by Tony Hawk
Dear Tony Hawk,
If I offered you a million dollars, would you endorse my new dildo?
I bet you would.
Chelsea Piers had a big halfpipe at the time, and Dave and I did a demo for the crowd, with Johnny as emcee. One problem: Skateboard and BMX tricks have strange names (stale fish, Madonna, slob air, can-can, tailwhip) and Johnny didn’t know any of them. So he improvised, figuring it would be clever to name them after random cereals: “There’s Tony with a huge Cheerio!” And “Dave sticks a perfect Grape-Nut.” Like that. One problem: Cheerios and Grape-Nuts are made by Froot Loops’ competitors. That didn’t go over so well with the marketing execs.
I’m not sure what the whole thing did for Toucan Sam’s image, but I know for certain it didn’t help mine. On the flight back to California, I decided that the Froot Loops episode would be the last time I’d relinquish control to any company that wants to use my name or image to help sell its product. That decision turned out to be a good idea, on many levels.
Stuck Between Coach and First Class
Skateboarding is a strange profession, probably because it was never supposed to be a profession. Decades after the sport’s birth, mainstream America still dismissed it as a fad, a kid’s game, a joke. That condescension pushed serious skaters even deeper underground, where they thrived, happy to be seen as counterculture punks. They knew how hard it was to master, and how satisfying; they didn’t need affirmation from above. Hard-core skaters were (still are) artists of the purist sort. They do it because they love it, not because they crave recognition or need money.
Me, riding on my very first skateboard, given to me by my brother Steve.
All of which has placed me in a treacherous middle space—balanced on a tightrope stretched between opposing forces, both of them skeptical. For many years, few adults took my career seriously. Even now, businessmen on airplanes frown when they see me carry a skateboard into first class. At the same time, there will always be a certain segment of skaters who write me off me as a sellout. On the same airplane, they’d give me shit for not riding with them back in coach. But I don’t stress about the haters as much as I used to. Most of them have never met me and have no idea how much I love to skate, or how much time I still spend doing it, or how essential it is to my sense of self.
At its heart, that’s what this book is about, or at least what I hope it’s about: how to sell celebrity and promote skateboarding without selling out. For me, it starts and ends with my skateboard, and with the many friends the sport has brought into my life. When I’m torn between business deals, I always seem to pick the one that offers the best chance for my friends and me to skate.
I am acutely aware that I became famous, and make good money, not just because I excelled at my particular sport, but also because I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Several times in my professional life I’ve just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I got into skating when the fad was dead, and turned pro just as it started to benefit from a mid-1980s boom. I ended up on the most famous skate team of the era, Powell Peralta’s Bones Brigade, and by the time I was 16, I was making more money than my high school teachers.
When the skateboard industry slipped into a coma in the early 1990s, I still rode my vert ramp almost every day, which enabled me to keep progressing. So when ESPN created the X Games in 1995 and gave skateboarding its first legitimate coast-to-coast TV exposure, there were only a handful of vert skaters still on their game, and I was one of them. The show’s producers devoted a disproportionate percentage of airtime to me that first year, and I came away as the “face” of the X Games.
Indy air at one of our Secret Skatepark Tour demos in Missoula, Montana.
Then, in 1999, the X Games’ fifth year, I made a maneuver (the 900: two and a half midair spins) that had eluded me for years. I’d worked long and hard at that trick, but that day also had an element of serendipity: I made it in front of a big TV audience only because skating is one of the few sports in which the people in charge would allow a skater to keep trying a new move, with the cameras rolling, after time had run out.
That same year, Activision released my first video game, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which would go on to be one of the biggest gaming franchises of the decade. The confluence of those three things—the X Games, the 900, the distribution of millions of video games bearing my likeness—elevated my name recognition, especially among young people, to a level I’d never dreamed of. My agent told me around that time that my “Q score” (an authoritative, proprietary poll that measures a celebrity’s notoriety and appeal to American consumers) among teens was second only to Michael Jordan’s among athletes.
But I really knew the world had gone crazy when I got invited to the 2003 Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards, at which the network’s viewers named me their favorite male athlete. The other three finalists were Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, and Tiger Woods. (A skater beats out Kobe, Shaq, and Tiger? WTF?)
That was when the line from that old Talking Heads’ song began repeatedly ringing in my head: “And you may ask yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’ ”
There’s a lesson in that question, and it’s the first one I’d share with those first-class businessmen if any of them were to ever look past my skateboard and ask for advice: Never get cocky about your professional successes, because the good luck that got you there can turn bad fast.
Rule Number One: Don’t Make Lists
And to any kids who are hoping to learn how they, too, might someday get stink-eye in first class, here are a few other bits of advice:
1. Once you find your passion, run with it. Ignore what peers or career counselors say.
2. Don’t rebel for rebellion’s sake. In fact, rebellion shouldn’t even factor into it. If the thing you love and do best is viewed as rebellious, then, yes, embrace your inner Che Guevara. But don’t let the cool police dictate your dreams. Think of it this way: If your passion is dismissed as mainstream and dorky, that makes your insurgency all the braver. Do it because you love it, not because you’re worried about what others—teachers, friends, that hot emo chick who sits alone by the bike rack at lunch—will think.
3. Whatever you pick, as long as you truly love it, put in the sweat to get really good at it. That means spending a lot of time at it. Take pride in being defined as obsessive.
4. Once you’ve achieved proficiency, take your specialty to a level that fellow specialists can appreciate. Innovate. That’s what will set you apart—when you become a pioneer among pioneers.
5. If all that works and you become successful, stay in touch, and stay humble. Don’t get complacent, and absolutely don’t get stuck in your ways. Appreciate and acknowledge the genius of your competitors, peers, and future successors. Learn to admire rather than resent.
6. Become a mentor. Hang with and encourage the people who will inevitably replace you. The higher you move up the corporate high-rise, the more you have to make a conscious effort to spend time in the street. And don’t preach. Instead, find the kids who are doing what you did at that age, and have the humility to let them tell you what’s going on.
7. Take it all in, listen to the competing arguments (maximizing profits versus staying true to your art or your roots or whatever), then clear your mind and trust your gut.
8. Don’t be afraid to take risks, but make sure you have good lawyers before you do.
9. If you get some extra money in your pocket, give back.
10. Never stop skating.
2
BUILDING A BETTER BIRDHOUSE
The birth and near-death of our first business
From:
To:
Subject: Question
Did you go to Collage?
I officially became a professional skateboarder in 1982. I was 14. The moment itself was no big deal. I was at a pro-am contest in Whittier, California, and my main amateur sponsor at the time, Stacy Peralta (co-owner of Powell Peralta),
suggested it might be time for me to turn pro, since I’d reached the top of the amateur ranks. When I filled out the registration form at the skatepark that day, I simply marked the box that said “pro” instead of the one that said “am.” That’s it.
My first board.
I’d started skating five years earlier, when my brother Steve gave me one of his old boards. I took to it quickly, and lucked out in two big ways. First, there was a good skatepark (since demolished) just a few miles from my house in San Diego. Second, my parents were the kind that steadfastly supported their kids’ passions, no matter how far they veered from the mainstream. My sister Pat loved to sing; my dad managed her rock ’n’ roll band and drove her to gigs. Steve loved to surf; my parents would get up at dawn to drive him to the ocean, 10 miles away. They didn’t have much money, but they were there for us in every way.
From:
To:
Subject: GO F*%K YOURSELF
TONY HAWK HAS REALLY HIT A NEW F*%KING LOW. I WAS AT WALLY WORLD TODAY BUYING TOOTHPASTE, AND THERE THEY WERE–A WHOLE SHELF OF JUNK TONY HAWK SKATEBOARDS. COME ON TONY, LIKE YOU DON’T MAKE ENOUGH MONEY–NOW YOU GOTTA SELL JUNK SKATEBOARDS AT WAL-MART? SO MUCH FOR YOUR INTEGRITY. GO F*%K YOURSELF AND YOUR 900.
My dad, Frank Hawk.
Once I started winning amateur skate contests, my dad, Frank, diverted his enormous energy into helping the sport become more organized. He and my mother, Nancy, founded and ran the California Amateur Skateboard League—which, amazingly, is still in existence, and now, even more amazingly, includes a parent-child division. Dad also created skating’s first truly successful professional circuit, the National Skateboard Association. (The NSA eventually morphed into World Cup Skateboarding, which remains the governing body for both the X Games and the Dew Tour.) He also built countless ramps for me over the years. He died of cancer in 1995, one month after watching me win gold during the inaugural X Games. My mom’s still going strong, and lives a couple of miles from me in northern San Diego County.
That day in 1982 when I officially turned pro, I harbored no fantasies about making a living as a skateboarder. I think the first-place prize money at that event was $150. Someone else won it. Even when Powell Peralta made me an official member of its team of pros, called the Bones Brigade, and started selling boards bearing my name (and an amateurish hawk graphic), I had zero visions of wealth. One of my first royalty checks, dated April 19, 1983, was for 85 cents. I still have it.
Things started to change after Stacy directed and released the Bones Brigade Video Show in 1984. It was the first direct-to-video skate movie ever made, and it helped trigger a boom for the skate industry. Suddenly, I was receiving royalty checks for $3,000 a month. The amount quickly grew. By the time I reached my senior year of high school, I was making around $70,000 a year. My dad believed it was likely to be a short ride, and he encouraged me to invest some of my income. My sister, Pat, who did my taxes (and is now my manager), told me I needed a write-off, so I bought a house in Carlsbad a few months before graduation. I was only 17, which meant that my dad had to co-sign the loan.
As with many pro athletes, my income was not only variable, but also destined to be short-lived. At the time, there were no pro skaters over age 25. Plus, the skateboard industry was notorious for its boom-and-bust cycles. But I was too young to care, and the money just kept getting better. As the 1990s neared, I was earning close to $150,000 a year—a ridiculous amount for a pubescent skate rat just out of high school. I socked some of it away, but I also fed my gadget obsession. The local Sharper Image salesmen got hard-ons when I strolled into their store.
A World of Hurt
Not long after my eighteenth birthday, the skate industry went into a tailspin. The major players like Powell Peralta, Vision, and Santa Cruz crashed hardest, taking hits from all flanks. First, skating simply fell out of fashion—a cultural shift that should have surprised no one since it had happened twice before, in the 1960s and 1970s. Also, the industry was suddenly swarming with small, agile upstarts who were ruthless (and often hilariously brutal) in their determination to take down the big boys. Because they were nimble, the new brands were also better positioned to survive a downturn. On top of all that, the old-guard companies started losing many of their best team riders. Some got recruited away, while others went off to start their own labels.
From:
To:
Subject: Thank you
I’m a single mom with two sons who are great fans of yours. I thought we couldn’t afford your products. I worked very hard to obtain two Birdhouse boards and two Tony Hawk HuckJam helmets. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making your boards and accessories widely available and affordable.
Powell took a particularly steep dive, partly because it and the Bones Brigade symbolized the clean, parent-approved side of the sport. The newcomers, most notably World Industries, were true anarchists who captured the skate world’s attention with their ballsy, uncensored approach. Powell tried to look cool by making videos mocking mainstream exploitation of skateboarding. World ran ads mocking Powell.
To outsiders, the distinction between the old brands and the upstarts was probably hard to discern, since even the biggest skate companies profited by painting themselves, and skateboarding, as counterculture. Powell’s graphics featured skeletons, rats, skulls, and snakes—sometimes skulls with snakes. My most popular insignia was a bird skull against an iron cross background, created by Powell’s gifted artist, Vernon Courtlandt Johnson. None of it was Sesame Street fare.
But companies like H-Street and World pulled out the stops. They openly ripped off logos from corporate America (Looney Tunes and Burger King, among others). One of World’s most infamous skateboard deck graphics had a naked woman in a spread-legged pose—an anatomy lesson. World’s founder, Steve Rocco, also got pissed when TransWorld Skateboarding magazine wouldn’t publish some of his attack ads, so he created his own skate mag. It was called Big Brother, and it did a good job of covering the hard-core corners of the sport, amid reviews of porn movies and articles like “How to Kill Yourself.” (The Big Brother crew would later create the massively successful Jackass TV series and movies.)
By 1991, the skate industry was reeling from uncertainty, civil war, and a declining market. My income from Powell had shrunk to $1,500 a month, and I was struggling to make my mortgage payments. It occurred to me that if I wasn’t going to make a living wage from royalties, I might as well take the big step of starting my own company. Also, I figured the industry had no place to go but up, right?
I started talking to a fellow Powell rider, Per Welinder, about teaming up to launch a new brand. Per had a business degree, I had the visibility, and we both had access to seed money. We met secretly for months to draw up a business plan. He would run the day-to-day operations, and I would head up promotions and recruit and manage a team. I refinanced my house, which gave me $40,000 to sink into the business. I also sold my Lexus and bought a Honda Civic. We named the company Birdhouse Projects, and we assembled an amazing team of skaters: Jeremy Klein, Willy Santos, Mike Frazier, Ocean Howell, and Steve Berra.
I was still pretty pessimistic about the future of the skate industry and my own career. I was 24—a geezer. It was time to think about putting away my skateboard and focusing on business.
Heelflips on the Titanic
The early years of Birdhouse were predictably bleak. The skate industry was overloaded with inventory, and we were barely turning a profit. When I took the team on tour, we slept five and six to a room. Occasionally, shops that hired us for demos would tell us after we’d skated that they couldn’t afford to pay. One guy offered Chinese food instead of cash. Once, I flew to France for a $300 payday, but an unavoidable ticket change on the way home cost me $100 of that.
I wouldn’t have minded the financial stress—in fact, part of me embraced the way the skate recession had weeded out the wannabes—except I suddenly had a new incen
tive not to go broke: in 1992, my wife Cindy became pregnant with our first son. At home, we pared our budget to the bone. I was given a “Taco Bell allowance” of five bucks a day and I was eating Top Ramen almost daily.
I started seriously weighing options for my post-skateboarding career. My first choice was to become a film editor. I’d already edited some video segments for Powell and all of the early Birdhouse videos, and had enjoyed it, so I borrowed $8,000 from my parents (who couldn’t really afford it), and cobbled together an editing system. I actually got paid to edit a few videos, but soon realized I didn’t have the contacts, equipment, or resolve to make a living at it.
In early 1994, Birdhouse was on life support, and Per and I discussed pulling the plug. Vert skating (on big halfpipes—my specialty) was dying, so I had stopped competing and was putting more time into the business. I still had a ramp at home, and I was actually skating better than ever (learning new tricks, like heelflip varial liens), but no one was watching. I often skated alone.
As a parting shot to my pro skating career, I asked the Birdhouse art department to use an image of the Titanic on my last signature-model board. It seemed like a good metaphor: the supposedly unsinkable ship, sinking.
Fortunately, my “retirement” didn’t last long. For one thing, I never really took to the 9-to-5 desk-job thing. Per and I quickly realized that it was better for the company if I spent more time in the public eye, doing demos and competing, so the company could profit from my high profile. We licensed my old hawk skull graphic from Powell, and began making more products bearing my name.
We got lucky, because 1995 was the year that ESPN debuted something called the Extreme Games (now the X Games) in Rhode Island. I wasn’t sure what to expect when the network invited me to compete, since ESPN was all about big-ticket sports like baseball and basketball, but I figured it was worth the risk. The producers went to great lengths to tell the stories of a few select athletes in hopes of giving viewers an emotional attachment to the competitors. That was crucial to the games’ success, because mainstream America at that point knew very little about skating or BMX riding. And since I was the best-known skater at the time, ESPN devoted an inordinate amount of airtime to me.