This is a great little bio video on Tony Hawk's life, and it shows his son Riley, who figures into this blog post.
As a homeless guy at the moment, I take buses all the time. City buses, are still free in L.A. county, because of the pandemic. I got on a bus in Long Beach yesterday, and a couple of stops later, a man who appeared in his early 40's, got on with his young daughter. Unfortunately for them, the only empty seats were right near me, the fat, sketchy looking guy in the back of the bus. The daughter was a cute kid, maybe 5 or 6, carrying a little stuffed unicorn.
Being a sketchy looking homeless guy, though showered and cleaner than usual at the time, I tried to ignore them, and not freak them out. The daughter had a little tiny notebook, and when she started writing in it, she asked her dad how to spell "Riley." I don't know who she was writing to, probably a friend, I guess. The dad wasn't sure if it was spelled with "ly" or "ey" at the end. Spelling is one of my strong suits, so being the dork I am, I spoke up. "It's R-i-l-e-y" I said. The dad thanked me politely, and repeated it, as his daughter wrote it down. "That's Tony Hawk's son's name, that's how I know it," I added.
The dad perked up. "I'm from Maine, I was such a huge fan of Tony Hawk!" As his daughter continued writing her note, we had a great conversation about skateboarding in general, and Tony Hawk in particular. This was your typical, Yuppie looking guy, with no Van's shoes or Thrasher T-shirt or anything that would suggest a background in skating. But he had been a pretty serious skater for at least a couple years as a teen, and it turned into a really cool conversation.
I told him I was a BMX guy mostly, but I skated a little, made it to Southern California, and wound up working at Vision Skateboards during their heyday. I actually got to go to Tony Hawk's Fallbrook house way back in 1989, for a video shoot with Ken Park (and also one with Joe Johnson later on). In this clip of Ken Park, shot at Tony's Fallbrook house, I'm in the background in the all white at :16, :25, :41, and 1:34. I was helping out Don Hoffman, my boss at Unreel Productions, and shooting the Super 8 footage that day, as Don shot 35 mm film. Tony was off at a demo somewhere, but I had lunch with Don and Frank Hawk, Tony's dad, sitting in the bed of Frank's pick-up. Don and Frank were talking about the "old days of skateboarding," and this was in 1989. It was an epic conversation to just sit and listen to.
I never did meet Tony Hawk. I've seen him at a few contests, and actually stood next to him on the deck of a ramp at an Action Sports trade show in 1994 or so. I was shooting photos of the BMXers on the halfpipe, and the BMX session ended, and the skaters took over the ramp. Tony flew out right next to me, but I felt to weird to introduce myself, so I kept shooting photos. Some skater I'd never heard of, Bucky Lasek, dropped in, and did a 360 backside ollie right in front of us, and Tony freaked, that was a brand new trick then, so that stuck out in my mind. You know it's a good trick when Tony Hawk, and all the other skaters, freak out an slam their trucks on the coping giving props.
A few years later, I scammed a press pas to the X-Games in San Francisco, in 1999. I wanted to shoot some video footage to start getting back in the scene, and told ESPN I was writing for Dig BMX magazine in the U.K. I did actually send an article to Dig, so it was semi-legit. I wound up at the BMX vert ramp during practice, when Steve Rocco flew over in a helicopter, and threw money stamped with World Industries logo characters at the crowd. I got 4 of those World dollars, most of which actually fell on the BMXers, not the skate audience, due to the wind.
I ran into Old School Skyway pro, and friend from my time living in SanJose, Maurice Meyer. We started talking about "the old days," in the 1980's. I was part of the NorCal scene for a year, before I got the magazine job in 1986, and moved south to Redondo Beach. Maurice, better known as Drob, was he pro I got to know the best while living up there.
That evening at the X-Games, the skateboard best trick contest was starting as BMX practice ended, so Maurice and I walked over to watch it. We were standing right behind the skater's chairs, maybe 20 feet from the side of the halfpipe. PLG was trying heelflip Caballerials, as I recall. Bob Burnquist was trying to land a one footed Smith grind to revert. Tony Hawk pulled his best trick, a varial 720, with about 15 minutes left in the jam. It was an epic skate session, "real" skateboarding, the vibe was like a backyard ramp session, only with about 5,000 people in the stands watching.
And then this happened, something none of us expected. I think it took Tony 11 tries to land the first 900 on a skateboard. I was standing there, with my little Sony Digital 8 video camera... with a dead battery. I didn't care. I was stoked to just watch that happen. By the time he landed the 9, we all knew we were watching skateboarding history happen. You can get a glimpse of Maurice, in a white hoodie with sunglasses, at 6:04 in that clip, part of the crowd congratulating Tony. For some reason, I didn't move, I just stood where I was, and watched it all happen, for once not worrying about getting the video shot.
So what started as a pretty average bus ride yesterday, turned into one of those really cool random conversations with a stranger. He told me about Joe Rogan's podcast with Tony, which I have never watched. The dad and I fist bumped as we got off the bus, and headed our separate ways, both kinda stoked at reliving a bit of our teenage/20-something years, all because we were both big fans of Tony Hawk, the skateboarder.
As I've grown older, I've realized the the things we put so much emphasis on achieving in life are rarely what we remember 10-20-30 years later. We remember little moments, weird little interactions with other people. Those are the things that stick in our minds, and become our most cherished memories.
My blogs, the Old School BMX stuff, anyhow, is mostly me telling those stories about obscure moments in the early days of BMX freestyle, and sometimes skateboarding. That's what the success of my blogs is built on, those weird little moments we remember many years later. Yesterday's completely random bus conversation has become another one of those cool memories. One of these maybe I'll actually have to meet Tony. We'll see.
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