INTERVIEW
As a child, skateboarding gave Hawk an outlet for his excessive energy and helped him to feel accepted
Birdhouse Projects (now renamed Birdhouse Skateboards), with fellow pro- fessional skater Per Welinder in 1991. Hawk had a few tough years, but his
confidence was eventually rewarded, as skateboarding began to increase in popularity again and Birdhouse grew into a hugely popular and successful skateboard company. In 1999, he had his most successful business idea, when he teamed up with Activision to create the Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game. The same year, he became the first
person to successfully land a 900 (two and a half rotations) at the X Games in San Francisco, a feat which was broad- cast by television sports network ESPN and catapulted him – and skateboarding – into the mainstream. “Landing that 900 was one of the
highlights of my career,” says Hawk. “It was something I’d been trying off and on for more than five years prior to that, so to finally make it in such a huge venue was a big deal. It really changed my life in terms of the recognition fac- tor and opportunities.” Hawk retired from professional skate
competitions shortly afterwards, but has continued to perform in skate dem- os, as well as organising his own events. He launched the Boom Boom Huck Jam show in 2002 – an extreme sports tour featuring freestyle skateboarding, BMXing and motorcross that toured arenas and Six Flags amusement parks across the US (Six Flags also launched a rollercoaster with Hawk’s name: Tony Hawk’s Big Spin). The last Boom Boom Huck Jam was in 2008, but Hawk says he’d be keen to relaunch it. “We still have all the ramps, so if we found a good sponsor we’d happily go on the road again,” he says.
Issue 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013
GIVING SOMETHING BACK Hawk’s huge personal success made it important for him to put something back into the sport that had given him so much. In 2002, he set up the Tony Hawk Foundation, with the aim of providing skateparks in low income communi- ties, and “empowering youth to want to make a positive difference to their communities.”The idea for the Founda- tion was born when Hawk realised the poor quality of many of the skateparks being built in the US. “About 10 years ago I saw that there
was a lot of interest in skating, and communities were starting to build skateparks, but mostly in affluent areas in big cities,” he says. “I got invited to some of the openings of these parks, and when I went to skate them I realised that they were really built poorly. “They clearly weren’t designed by
skateboarders; they were designed by people who thought they knew what skateboarders needed, and were built by contractors that had no experience of building skateparks.
“I wanted to change that cycle and
try to encourage the cities to get skate- boarders involved in the design, but also to direct funding towards the cities that needed those facilities – the low income areas with at risk youth.” Hawk was convinced of the power
of skating to help give disadvantaged young people a positive focus. “A lot of kids in those areas choose to skate and they don’t have any support in that, so they get discouraged from doing some- thing they have a passion for and they end up probably doing something more subversive,” he says. “Not all kids fall into mainstream
sports – in the US, as many kids are into skateboarding as are into baseball, and if the cities aren’t recognising that desire they’re fooling themselves. “Skating teaches them a lot about self
confidence. It’s healthy, it’s creative, it’s active and also it allows them to be part of a community and share ideas and de- velop new techniques.” The foundation is not just about hand- ing over money – the idea is to empower
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