Tony Hawk | Full Q&A at The Oxford Union

Wow hello everybody flitting about Hogwarts thank you again Tony so much for coming I just like to jump right in with a question about your early life when did you first realize that skateboarding was something that you wanted to do even just as a hobby it wasn't it wasn't initially when I first started when I first started I was doing it because my older brother was a skater and some of my friends in the neighborhood were doing it so I just did it more as a social activity about six months maybe almost a year after I started doing that I got invited to the skate park in San Diego and when I first went to the skate park and I literally saw people flying out of swimming pools that was the moment that I said I want to do that like that spoke to all of my desires in terms of being a daredevil and being active and doing something creative but more of an individual pursuit and I'd set out to learn how to fly that was it was it was the moment was it right then that you knew that that would be your life no not at all in fact I all I was doing was trying to figure out how I could get rides to the skate park and my older brother would pick me up once a week and take me there so that was pretty much the only time I could do it it wasn't until probably another year went by that I was actively skating and realized that I wasn't enjoying the other sports I was doing I was playing baseball in basketball as well in fact my father was the coach of our little league team and became the president of Little League the year that I quit so that was an awkward conversation you said you were invited to a skate park how did that work what was like the social context Oh a friend of mine was going and his mom was driving was it wasn't a formal invitation but I was one day no courier you should have my house understood when you think about your career in total are you more proud of the technical skateboarding achievements or is it more the way that skateboarding is viewed as a result of your achievements well I think my pride tells me that I'd much rather be viewed for my skating achievements for being an innovator I'm skating but I think more importantly as someone that helped to to bring skateboarding more into the mainstream acceptance but I but I also credit my video games with that but truly the thing I'm most proud of is being featured on The Simpsons about your video game what was your actual involvement in that what made you decide to do it once you had decided well I've told the story before but the way that the the way it happened initially was I was I was asked by a PC developer to come pitch a skateboarding game with him some one time I think it's around 1996 maybe and he said you know I have an engine he had this really crude engine that he had been working on and it was just sort of the skater cruising through these terrain and and there nothing was like it so I was excited to even be involved with it at all and so he and I went pitching different console manufacturers different publishers and mostly just came up against a lot of pushback no one thought it was a good idea the in fact one one company rhymes with rhymes with skid way they said they said skateboarding is named popular why would anyone want to play a video game about skateboarding and and home consoles were not a thing right then so we were we're up against a lot of challenges and then and he gave up basically and but he said I remember when he called me he said look III have to make a living I have to go do something else but I feel like we planted a seed video game industry with your name and the interest level that you have for doing a game and at the time I didn't understand what that meant but he was right because not long after that I got a call from take 2 which is no Rockstar and they were doing a skate game and I got a call from Activision and they were doing a skate game and I actually had this sort of a bidding war but mostly I went to each one to figure out what they were working on and the one would take two it seemed like the the learning curve was too difficult on it and I wanted something that was much more accessible right out of the gate and then went over to Activision and saw what they're working on they came up it was funny they invited me to their office in Santa Monica in a big conference room with all these guys and with suits and ties and I walk in looking like a skater a little less than this and and they had a they had a PlayStation one on the table with a controller and they said well this is what working on please try it and they're all like watching and watching play and they they had based the engine on a game they just released called apocalypse featuring Bruce Willis which was a flop but that's not a secret I'm not throwing I'm one of the bus they didn't have success with it but never soft that the developer thought the engine be perfect for skateboarding and so the very first incarnation of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater that I played was Bruce Willis with a gun strapped to his back on a skateboard that's true skating through a dystopian wasteland so I'm doing kick flips through the desert and instinctively I knew that this was this was how I would like to play a game this is the kind of game I'd like to be involved with and with my resources my experience and my connections that we can make something that's much more authentic to skateboarding but also understandable and relatable to someone who doesn't skate and so I signed on right then I didn't I had no guarantees about about sales about support and for them it was sort of a pet project so it was really fun because we didn't many parameters that we had to go by so when I was working with Neversoft we could throw in different tricks we could you know throw in the music and and the styles of my culture and it we weren't trying to please anyone with it we just for me I wanted to make a game that skateboarders would be inspired to buy a Playstation to play that was the goal like for me that was the sign of success is that a skater thought the game was good then they would go buy a game system and play it and and I didn't know what that meant monetarily but but for me that was the you know that was the validation it's obviously been very successful but has it always been a purely positive experience with the entire video game series or have there been hard jobs well no it's widely documented that we had a few we had a few that didn't go so well but for the most part the the I'd say the first eight games that we did were a dream I mean even that the first game getting to a sequel that was the dream come true for me the idea that they wanted to make a second one and to expand on what we had done that was incredible and then as we got into the later consoles and started doing even more technical technical controls and graphics it was it was incredible but then as soon as we got into a sync project project eight then they didn't keep putting the resources into the development of it as much as we had hoped and then the skate series came out and that's sort of that sort of divided the market in half and once that happened Activision didn't want to put the same resources behind our game and then I had the brilliant idea of doing it a skateboard controller that you would stand on because of the success of guitar hero and all the all the peripherals that people were getting and so we set out to do that and the challenge of that was making it fun and accessible but not dangerous because we designed this skateboard that you'd have to stand on and I learned very quickly that a lot of don't want to get up from their chairs and couches to play a game and also they were under such a they were under such a deadline for the game to be released that it didn't it wasn't fine-tuned to the board to the controls and it was pretty messy and a lot of morning when syncing up so that was hard but then when we got to do the second one the second one was more along the lines of that was called Tony Hawk's ride then we got to do Tony Hawk shred that was I think 2009 2010 and the Shred game was actually the game that I had set out to do for the ride which was much more intuitive the controls were more subtle and you could use the board for snowboarding because that was the goal for me it was that I made this board and you can use it for snowboarding or surfing or whatnot by the time shred came out peripherals were done people were throwing away the guitar cosets you know and their and their rock band and and then so and and our first game got soap and that no one was going back to the second one so it was sort of a bittersweet release for me because I knew it was the game I really hoped for but we didn't have the audience for it and then I basically worked with Activision for a few more years we released Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 which didn't get stellar reviews but definitely was back to what the game controls that we first had and and there hasn't been a skate game since on a console which is unfortunate what's that we just I just worked on a mobile game Tony Hawk skate jam I didn't come here for a plug by the way I'm it's out now it's free-to-play download on the App Store but I just worked on that and that was with a very small developer and I liked what they were working on what they had already they had a game called skateboard party and so I felt like with my influence and and working on the controls to make them more like thps and I feel like we've accomplished some of that and and captured that feel of it so I'm excited about that it's more of a it's more of a fun project for me though it's not like some great big windfall like thps was its you do actually enjoy being involved in the development of the games yeah and and like I said that the my last few games with Activision were a challenge because it was hard to get it was hard to get real-time updates of the games because they're so huge and I'd have to go to some server to download about it so I'm actually installed in my system they were already past that one so there were a lot of challenges with that but but I do it's been fun to work on this mobile game for last year's okay so the games are obviously very very successful they've made skateboarding very popular to people who would never actually go skateboarding how do you gel the kind of mainstreaming of skateboarding that you've helped bring along with a kind of rebellious image that skateboarding still has how do I gel I don't know I've never thought it wasn't some concerted effort on my half my part I think it was more I wanted to bring the attitude and the the feel and the the creativity and the individualism of skating to video games but in terms of promoting skateboarding I just wanted to promote the positive aspects like I found skateboarding a time when I was kind of a runt in school and in a lot of ways you know within hindsight I can tell that I was I was bullied as a kid and even when I was skating in the skating I was bullied in a lot of ways because my style wasn't cool because I was skinny you know it was I was weak so I didn't have the the mass and the bulk and the and the surf background to make my skating look cool and so I did okay in team sports but I never excelled in them in a way that I thought I was capable of and when I found skating I found my own voice I found my own style and I found a way to be creative in a way that was an open canvas skating was not established there wasn't some there wasn't this cookie cutter way you had to skate there wasn't any way that that you had to perform or compete there wasn't compulsory routines and I love that element of it and and all the people that I found that were involved in skateboarding were super creative and and really interesting people and came from all walks of life and so I felt at home in this band of misfits and so to promote that in any way I felt proud too but at the same time you know I wasn't trying to promote some outlaw image and and I think the the student was skateboarding is especially now it still remains through the 90s is when the skate parks sort of stuck a lot of skate bars closed because of insurance issues and because skating's popularity was waning and so through the 90s it was all Street skating and people were skating you know these forbidden areas and handrails and public spaces and it wasn't because they were it wasn't some outlaw chase that they were after it was more because they just didn't have anywhere to go and so there became the stigma that skaters are punks and they're outlaws and they're trespassing and it was like they're just trying to find a place to do this and the urban landscape is their skate park now and so since then skate has come a long way there's a lot there's a lot of public skate parks in fact there's one here in Oxford I was just there earlier today in the rain and and now that's just part of life skateboarding is much more accepted there are more facilities to do it it's in the Olympics next year and none of those things I was setting out to accomplish but I think they just sort of came with me trying to be I don't know an unofficial ambassador to skating because people that know my name it was synonymous with skateboarding thanks to the video games so you mentioned that there was a tough time for skateboarding and you've talked some times about there being two waves to your career and there was a bit of a tough time in the middle they got there's three waves to my career now if I'm 50 with a being a pro skater so I'm in the 5th wave maybe uh yeah so when I first started skating I didn't realize it at the time but it was sort of at the tail end of its popularity in the 70s and so when I first started skating all my friends were quitting the skate parks are starting to close but I got lucky in that I lived in San Diego and I lived near one of the last remaining ski parks that was open in the US like a handful of them so I had a place to hone my skills and then skateboarding started to come back around in popularity in the 80s I don't know I don't know what to credit for except that I guess there was a few key things like Back to the Future a lot a lot of people like professionals that you've heard of now started skating because they saw Back to the Future that's the true MTV was big you know there was some skateboarding there there was trying to think that there was a couple other things that people were gleaming the cube came out don't blame me for the story but um that was a movie that I was in and so some there was ski burgers fusion a few things in the 80s and it came back around in popularity but it was still considered more of an outcast thing was more of a fad and a novelty and people were more focused on the hairdos and the music and the graphics and the actual physical act of skating but at the same time that's when I hit my stride and when I started learning a lot of tricks and things like that and I was doing really well in competition so I had a good career when I was in high school I literally bought a house when I was a senior in high school which was a challenge to stay focused on my schoolwork but I managed to graduate and then it's like I said through the through the late 80s it was it was still on the rise I would say somewhere around 1990 91 is when things started to drop off and skateboarding took a huge nosedive the parks were closing it wasn't considered cool anymore it was more like why are you skating when you're 20 you know that was I remember when I was when I was in my 20s I remember opening Thrasher Magazine and there was a picture of this guy mark lake and he was doing a handplant on her happiness and Mark Lakes 30 and still going for it and I remember thinking whoa like he's scanning these thirty like even even in my eyes it was like that's crazy and then through the early 90s is when I decided that I should probably step back behind the seems based on that based on the fact that I was sort of considered too old to be a pro in my early 20s and I started my own skate company and that's when I formed bird house so through the through the mid 90s was me just trying to get bird house off the ground and get the word out there and promote skating in any way I could that's when the X Games started and I would say that was probably the the catalyst for the growth of skateboarding through the mid to late 90s and then of course our video game got released in 99 so I guess the funny thing is about that is that a lot of more mainstream people discovered who I was when the video game got released when I did a 900 the X Games I was 31 at the time like that seems way over the hill and so nowadays and this is all you can go see for yourself but when there's pictures of me posts on social media people like oh he got old and I was like I was already old when you discovered who I was now I'm older time passes it happens but yeah isn't that weird that's that's my answer to them always I know it's weird time passes but but to be to be considered a valid Pro or even relevant at age 50 is absurd but that was not even a ever consideration you just did a few months ago a video 50 tricks at 50 yeah why'd you do that what was my birthday in May and I I think there was there was it was sort of cathartic for me because I visited a lot of tricks that I created through the years and I wanted to do 50 of them the ones that I had created and there were a couple of tricks that I realized after doing it for that video that I never want to do again just because they're too they're too hard they're too risky and and I don't my motivation would be to do them again so I thought it was it was it was an idea that I had and I started shooting it and as I got about halfway into shooting it it looks like it's all in the same day it's not on the same day I wore the same clothes but it was over the course of several weeks and and it was like I said there was there was some closure I had to a lot of the tricks so I didn't ever think that that was going to be a thing that name would even care about but as I started doing and I thought was something I'm kind of proud of you know it's it's sort of a collection of these tricks and a lot of them are just gonna remain there I'm not gonna do them again I'm not saying which ones but a few I'm really interested to hear when you're doing maybe aiming to do two or three new tricks a day how do you physically go about doing that I don't just keep on trying the same one over and over again yeah well that's skateboarding really yeah there's a joke how many skaters to take a screw in a light bulb just one but it takes 100 tries oh and one guy to film it it yeah well like I said they were all they're all tricks that I had done at some point before but I would set out with a a modest goal for that day so it would be maybe three to four tricks I want to do sometimes it was only one because I knew how much how hard it would be and how much it would take out of me and yeah to get that one trick just keep trying it over and over and over and over you had a really bad accident that looked like in the video yeah I got away lucky on that one but yeah do you get a lot of that not usually so bad but I put through the years well the worst injury how was breaking my pelvis shooting for jackass of course I we were doing actually we're doing an episode of wild boys and we Bob Burnquist and I were dressed up in monkey suits which should have been my first sign of trouble and we we did some skating we actually they had an orangutan skating on his ramp so it was us dressed up like him and we did some skating we did some tricks and then Bob Burnquist has his own loop ramp at his house and he and I had been on tour for almost two months prior to that doing this loop that I had built every night for our show for Abu Mohammed oh and when we were at his house doing the wild boys thing he said oh we gotta do a loop and the monkey suits and I was like yeah that's a great idea and his loop was was much more weather than mine was so it was really slow it was kind of rickety and it just wasn't it wasn't the same timing technique you would do and I was cocky you know I was like we've been doing this every night I got it as soon as I dropped in I knew I didn't have enough speed so I tried to compensate by the secret to the loop is this remaining in one position and not using your legs too much and I did the first mistake cuz I pumped my way through the first part of the transition and then I had I was off the wall and just spinning in space he came down right on my shovel right on my hip and and fractured my skull and broke my pelvis and when you break your pelvis there's you can't do anything like except sit around you can get good at video games but yeah it it's sort of the center to your whole nervous system and so you can't you can't sneeze you can't coffee you can't go the bathroom everything is like it was just a shock to the system and that was when I was 35 so I didn't think I was coming back from that but slowly but surely I started to regain my confidence and figure it out but I guessed answer your question no those injuries don't happen a lot because that was the most that was the biggest setback for me in terms of physically it sends it sounds awful so that were the one that you saw in the video looks very much like that good I don't know how it somehow it got away with it you can see what he's talking about in that 50 to 50 video I give it a watch completely moving subjects what do you think is the state of skateboarding today is it more popular less popular has it changed um I think it's less I think it's more popular in a in a general sense of hobbyists because there are a lot of people that just skate leisurely even just for transportation but if I were to say ten years ago the people that were skating were they were very focused on serious skating and tricks and and the videos and things like that so I feel like it's in a healthy state in terms of interests but it's not as there's not as many people they're serious about it that being said it's growing internationally it's going to be in the Olympics next year so there is a definite international interest in it and we're seeing skate scenes grow in the most unlikely places like Cambodia Ethiopia there's a skate scene in Kenya and and that kind of thing I never imagined I feel like that's the silver lining to the growth of it and to the the idea that it that it's going to be in this very structured format of Olympics and do you how do you see your foundation the build skate parks fitting into that well we we try to help communities that that want to get a skate park in the area by giving them funding and resources and sort of the the roadmap to getting it going in terms of getting it approved and getting a push through the city we are mostly focused in the US and we've helped to fund over 600 parks now over the course of 16 years so I would like to keep that gun I'd like to keep that model going and possibly do it more internationally we have an international extension of our of our foundation through Skateistan and their model is more skating and education so they actually have a skate and a skate camp of sorts and school in Kabul Afghanistan and they also have they've taken that model and done it in Cambodia which we funded and in South Africa where we fund two but the the beauty of their model is that especially in Afghanistan girls aren't allowed to complain in sports or to play in any co-ed sports but because they consider skateboarding a toy it has this loophole that they're allowed to go skate and so the ratio of girls to boys skating in Afghanistan is one-to-one which is way more progressive than most countries ironically you know if you look at say even the u.s. I would say it's more like five to one and and that is huge compared to the past when it was almost all guys right I think we might move on to audience questions now so everyone okay put up your hands we'll get a microphone over to you yeah you over there hi thanks for your talk so far I was just wondering what you thought about skateboarding brands like supreme and Pallas being like pushed way more into the mainstream and how that would like affect skateboarding culture in general ah I think it's cool I think that it's great that they they stuck to their guns in terms of just promoting skating and skate culture and not trying to make it some high fashion thing and through doing so have become one of the most coveted brands and and I think it's it's very cool I actually saw I was in Tokyo a couple months ago doing some stuff for Lakai shoes and the whole Palace crew was there and you can tell those guys are rock stars now and all because they just they love skating and they and they stuck by skating and skate fashion and it's it's a crazy phenomenon though I mean I it is still kind of baffling that you could sell you know a t-shirt for $600 after the fact after you buy it for whatever 50 but I think it's I think it's very cool and I think it helps to it helps to raise the profile of skating very much so so I think I think it's cool I you know I wish I was part of them to begin with over here in the blue oh yeah I was gonna ask where would you say your favorite places to skate maybe skate parks are in the world and in the UK as well ah um Wow uh well my ramp is my favorite place to skate just because I designed it and it's my it's my happy place and I don't have to deal with crowds and so I don't have to be on display like I enjoy doing exhibitions and things but a lot of times I just like to skate on my own terms and and not have to do the craziest tricks and things like that but I I love it here I skated the Vans park um a couple months ago the underground house of vans here and I think that was super cool other than that what's the spot here I'm my mind is blank what's that no I just went there today but no the place in London Bay 6600 south bank yeah I mean South things are around forever and help support that to become more of a public facility in fact my wife and I took our kids to London over the summer and that is the only place that wanted to go was south bank they didn't want to see the London Eye they didn't want to see anything like we wanted a South Bank and Palace what do you think would take to get more girls into skating and how do you think that experience as a female skaters has changed since you started yeah um I think well I think that the the interest is growing the the acceptance is growing much more now so it's it's the best time as ever for girls to start skating I think for them to be inspired to skate it just takes probably seeing someone like Lizzie our Monto or Leticia who are of pro caliber out there in the in the public eye and maybe that's through the Olympics or maybe that's through marketing and whatnot but but I feel like I've actually had some girls tell me that they started skating because they saw the zero Manto in or they saw her doing stuff with with our team with birdhouse and and that's what inspired them and I feel like that's happening more and more and with even with younger girls but it's it's very cool that for instance in the Olympics there are equal disciplines and for both male and female and now with the Vans Park series it's equal prize money and those are all important steps and ones that should be taken a long time ago so keep skating how about one here in the pink in the front row hey thanks one of the in addition to raising the profile is skating one of the huge impacts of the games was frankly two soundtracks for kids growing up huge way to discover music everything from like Bad Religion to Frank Sinatra was in those games and I'm hoping can comment on how that was chosen you know if that was something that was done by either you or groups of people involved in the games and if you have a favorite either soundtrack or game with the best soundtrack Wow that's tough Sophie's Choice well the the soundtrack came about because I wanted the game to represent skating culture and and for me skating culture was was steeped in punk rock music especially in the in the skate parks in the 80s that was the soundtrack we heard I mean I was skating at a skate park in LA one day when I was 11 years old and all these Punk's started coming in and the Circle Jerks were playing at the skate park that night and that kind of stuff is what I wanted to carry over into the video game soundtrack and it was relatively easy because those bands were happy to to give music to be discovered in a way no one really thought it was going to be the success that it was so I'd say for for the sort of old-school punk rock choices were mine the newer bands such as Goldfinger millencolin stuff like that that was more the Activision side the music department going and finding those songs and I know that people love to identify Goldfinger Superman with with scheme with thps and with their discovery of new music and for that I'm hugely proud but I think I'm more proud that I could sneak in a Dead Kennedys track or a Circle Jerks track and and make that pull that into the mainstream because that's just something that we never imagined especially as as you know dirty skater kids listening to weird punk music I never imagined that anyone would care about it if anything we were we were being beaten up because of it but the fraud to ask Wow my favorite soundtrack I would say probably the first one even though it's so limited because it was it was our it was our starting point and it was our springboard for for all of it in terms of setting the standards setting the tone and and the fact that I was able to get primus and dead kennedys into the mainstream collective is something I'm hugely proud of great another question about right at the back in the back corner over there so ty Shaw and Jones got skate of the year from Thrasher in 2018 what did you think of what he's achieved in 2018 his work on videos like blessed just what did you think of what he achieved did you think he deserved the award what what did he do yeah we're getting even a skate culture here now people so tyshaun what I think that the the supreme video and with his partner it was it was such a breakout and you know he's incredibly talented and it was good timing you send us tend to see the skaters of the year with the videos that came out later in the air it's more fresh in people's minds but he deserved it I mean the guy you know he's incredible talent and I really like I like the supreme video for showing the raw aspect of skating and what it really takes to do these tricks in terms of the attempts and the kind of [ __ ] you have to go through with dodging security guards and moving barriers and stuff like that and I loved how they represented that it might have been a little excessive at times but I think it was great I think that I would have liked to have seen Evan get it too though because he's incredible so it's weird though it's you know the whole skater of the year thing it's it's it's mostly by committee there's no there's no structured competition for that and so a lot of times it's just flavor of the month but he deserved it what they're in the front row hi so thanks for coming to speak with us today I was curious about your process when you were creating some of your iconic tricks and new tricks what's the process of going about creating a new trick what would you think about you plan it beforehand how did you come up with an entirely new way of doing something on a skateboard it's always different I would say sometimes I just think of an existing trick and how to tweak it a little more or to combine two existing tricks you know I'd like it start in an end sometimes it's just a move goes awry and my board goes this way and I think oh what if I actually force it that way and caught it and put it back and so they were all they were all different I I guess my best example is like a 720 it was just you know people had done 180 360 540 and my thought was well if I go backwards and spin into a 540 that would become a 720 and I found myself at this ramp that was much bigger than than any other ramp at the time in Sweden and it gave the right amount of lift and gave me enough air time to actually spend that money and I always I was bring that up because when I learned that trick in 1985 I did it on this ramp in Sweden with 3 people watching me and no video camera and it was kind of like oh that's cool something new and then fast forward 14 years later and I did the 900 at X Games and it was it was a sports centre highlight it was like a mainstream event and I was thinking about what we're all you people back then like what why is this matter now and it's it was just an interesting paradox between those two events but I think that it's really just just trying to keep challenging yourself but that's what it takes to make a career in skateboarding is to keep challenging yourself no matter how are you get no matter if you're rated number one you got to keep learning new tricks and even today I still try to figure out new ways to to tweak tricks that are but but also tricks that I could survive a fall from so it's an it's an interesting parameter to have in terms of being my age and still trying to be curb progressive you'll get there though I hope thank you so much talking about some of your tricks and just a huge innovation that you've had throughout the years with landing a 900 etc you've inspired so many people have come after you we were talking about Ryan Sheckler who came on you know 12 years old and just completely changed the game in his own way what are some of those moments where you as a master became the student and you were sort of inspired by those that came after you who were some of your favorites that are on the scene now and and what are some of the things you've learned from them um there's so many I would say in terms of being technical and and and learning tricks Danny Way was an amateur when I was a an established Pro and he came on the scene and and took Street skating to the ramps and was doing kick flips and stuff like that on vert and and doing really different types of spins and things like that and so I took a lot of inspiration from him and then he became the guide to to usher in the entire mega ramp big air movement and so I was definitely inspired by that and and to to push those boundaries where I didn't really think that that was possible another guy that was big inspirations Bob Burnquist and I know that a lot of these guys are already you know are already established and are legends of their own but but they really came into the scene and mixed it up completely and showed us a totally different way of doing things and things that we didn't think we're possible Bob Burnquist was the first one to truly skate switch stance to not have a preferred stance of skating which was unheard of we would never have imagined that I mean the skateboards we were using at the time we're still very much there was no nose on them and they were all about the the your back foot and the tail and then Bob Burnquist came and said I could ski the other way I need a skateboard that's rounded on both sides and those kind of things like that that resonated nowadays when you got when you watch you know someone like a rodney mullen or even some of the most hardcore street skaters they don't look like they're skating backwards anymore and that's incredible to me so over here in the red hi thanks so well obviously skateboarders were the first people to use skate parks I was wondering what do you think of the you know developments of the years of BMX as roller bladers and scooter riders using skate parks like what's your opinion of that why did they respect everything uh well I'm happy that anything gets him active you know I'm not I'm not an elitist and in saying like you can only have skateboards in these parks I think that they they have to learn too you have to learn social etiquette in terms of where people are going and and to navigate parks and then not be in the way or to not be standing on the obstacles I mean but that's all stuff that anyone has to learn and I don't I don't have some prejudice against people riding scooters or bikes or anything it's just that you got to you got to share the space and sometimes people don't realize that where they're standing trying to get to another place is exactly where someone else wants to do their trick so but then they learn the hard way and they get knocked over over here hi Tony thanks for coming I thought was really interesting about what you were saying earlier about how in the 90s skaters sort of became a product of their environment and they were forced onto the streets I was wondering what you if you've seen any nuances to the sport come out of the upping world you talked about earlier sort of you know Kenya and Cambodia any sort of changes in the sport I don't see changes in the sport in general I do see especially in the in the case of there's there's a skatepark in Uganda where these guys went there they were doing some charity work and and they had skateboards and some of the people the villagers there were took interest in it so they built them this this concrete park it's amazing it looks like it's made out of clay and the type of skating the guy that the the people are doing from Uganda in this park is not influenced from the magazines or from the videos or anything like that so they've they've almost created their own style and some of the things they're doing are really fun and interesting to me there would be you know consider more novelty to us perhaps but but they've taken it to new levels and and doing these tricks you know doing these sort of early grab tricks or flips and types of stuff like that that that we wouldn't really consider doing because it's not what's considered cool now and so that to me is really exciting you know as different as it is and I think it shows that you can have these pockets of interest and passion and create your own style of doing it I mean that's absolutely what we were doing in the 80s because we didn't have those influence we didn't have YouTube we didn't you know we were barely getting escaped magazines so we were just making up as we went you gave the example of how this skateboard changed and had both sides rounded and going out had are there the skateboard it seems like it's been the same for a while or there has there have there been any changes recently and like technology with like trucks bearings or the deck or do you see any changes coming there there hasn't been any great strides in the equipment and I feel like that's something that's that's missing like a glaring omission of skating evolution a few people have experimented with different board constructs with composites and things like that and some have had mild success but I do feel like that that needs to be a sea change in the industry and I've been I've been working on my own as well trying to make some some improvements on it but it's hard you know skating as as there's an irony as as all encompassing and all welcoming it as it is and how diverse it is it's very much you ride this board this is what's happening would seven ply maple and anything else doesn't feel right but that shouldn't be how it is you know we should be open to new ideas as much as we're open to new types of people and new types of skating so I would like to see something in that sense the only thing that's changed really is the shapes but not the construct over there with the second row third row separately from like black round and like anything else again it could be any other medium like on vert or anything I want to know your your favorite trick to do on those two mediums or and also the trick that you're most proud of having done my favorite trick that's hard i well i one of my favorite tricks but not necessarily to do why is that so hard well I really I love backside Ollie's because it's a basic trick but it feels like you're kind of cheating physics when you do it and you can keep the board to your feet going upwards of six to ten feet in the air without grabbing it and have complete control and I and I feel the board under my feet even though I'm not grabbing on to it and and it just feels like the most controlled but sort of gravity defying trick to me I think the trick that I would be most proud of is a nollie McTwist because in the same sense I figured out how to do of spinning move without grabbing my board and when I first started trying it in the late 80s I did it as a complete joke I literally would go up and go haha Lima twist and and kick my board away and and at some point I started trying it a little bit lower and board was sticking to my feet almost all the way around and I figured it out and and ice and a lot of people thought it was just not possible and you still see people doing these tricks where they can they can spin with their board under their feet without grabbing it I mean we've seen it on those mega ramps people doing ollie 720 and to me that just is it still seems impossible even though I've done it it doesn't seem like it works so I think that you know that would be the most the thing I'm most proud of in terms of sort of ushering in a new technique I know a lot of people would like me to say 900 but I'm usually proud of doing that and how it resonated and what it brought to skateboarding and and how it maybe even broke through the mainstream barriers in a lot of ways but it was something that I was trying for 10 years up to that point and I was glad to have done it but it but it wasn't this it was more of a relief than a sense of pride it was like finally done with that one you know I've been trying ever so damn long well I also wanted to ask the question about like just flat ground only as well Oh flat ground yeah anything I can make on flat ground this point I'm proud of ok that's a good question I would say ollie impossible because I can still do them and if anyone challenged me to a game of scale that's my secret weapon I'd like I like to do that sometime ok any other questions I'll meet you in the quad right right at the back very back yeah hi I'm just wondering what impact you think social media and specifically Instagram has had on skating um I think that social media especially Instagram is leveled the playing field in terms of how you can make a name for yourself in skating it doesn't have to be Geographic it doesn't have to be through competition it doesn't even have to be that you are friends or know people with companies you can do it all on your own and be from relatively nowhere and make a name for yourself and so that's what I love about about the success people have had on it for me personally it's been a direct line to fans and to people who are interested in what I do and immediate feedback however brutally honest it is it's it's a blast I've you know I I was doing it more as I was enjoying connecting with people and sharing the sort of surreal situations that I found myself in but then eventually I realized that it is this huge marketing tool as well and not that I ever approached it like that but I understand it and even when I'm doing marketing I try to at least keep it interesting and not just some advertising line but it's been it's been a blast I mean I really like I can't I can't say enough about having that direct connection with with my fan base just there in the aisle but they're kind of mean hello thank you very much for coming so earlier you mentioned you also designed this peripheral port for your a video game and people could recycle it for surfing or snowboarding or whatever so I was wondering have you done like much surfing or snowboarding or have you taken on like influences from do sports or have you liked interest can you see how skateboarding interacts is the sports because to a layman it's sort of very similar right you have a boat you stand sort of sideways and take over well I know I've been serving as long as I've been skating so I definitely took inspiration from that and and skateboarding was a direct offspring of surfing it was the business surfers trying to figure out how to how to emulate what they do when the waves are flat and that's that's why we have pool skating which became halfpipe skating I mean truly I have surfing to thank for the for the onset of vertical riding because that's that was the whole deal as the people are trying to emulate waves and when snowboarding first was created I was right on that one as well so I definitely have a connection to all those board sports in terms of influences I feel like both while snowboarding for sure in the early years with half pipes and with doing spins and make twists and stuff like that surfing as of late is more mostly influenced by skateboarding because people are doing the 540 s and the shove-it sand and the key you can do kick flips on waves now and now I'd say skateboarding is borrowing a little bit more from snowboarding in terms of the aerial maneuvers because snowboarding has gone into a whole different realm in terms of what how they spin and what they do and double cork 720 and all that stuff and and even I get lost in how many spins they're doing so I know that they've kind of surpassed what we're capable of but at the same time we're striving to do more and bigger and better so I feel like they've all borrowed from each other at some point over here too plus it so I saw your f said on sneak shopping and I was wondering if it like bothers you seeing people kind of spent like five hundred pounds on a board that they're not gonna scare they're just gonna have on their wall and like I was wondering if you think that it's an issue that people are maybe more into the clothing or the games than they are into the actual you know skating are you asked me if I don't like posers that what it is I don't I think it's cool I mean III understand the value of collecting and and and vintage goods so I totally understand that you know I don't it's not really my thing like and in full disclosure they gave me $2,000 to spend in that store I wouldn't have dropped two K on shoes for my kids but at the same time I understand it like I you know there's certain things that that I collected through my life like I wanted to get a vintage Sims and Rec board because that was the first real professional skateboard I ever owned and I spent five hundred dollars on it so I I you know I understand the sentiment of having that and what it can mean to you and you know I if someone wants to buy my skateboard with a signature on it for five hundred bucks so be it I'm I'm stoked that they think that has that kind of value I yeah I don't know and as far as shoes go that's a whole world unto itself I can't even claim to understand that I mean there were shoes in that store there was a pair of Nikes that were 50 grand the AMEX yeah yeah got it I think we might have time for one or two more questions and we'll take one over here how did the professionalism and the fame affect your hobby and Jever wish you could go back to a more simple time wait say that again I'm sorry how did the professionalism and the fame affect your hobby affect my hobby and you wish you could go back to a more simple time um I think it initially when I when I had a level of fan that I never imagined to have especially in the early days of the of the videogame it allowed me to skate more and better because I didn't have to devote time to making ends meet by getting jobs I mean how it was really the the the thing that was hindering my skating the most especially in the early 90s was I was trying to make a living I was trying to make a living skating but but that was nearly impossible so I was making a living doing other odd jobs like video editing you know consulting for people I would be the stunt coordinator sometimes on on shoots and that didn't allow me to really skate as much as I wanted to and when I had the success and I was making a comfortable living skating my skating improved tenfold and I didn't think it would work like that you know I thought if anything I would be under more pressure to skate and be more conservative and and and have to perform all the time I think it was my exit from competition that allowed me to really explore a whole new style and a lot of new tricks so in the I would say in the early 2000s I had a really good run of learning new techniques and new tricks that stick with me to this day and one final question from right over here in in 1987 the hottest kid in the skate park could do a kickflip but by 91 92 when I saw you skate in bath there were lots of people doing 360 kick flips and Impossibles the boardslides lot kind of stuff I just wondered what or who triggered that rapid development do you mean in terms of ramp skating or his overall skating's overall Street skating ramp skating what rodney mullen is the godfather of modern skateboard tricks kick flips and stuff like that he was doing that stuff in the 80s when no one could even comprehend how he was doing it like when when Rodney first did a kickflip we didn't understand that he was doing that with his front foot we called it a magic flip because no one understood how he made that work he's the only one that could do it and then once we started to figure that out he was off doing 360 flips and all I Impossibles and things like that so he's definitely the the spark for all of that I think the person that brought it into more accessible mainstream was Mark Gonzales because he took Rodney's he literally took Rodney's tricks and started doing them in the street downstairs over gaps he and Jason Lee like they ushered in that whole movement and nowadays I mean you're not even gonna be on anyone's radar and listening to it 360 flip no offense to anyone here they better learn it yeah and but but I think that people people know of rodney mullen as a an influence and as as a maestro but they don't understand how he was developing this stuff when no one was interested or understood it he was just off on his own creating this entire movement in skateboarding and it's what we know as modern skateboarding and it's what you're gonna see in the Olympics and it was all because rodney was in his garage doing it on his own in Florida with his dad trying to get him to quit and you know he's he he's the Grandmaster what can I say I can't say enough about him and so I'm glad that we we ended on him because he deserves it on that thank you very much Tony that's all we have time for today thank you everyone for your questions and y1 please join me giving one final round of applause for mr. Tony Hawk you

Channel: OxfordUnion

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Keywords: Oxford, Union, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, debate, debating, The Oxford Union, Oxford University, Tony Hawk

Id: jicIk7YpfqI

Length: 59min 10sec (3550 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 30 2019