His frustration with himself was so harsh that his parents
had him psychologically evaluated at school. The results were
that Tony was "gifted," and school advisors recommended
placing him in advanced classes. The root of his frustrations
was uncovered as well: "The psychologist said he had
a 12-year old mind in an 8-year old body," his Mom recalls.
"And his mind tells him he can do things his body can't
do."
Luckily, for those around, Tony's brother, Steve, supplied
the answer to his sibling's brain/body problem-he gave him
a skateboard. Tony started goofing around on the thin Bahne
board, and his body finally caught up with his brain. "When
he started getting good at skating it changed his personality.
Finally he was doing something that he was satisfied with,"
Steve said. "He became a different guy; he was calm,
he started thinking about other people and became more generous.
He wasn't so worried about losing at other things-he wasn't
as competitive at Pac Man as he had been."
His mother agrees with a laugh, "I was just glad he was
taking all his energy out on skateboarding and not on me."
But Tony was still beating himself up. If he didn't skate
his best in a contest-even if he won-he would be silent, and
when he arrived home he'd take his trusty cat Zorro up to
his room to be by himself. "If I don't do my best it
kills me," he lamented.
It's not entirely clear where all of this determination came
from. At least some of it, no doubt, came from his father,
Frank, who flew torpedo bombers off of aircraft carriers in
World War II. More than providing the genes, however, Frank
Hawk also played a major nurturing role as Tony progressed
as a skater -- not by teaching or training, but by throwing
his full support behind his son's athletic passion. Frank
drove Tony up and down the coast of California for skate contests,
built innumerable skate ramps over the years, and when he
grew dissatisfied with the competitive organizations, founded
both the California Amateur Skateboard League and the National
Skateboard Association. The NSA's high-profile contests have
been credited with helping the sport surge in popularity during
the 1980s. Frank died in 1995.
|
By twelve, Tony was sponsored by Dogtown skateboards,
by fourteen he was pro, and by age sixteen Tony Hawk was the
best skateboarder in the world. In the ensuing 17 years, Hawk
has entered an estimated 103 pro contests. He won 73 of them,
and placed second in 19. By far the best record in skateboarding's
history. (He even won a contest after a redeye flight and
only three hours of sleep.)
Unfortunately, being the world champion of skateboarding doesn't
necessarily translate into financial security. Skateboarding
is notorious for its peaks and valleys in popularity. As a
senior at Torrey Pines High School in Del Mar, Calif., he
was able to buy his own house at age 17. Two years later he
bought another house: a four-and-a-half-acre spread in nearby
Fallbrook, where he built a monster skate ramp at the top
of a hill. A smaller ramp was wedged between his house and
his pool. Hawk was constantly traveling worldwide for demos
and contests. He was making enough money to buy his friends
trips to Hawaii so everyone could vacation together. He married
Cindy Dunbar in April 1990 and they lived in Fallbrook. Always
an electronics nut, Hawk constantly updated his computers,
stereo systems, video cameras and cars. But, one day in 1991
this all came to an end. Tony felt the bump on his helmet
and when he looked up, it was too late; the sky was already
falling.
Skating died. Not a slow death where you could see it coming and plan ahead,
this was a blood-hose-out-the-nose aneurysm at the breakfast
table. Tony's income shrank drastically, and suddenly his
wife, a manicurist, was the family breadwinner. The times
were so lean that Tony was allotted a daily Taco Bell allowance
of five bucks.
The next few years ripped by in a blur of financial uncertainty
and personal eruptions. He sold the Fallbrook house and the
Lexus and in 1992 Cindy gave birth to their son, Riley. Tony
refinanced his first house and started a skateboard company,
Birdhouse Projects, with former Powell pro, Per Welinder.
Two years later, he and Cindy divorced. Birdhouse wasn't making
money and Tony's future was sketchy. If he couldn't make a
living skating he figured he could either edit video for other
companies or get a job "sitting behind a computer doing
some sort of programming or web design. I thought skating
was over for me." (Hawk is a proud computer geek.)
But skateboarding went through its cycle and was deemed cool again. The Hawk became the Phoenix. In 1996 he married Erin Lee, and bought a new house with a new pool with a new waterfall. Birdhouse is now one of the largest skateboard companies in the world and he's signing six-figure endorsement deals with companies like Adio shoes, Jeep, and Sirius Satellite Radio. In 1998 he and his family started a kid's skate clothing company called, of course, Hawk Clothing, which was acquired by Quiksilver in early 2000 (and is now available exclusively at Kohl’s department stores). In 1999 Activision and Tony created Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game for PlayStation. They expected decent sales, but the copies blew off the shelves and it quickly became a bestseller. The next year, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was released and jumped to the number one position for over a month. Since then, the THPS series has become one of the best-selling video-game franchises of all time. Tony Hawk's Proving Ground just launched October 16, 2007 to excellent reviews and with no signs of slowing down.
Tony's success overflows into the non-electronic world as
well. His autobiography, HAWK -- Occupation: skateboarder
was a New York Times bestseller and is currently available
in paperback. He created Tony Hawk's Gigantic Skatepark Tour
for ESPN, which is second only to the X Games in viewership.
Today, Tony's
days adhere to an outlandish dichotomy. Recently, after slicing
his shins open while shooting a TV commercial (probably needed
stitches but didn't go to the doctor) he had to rush back
to pick Riley up from school. On March 26, 1999 Tony became
the father of a second baby boy, Spencer, who already has
a weird attraction to skateboards--he rides a mini-board around
the kitchen. Tony's third son, Keegan, was born July 18, 2001,
and he has proven to be even more of a lunatic daredevil than
his father. Shortly after Keegan learned how to walk -- and
climb -- Tony walked into the kitchen to find his youngest
son standing on a chair with an ice pick in one hand, a knife
in the other and a small lightbulb in his mouth. Though he
and Erin divorced in 2004, Tony remains a proud and actively
involved parent.
"It makes me proud that I can switch from being a skater
to a responsible parent," he said. "But," he's
quick to add, "I don't feel as old as other parents."
He may not feel as old as other parents, but he's old enough
to have retired at age 31. It should be made clear, though,
that in skateboarding the word "retire" doesn't
mean you stop skating. It simply means he's stopped competitive
skating. He still skates almost every day, still learns new
tricks, and still does several public demos a year. He was
recently voted the best vert skater by readers of Transworld
Skateboarding magazine. One of the reasons Tony decided to
stop competing at the end of 1999 was that he landed the first-ever
900 (two and a half mid-air spins) at the X Games. The 900
was the last on a wish list of tricks he'd written a decade
earlier. The list included ollie 540, kickflip 540, varial
720 and the 900.
In 2002, Tony launched the Boom Boom HuckJam, a 30-city arena
tour featuring the world's best skateboarders, BMX bike riders
and Motocross lunatics performing choreographed routines on
a million-dollar ramp system, while punk and hip hop music
plays. The hugely successful (and massively publicized) HuckJam
tour has sold out arenas across the country every year since
its inception and even been featured as a Happy Meal at McDonalds. It can currently be found entertaining standing room only crowds at Six Flags parks across the country.
And, speaking of Six Flags, two new Tony Hawk’s Big Spin roller coasters were recently unveiled in San Antonio and St. Louis with more on the way over the next few years. With a skateboard design theme and rolling, spinning moves around the track, the coaster takes on a Tony Hawk theme complete with a history of action sports and Tony Hawk’s life story. Coasters are planned for 2008 at Six Flags Over Texas and Six Flags Discovery Kingdom.
In January of 2006, Tony married Lhotse Merriam in a ceremony
on the island of Tavarua. Tony and Lhotse continue to live
in the San Diego area.
With the creation of the Tony Hawk Foundation, Hawk also has made an effort to give something back to the sport that has given him so much. Designed to promote and help finance public skateparks in low-income areas, the foundation has distributed more than $1,700,000 to non-profit groups building skateparks throughout the U.S.: from Homer, Alaska, to Needles, California, to Greencastle, Indiana, to Glenwood, Arkansas, to Livermore Falls, Maine. The Foundation has now been a part of 336 new skateparks around the country.
"I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out,"
Tony says. "I mean, I never thought that I could make
a career out of skateboarding." |
