How Did I Get Here

by Tony Hawk

  Anyway, the show went on, and we all had a blast, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. USA Today, MTV, Access Hollywood, and ESPN all covered the event, and gave favorable reviews. That night, we popped the champagne, exchanged high-fives, and everybody went home happy. Then Pat, Jim, and I looked at the accountant’s reckoning, and freaked. The venue and local labor costs were so enormous, we’d netted next to nothing. At that rate, there was no way we’d recoup all of our start-up costs. It was particularly bittersweet for me. I’d been excited to see so many screaming kids and stoked parents in the stands, but it looked like we were about to lose a whole lot of money.

  Our goal had been to launch a summer tour just two months later, but now we were having serious second thoughts. Pat went on a mission to find sponsors. Fortunately, Activision planned to launch the fourth installment of my video game in November of that year. The game’s marketing team agreed to be the HuckJam’s title sponsor if we’d postpone the tour to coincide with the game’s release. Even though kids would be in school by then, we said okay, and began to organize a 24-city tour for the fall, to be sponsored by Activision, Sony PlayStation, and a new pudding-in-tube product called Squeeze-N-Go.

  Five months after that first show in Vegas, we gathered up most of the same athletes and crew, studied the films, made some production changes, and went back to the hangar for rehearsals.

  After the last rehearsal, when everything was packed, we stepped outside the hangar and took in the sight of the huge convoy of trucks and buses, all ready to roll. I think that may have been the first time the Talking Heads song ran through my head.

  In addition to Social D and Offspring, Jim had managed to pull in Face to Face, Good Charlotte, and CKY to play at various stops along the way. Just before the final tour plans were cemented, Jim asked me, “What do you think about Devo?” I thought he was joking. Devo had been one of my favorite bands growing up. They were deeply connected to the underground skate scene of the early 1980s, but I’d never had a chance to see them play because I was so young, and they hadn’t toured in years. I thought Jim was crazy, but he said, “I’ll call Mark.” Meaning Mark Mothersbaugh, the band’s co-founder? In my mind, that was the equivalent of saying, “Maybe we should get Zep—I’ll call Robert and Jimmie.” Devo ended up playing two dates with us, Anaheim and my hometown of San Diego. When they played the SD show, it was my dream demo: friends and family in the crowd and one of my favorite bands playing on the deck. That night, I pulled my first 900 of the tour.

  Trial by Fire—and by the Loop of Death

  It didn’t take long to realize, though, that our plans for the first HuckJam tour were stupidly ambitious: too many big-name bands (with their crews, gear, and personalized sound checks) and too many goofy sideshows each night. During set changes, for instance, we had mimes sweep the ramps with giant brooms, hot models in skin-tight space suits walking around with signs introducing each show segment, and a weird mid-arena lounge area where the athletes were supposed to relax between sessions while being interviewed by emcees.

  On top of all that, our ramp system covered the entire arena floor, which meant that at each venue we had to install lights to illuminate about four times more space than the typical rock band. And that, of course, required more workers and more money. The first few dress rehearsals were incredibly dangerous, with airborne motorcycles just missing crew members running to change sets. We ended up using spotters and buying red-yellow-green stoplights to avoid mishaps.

  Also, we were so thankful to have sponsors that we made some embarrassing compromises to keep them happy. We initially agreed to give out free Squeeze-N-Go pudding samples during intermission, and to have our emcee, Rick Thorne, lead the audience in a “SQUEEZE AND GO!” chant. That made everybody cringe, including most of the spectators, so I asked Pat to tell the Squeeze-N-Go people that we needed to kill the chant. Before the second tour started, BMX star Dave Mirra went through all of the rehearsals, collected his rehearsal pay, and then, on the day before we were flying out, announced that he was leaving to host a reality show on MTV. That was about as pissed as I’ve ever been, because he’d kept it a secret and because his replacement wouldn’t have time to memorize our routines, which put all of the performers at risk. In another stroke of luck, we persuaded BMX legend Dennis McCoy (who had been cut earlier to make room for a newer rider) to sub for Mirra. Dennis hopped on a plane in Kansas City, studied the routines on video while flying, learned them in one day, and kicked ass the whole tour. He remains a key HuckJam performer to this day.

  As the tours progressed, we experimented with more complicated routines that included BMX and skate simultaneously. Andy, Lincoln, K-Rob, and I even attempted a quadruple stack, in which we tried to ride above and below each other on the same side of the ramp at the same instant. Kevin came down on Andy’s back and severely rolled his ankle. I ended up carving too far trying to dodge the other three guys and went off the side of the ramp. That was our lone attempt at a four-way.

  But there were emotional high points as well. We sometimes arranged with the Make-A-Wish Foundation to arrange VIP seating for severely sick children. At a pre-show meet-and-greet, I promised one of the terminally ill kids I’d do a 900 for him. It took me a few tries, but I made it. On my way back up to the ramp deck, I pointed at him, and his older brother burst into tears. After the show, I went backstage and found a quiet place to cry myself.

  By the end of the second tour, we decided to do away with the big-name bands and create our own house band to play covers of our favorite music. That worked out well, and the whole thing started to hum like a well-tuned engine. It wasn’t easy, spending seven weeks on the road each year, but the road has its own allure once you get into the rhythm.

  HuckJam Happy Meals?

  In 2004, we spent a long time negotiating a contract with Fox Sports to film a one-off HuckJam show in Phoenix for a 60-minute special to air on Fox’s new cable channel, Fuel TV, the first-ever 24/7 action-sports channel. We also cut a deal with Fox to film and create an eight-part reality series, Tony Hawk’s HuckJam Diaries. It was mutually beneficial: Fox wanted original programming for their new network, and we needed sponsorship dollars to keep the tour alive. Also, I was (and still am) a fan of Fuel TV.

  That same year, I was offered a hefty two-year endorsement deal with McDonald’s and Powerade. McDonald’s wanted to create a Happy Meal with small skate-related toys, and we talked them into using the Boom Boom HuckJam brand. I knew I’d take flak from some core skaters, but I wasn’t being duplicitous: My kids were fiends for Happy Meals and McNuggets. McDonald’s also agreed to sponsor the 2005 summer tour. They were promoting Powerade as one of their “well” drinks, so Powerade came in as a major sponsor as well. We decided to book another tour, and McDonald’s sold 22 million Boom Boom HuckJam Happy Meals that year. And the toys were actually some of the coolest they’ve ever sold.

  McDonald’s interpreted the many disciplines of the Boom Boom HuckJam tour into what turned out to be a very popular Happy Meal toy set.

  As the tours progressed, it became increasingly clear that our audiences, primarily families, were there to see the action, not see bands, so we ditched the live musicians and created an original pre-recorded soundtrack. Pat’s husband, Alan Deremo, an accomplished studio musician, arranged the music and wrote many of the tracks.

  The tour kept morphing. In 2006 and 2007, we restricted it to Six Flags amusement parks across the country: eight stops, four shows per stop. The next year we went crazy with a manic 24-city tour that almost killed us all.

  Meanwhile, Pat was out pitching the Boom Boom HuckJam to various licensees, which enabled us to extend the brand into markets beyond the core skate world, without placing my name front and center: school supplies, DVDs, bedding, linens, party supplies, room décor, vitamins, flash drives, toys, pool toys, bikes, skateboards, helmets, and safety pads. I’m grateful that those products have kept the show alive and continue to generate income even when we’re not actual
ly touring.

  But—and I can’t say for sure the other athletes agree—I’m jonesing to get back out there. There’s nothing like skating in front of an appreciative crowd filled with people of all ages, especially when you can do it without worrying about how you’re going to get scored by a bunch of judges.

  6

  “EXTREME” IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

  “This is how we do it in our world”

  Dear Tony Hawk

  I am 13 teen years old and I am your biggest fan. I have all your T-shirts, and merchandice. I also have your bio, the Falcon 2 deck, ‘‘The End’’ video, and your trick tips tape. In school, some kids bad mouth you and say you are a sell-out and I look at them in despise.

  Sincerely,

  In 2002, we cut a sponsorship deal with a marketing agency for a Hershey’s-branded chocolate milk product. My name and image were going to be all over the campaign: TV commercials, print ads, point-of-purchase displays, and packaging. Even though I didn’t have any contractual control over the “creative,” as it’s called, I decided to push for at least a modicum of authenticity, since I’d be skating in the TV spot.

  I really wanted the ad agency to get a director for the TV shoot who had experience filming skaters, so I steered them toward Stacy Peralta, my former team manager and co-creator of Powell Peralta Skateboards. Stacy’s star was rising in Hollywood at that point, having directed the well-received documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys. They said okay, and I was stoked to be working with him again.

  As a longtime user of the T-Mobile Sidekick, I was excited when I got to design my own personal signature model.

  Courtesy of T-Mobile® USA, Inc.

  But when we got to the set in L.A., we noticed that the extras were dressed in dorky orange and brown outfits. Somebody had decided to color-coordinate the wardrobe with the package design. Fortunately, I’d brought along my recently hired brand manager, Jaimie Muehlhausen, who politely asked the stylist if they could dress everyone in real skate clothes. They agreed, and the shoot went well. I even managed to pull a 900.

  From:

  To:

  Subject: McDonald’s

  An article in the New York Times says you include McDonald’s among your sponsors, and that you take your own children to McDonald’s. How can we fight obesity in America when a role model such as yourself endorses fast food? I think I deserve a reply.

  Not long after the commercial was in the can, the agency sent us samples of the product’s proposed packaging. Like the extras’ wardrobe, it was cheesy—an artless Madison Avenue–like incarnation of “extreme” graphics. Jaimie took their template and specs, sketched out his own version, and sent it to the designers as an example of a more credible direction, saying, “This is how we do it in our world.” We hoped his version might influence their finished product, but it did more than that: They used it untouched.

  HuckJam bedding.

  That story illustrates one of our fundamental business tenets: Gravitate toward sponsors and licensees that are willing to collaborate on, or even give our team control over, the look and feel of marketing material, no matter how seemingly insignificant. It’s allowed us to weave a thread of graphic continuity through a wide range of products. The same hawk skull that adorns a Birdhouse skateboard also smiles out from a T-Mobile Sidekick or a back-to-school portfolio. It benefits both sides: The retail goods receive a stamp of credibility, and my logo (and thus the brand attached to my name) remains intact and recognizable as it gets adapted to an ever-growing range of products.

  When Not to Trust Your Gut

  I’ve learned to trust my gut reaction when it comes to rejecting or considering offers from potential licensees. Every now and then, though, my gut blows it.

  For example, a few years back I was asked if I wanted to attach my name to a line of BMX bikes that would be made by Dynacraft, the mass-market bike manufacturer. I initially resisted because I worried that I’d look like an interloper. I imagined what my reaction would have been if a famous BMXer came out with a line of skateboards. But Pat pointed out that we’d already developed a wide range of HuckJam products, like bedding and party supplies, using imagery from skating, BMX, and Motocross. Ultimately, I agreed to put the HuckJam name on the bikes on the condition that the styles and features would be consistent with professional BMX bikes. I also insisted that they hire a professional BMXer (Mike “Rooftop” Escamilla) as a consultant.

  I had no idea how successful the Tony Hawk HuckJam Series bicycles would turn out to be.

  My confidence in the line grew as the bikes moved through R&D, but my fear returned when I found out that Dynacraft planned to launch the line at the annual InterBike Trade show in Las Vegas by installing a huge booth in the middle of the show’s “core” BMX section—and that I had to make an appearance. It was particularly awkward because we were doing a lower price-point line, and our booth was adjacent to Dave Mirra’s. I worried that the hardcore BMX industry would accuse us of stepping on their toes. I did an autograph signing, and even though we felt a bit out of place, the reception was surprisingly positive. I was really glad Rooftop was there for moral support.

  Bottom line: My fears were misplaced; the HuckJam bike line boomed.

  The Last of the Flimsy Pink Backpacks

  The licensing boom for Tony Hawk Inc. began around 1997. Before that, it had been fairly easy to maintain authenticity because my only enterprise, Birdhouse, was a skate company run by skaters. Almost everyone in the building had been skating since they were kids; it was what defined them. As a result, they were hypersensitive about producing any kind of graphic or marketing material that hard-core skaters might mock. But as I began to gain mainstream recognition, companies with zero knowledge of our world wanted to capitalize on all things extreme. We quickly realized that they’d embarrass themselves, their product, and me if we didn’t gently (and sometimes not so gently) push them in the right direction.

  The first mass-market product with my name on it was the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game series by Activision. I spent a lot of time with Neversoft, the game’s developer, making sure the characters, brands, shops, and venues scattered throughout the digitized landscape were the real deal. Luckily, some of the Neversoft guys were skaters, and I like to think that the franchise has accurately represented the skate culture.

  Things got much more complicated after the video game’s success, as companies of all kinds began courting me with sponsorship and endorsement offers. I was eager to avoid mistakes I’d made early in my career—like the time in the 1980s when I allowed my name and image to be used on a line of flimsy canvas pink “skateboard” backpacks. To gain proactive control over the way my image would be used on disparate products, we eventually created a graphic style guide. We initially contracted with an outside design company that had done similar work for such entities as Warner Brothers and NASCAR. They helped us develop new logos, then assembled all the collateral (artwork, font styles, Pantone colors, photos, and so forth) on discs for licensees. But outsourcing was expensive, so we decided to look for an in-house brand manager.

  A couple of years earlier, at my brother Steve’s suggestion, we enlisted Jaimie Muehlhausen to create the program for our first Boom Boom HuckJam tour. Steve knew Jaimie from his days at Surfer, when Jaimie had been art director at Surfer’s sister publications Snowboarder and Skateboarder. Jaimie’s a funny guy of many talents: musician, artist, and writer. (He also created the very funny websites menwholooklikekennyrogers.com and redneckwordsofwisdom.com.)

  Many mainstream design teams simply try to reach too far when they venture into the action-sports world: too much graffiti, too much color, too many distressed fonts. Our initial advice is to let the sports speak for themselves when it comes to craziness. We’ve certainly done our share of punked-out, edgy looks, but always with some overall design constraint.

  Jaimie quickly became a linchpin in the THI team, helping one outside company after another incorpor
ate my existing logos and designs into their packaging and marketing material. His approach is gentle and simple: give them art they can actually use, that’s as good or better than the stuff they concoct on their own, and then politely say, “This is how we do it in our world.”

  An example: Six Flags, the amusement park chain, approached Pat in 2006 with the idea of creating roller coasters with my name on it: Tony Hawk’s Big Spin. I love roller coasters, and I love taking my kids on roller coasters, and Six Flags makes the best ones, so when we got the call, I didn’t hesitate. The idea was to make a giant skateboard-shaped car that spins like a platter while it speeds along the track. They also wanted to dress up the waiting area to give people standing in the queue an action-sports “experience,” with video, photos, audio, and artwork.

  The Six Flags graphic-design team knew their stuff, but to their credit they also knew what they didn’t know, and so came to us for help. We spent many hours crafting signage and high-octane video loops, along with a mini-documentary about me. In typical theme-park fashion, they wanted to install larger-than-life cutouts of me spinning somersaults above the ride. They submitted lots of oddly cropped mock-ups for our approval. Jaimie tweaked things and sent back high-res artwork that they used as is. We were lucky that the marketing team was led by Mike Antinoro, a former ESPN guy who’d worked on the X Games for years. Collaborating with experienced and open-minded folks made things far less painless.