam halfpipe (which required a customized roof extension), a studio for his Sirius radio show, two fully outfitted film production studios, a climate-controlled film library, and enough hard drives to store the zillion gigabytes of photos, video footage, graphics, and designs needed to run the business. Today, accounting, scheduling, production, events, brand management, fan club, product development, Birdhouse Skateboards, and the Tony Hawk Foundation staff are all housed under one roof.
Most of our employees have been with us for years. Our staff jokes that the Hawk family is like the mafia: You can get in, but you can’t get out. We’re all dedicated to the cause. But no one works as hard as Tony.
I never really lived at home with my youngest brother when he was growing up, and yet for the past 15 years we’ve communicated almost every day. When he was young, not only did he skate, but he also was a hyper overachiever who got straight As. He was a computer nerd before it was popular to have a PC at home. He could solve a Rubik’s Cube in about two minutes. Tony is still a versatile guy who never stops. He answers almost every text, AIM, or e-mail that reaches him. Off the ramp, you can often find him tweeting or blogging while simultaneously being followed by a camera.
A successful business venture doesn’t just happen to its creator, even if the person is famous. It takes determination, countless hours of hard work, sacrificed family time, and, in the case of a professional skateboarder, inevitable physical sacrifice. Most of all, it takes a love of what you do.
Thanks for the ride.
—Pat Hawk
September 2010
CREDITS
Photo Credits—Text
The following photos were used with permission:
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (page 39), courtesy of Activision.
Tony Hawk’s Boom Boom HuckJam Happy Meal toys photo (page 60), courtesy of McDonald’s Corporation.
T-Mobile Sidekick Tony Hawk Edition photo (page 65 and page 3 of color insert), courtesy of T-Mobile® USA, Inc.
Cover of The Bones Brigade Video Show (page 85), courtesy of © Powell Peralta 1984.
Boom Boom Sabotage illustration (page 118), courtesy of © Rainmaker Entertainment Inc.
Tony behind the scenes on the set of CSI: Miami (page 122), courtesy of CBS Productions. © 2010, CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Entertainment AB Funding, LLC. All rights reserved.
Additional Photos courtesy of:
J. Grant Brittan (page 12)
Jody Morris (pages 6 and 95, pages 12 and 15 of color insert)
Jaimie Muehlhausen (page 3 of color insert)
Frank Quirarte (page 142)
Miki Vuckovich (page 23)
Photo Credits—Insert
These photos were used with permission:
Hershey’s MilkShake bottle photo, courtesy of © White Wave Foods Company. (page 3 of color insert)
The Simpsons illustration, courtesy of THE SIMPSONS TM & © 1990 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. (page 10 of color insert)
Tony Hawk’s Halfpipe and Tony Hawk’s Big Spin photo, courtesy of Six Flags Entertainment Corp. (page 2 of color insert)
Nixon Advertisement, courtesy of Nixon Inc. (page 6 of color insert)
Cover of Success magazine, courtesy of SUCCESS Magazine, November 2008, published by SUCCESS media. All Rights reserved. www.Success.com. (page 10 of color insert)
Hawk Clothing Advertisement, Courtesy of Kohl’s Department Stores (page 3 of color insert)
Other material used with permission, include the following:
“An Enigmatic Treasure Hunt” blog (pages 101–104), courtesy of Lyndsay Walsh.
“E-mail Reply to Tony Hawk” (pages 86–87), courtesy of Stacy Peralta.
HOW DID I GET HERE?
1
TOUCAN SAM TEACHES ME A LESSON
DEAR TONY HAWK
WE ARE YOUR BIGGEST FANS! WE EVEN EAT YOUR SERYELL. DON’T RETIRE, YOU THE BEST SKATER EVER. YOU CAN’T JUST QUITE!
FROM AND
In 1998, I got invited to New York to help Froot Loops, the sugary cereal that my skate friends and I used to eat by the case, radicalize its image. Actually, invited isn’t quite the right word: A marketing agency paid me to join a team of fellow “extreme” athletes at a big coming-out party where it would be announced that the cereal’s mascot, Toucan Sam, was now himself also extreme. (This was before the word got banished to the Island of Misfit Slang.)
The night before the event, I joined BMX hero Dave Mirra and lunatic Olympic ski racer Johnny Moseley at a media-training session with agency execs. They told us that they wanted us to stay in character during press interviews, meaning we were to talk about Toucan Sam as if he were real, and as if he ripped. “You should see that feathered freak’s McTwists,” that sort of thing. Unfortunately, they failed to caution against inadvertent shout-outs to competitors.
The whole thing would last only a couple of hours, and they were paying $50,000, a lot of money for me at the time. The skateboarding industry was just starting to emerge from the fiscal doldrums of the early 1990s, and I was a young father barely scraping by as a pro skater and co-owner of a struggling skate company. So I figured the money was worth two or three goofy hours.
When we got to Chelsea Piers the next morning, the place was mobbed—with media people and about 100 middle-school kids. The kids, dressed in Froot Loops T-shirts, weren’t skaters or even, apparently, fans of the sport; someone had bussed them in, figuring their presence would inject youthful energy to the proceedings.
We did a few interviews, mostly sticking to the script, talking about Toucan Sam as if he were a legitimate action-sports hero. We mused on how he was a true crossover athlete, ripping the streets, snow, and halfpipes. No pads, just fearlessness and feathers.