Tony Hawk: Harnessing Passion, Drive & Persistence for Lifelong Success
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I ander huberman, and i'm a professor neurobiology and optimal gy at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is tony hawk. Tony hawk is one of the most celebrated and accomplish professional skateboarders of all time. For more than forty years, he has been at the forefront of the sport, and I don't mean just doing a sport for more than forty years.

He truly mean he has been at the forefront of skateboarding, developing new manuvers A K tricks that include incredible feeds like the nine hundred and nine hundred degree spin in the air, as well as numerous other manuvers that have really pushed the entire sport forward. He is also completely popularized the sport through his video game and through his ambassador for scape ing. In fact, few, if any, names are synonymous with skype ting in the general public as tony hawk.

And he is also deserved of that title, because for more than forty years he has shown up as the consumer professional. He is kind, he is respectful, and he is completely committed to his craft. And that shows up in every aspect of his life.

He still, to this day, skakel boards daily, and his y'll soon learned he recently suffered a major injury, a complete break of his fear, that is, the bone in his upper leg. And this is what many people would consider a career ending injury. Not only the tony come back from that injury, but he went back to the very trick on which he broke his fema and recently completed that trick that is five, forty years, so called MIT twist.

I mentioned this because at every level of his life, tony has demonstrated himself to be somebody with incredible drive, incredible vision, an incredible persistence. And today we talk about that drive, vision and persistence. And we talk about what IT takes to set a goal and to continually evolve one's goal, and to continually progress as a basically Young protein, as a teenager, as a Young adult, as an adult.

And well, let's face IT, as a fifty five year old man, he is now heading a little bit past middle age, although we do hope that he lives forever. Tony hawk, A K. A. The bird man really does seem to be superhuman.

But as you learn today, he is also so human in the way that he shares his own experience and shares with you the ways in which we can each and all look at what we do and think about what we want to achieve and put our minds in our bodies to those goals and achieve them. I confess that today's discussion with tony hawk, that was a particularly thrilling one for me to have. I grew up in the sport of skate boarding, so I had met tony previously, although he doesn't remember that there was many years ago.

In fact, I met his parents. You will learn more about that story during today's episode. But I was aware, of course, of tony e's accomplishments.

I was also aware of his philanthropy, so he has a skatepark foundation. I also listen to his podcast with another professional skateboard, Jason Alice, called hawk verses wealth. We provided a link to that podcast in the shower note captions as well.

But never before I have, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to the tony hawk and learn from him. So I was absolutely delighted to have this conversation. And IT far exceeded my already lofty expectations.

Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, i'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electoral light drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of sault magnesium in peason, the so called electorate, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potash are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electro lights need to be present in the proper ratio.

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Again, that drink element element t dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja, recessions and nsd r non sleep depressed protocols. I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mention to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much.

So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate. Other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do.

I also love that the waking up up has lots of different types of yoga eda sessions, those you don't know. Yoga eeda is a process of line very still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations. And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yogananda and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even, which is to a short ten minute session.

If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up that com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial. And now for my discussion with tony hawk.

Tony hawk, welcome. thanks. I'm particularly thrilled to have this conversation because i've tracked your career for a very long time group in the escape board .

thing I know had your .

poster on my wall. Oh, thank you. Your name is anonymous.

Was cape boarding, as you know? I think a question that probably get asked from time to time, but let's just clarify the data from the outset. Tony hawk, is your real name right?

But I never went by Anthony. My parents call me tonnes and so could remember .

so it's a fitting name given the sport and what you do. And we will get into this a little bit later when we talk about family and parenting and parents um but i'll lead to the story now that when I was fourteen years old, your parents took me in I slept in your bed in your whole child, not with you in IT, but surrounded by your a near infinite number of trophy and and and and he must have .

been right after I moved out .

this would be, I was fourteen years old maybe I to stop the story now very briefly, as fourteen years old as a contest at linder vista boy's club. Yeah, everyone left me in another kidney. Billy waldman, en, we're still there.

Your dads said, where? Where are you going? IT was clear that I didn't know where I was going. My life was, I was a wayward youth at that time, and so they took me in for a night, maybe even two nights. Your mom, Nancy and your dad, Frank, were so gracious brought me and in your home took me to dinner. I don't recall .

that tracks that. What doesn't dad my mom together would be doing that yes people um and .

we will get back to that story later because you and I actually met uh, the next day in fall brook .

at your rank but but is one.

Nsa or castle contest that your dad was very active in. But we'll get back to that. But uh, I have so many questions that relate to skateboarding to you and really as a neuroscientist to the whole concept of a life of continual progression because but they're not people listening to this and watching this or skateboard ers or not. And I imagine that most of them or not, it's absolutely clear that you've been in this game a very long time and that you've somehow manage to continue to progress over and over to come back from very severe injuries and somehow keep getting Better and Better. So the first question I have is about the Younger version of you. Did you have any sort of self concept like, you know, I want to be a pro athlete, I want to be a escape border or I want have a video game named after me, right? Exactly um you know but if you can think back to maybe in press cape boarding, do you remember what your self concept was you know this notion of like self and either similar or different to other kids in some way.

When I was Young, I was put in a lot of advanced classes and not that that felt like a badge vanter IT felt more like I was just classified as a nerd.

But then I thought OK well, that's my strength so i'll lean into that and and I thought that maybe I would be a teacher because I said why I get all these concepts and I think I could relate them to kids or to to my peers um because I help a lot of my classmates through some some classes uh so that's all I really had. I didn't know. And then when I would play sports, I would I would be okay.

You know, I went I wasn't terrible, but I wasn't the VIP and the MVP and so I was just kind of playing baseball, playing, uh baseball um and then when I found skip wording, I mean, IT was IT was pretty obvious that that was what I want to do. IT was once once I got on a skateboard and realized that I could manual IT and do things that were unique and not they're moving the middle or anyone cared, but they were unique in the sense of, like, I I never seen to do this, and this feels awesome. And so I just wanted to this.

And so I didn't think that this is my career as ten. So I just thought this, this is my, this is, this is my hobby, this is my thing. Um and I don't want to play these other sports anymore.

Did you stop playing all the others? Yes.

I quit. I quit little egg in the middle the season when my dad had been of president of that chapter of little league because he was the coach he was always very involved in. All his kids have three sibgin, so he was always very supportive, whatever they were doing. And then when I was playing baseball, he became a coach because he at time, and he was doing that was he was almost retired um and then he was such a prominent figure in the little league they said, oh, your president now and so then someone else was coach and then I was skating and I was over IT.

did you immediately start skate boating in the parks on transition, as we say? Or were you pushing around in the dry way?

Like most kids, I was transportation and scanning was kind of a fat. So I started in seventy eight, roughly maybe seventy seven, eleven, and IT was kind of a fat. So kids just had skate boards and they they would all cruise SE around, you know, like IT was a seventy, so everyone had a bike, right? And you knew wherever all the kids work because the bikes from the front line.

And then at some point, that kinds turned into skating. So everyone had skateboard. They're all like shit, you know uh, J C penny or big box store skate board.

No one had really good one, not my area um but then at some point we were just looking these magazines of people skating and everyone skating and pools because that was the dog town and z boys there. And I was like, are flying. I wanted like, where do we do that? And then the skip, I go IT up in .

ci ago because delmer skip skate, always.

always skip was the first one in our area. Actually, I took that back. Spring valley was the first city park. I tried to go there and I was nine and you had to be ten. And I remember like sitting in the parking out looking over the fence. And my dad didn't realize what the because my dad would have easily lied for me but he didn't realize there was an age limit is told as he nine, our story can come and then they closed not long after. So when I never got spring valley um because I I .

think of you as synonymous with delmer skate ranch.

Sure what that was that came later because oasis skate park was opened that so this is when I first one was like seventy eight, uh, a friend of mine was going instead I want to go to the skate park so I had to go get such a hassel like I had to go get the authorization form.

Had to get a notarized by the bank from my parents, like to go there and then I went and IT was that was my epiphonema first saw people flying around in person like this is what i'm doing for as long as I could possibly do IT because IT IT look like magic IT really did look there were flying a magic carpets and IT spoke to me in the sense of being a dair devil but also doing IT individually not relying on my team, not um getting getting hassle by coach IT was just like, oh, I can be part of the scene but do my own way and then I skated away as as much as I could as well whenever you you're rides there. And um then my parents moved to north county city ago when I was in high school. Um more thing because they were just chasing kind of real state deals and uh and so I got lucky that do my skate ranch was right there.

Every other park closed, the doma skate grants remained up. And so and there was a bit luck to all that. And there was based on geography.

your dad's involvement is interesting because I got escape boarding because my dad wasn't around that match at that time. A lot of kids get in escape ping because IT doesn't require parent involvement. Was IT unusual to have parental involvement at that stage. Ah I mean, I remember Frank, and by the way, I remember Frank and Nancy, your parents with such fondness, not just because they took me in, but I remember thinking like there they were at times the only point of stability in a landscape of like two hundred people where as you know, there could be like potential chaos of any kind and your dad had this way of moving about like he wasn't afraid I recall that he wasn't afraid to say what he thought like, hey, don't do that. I impose some regulation at this contest and at the same time, IT seeme also understood that this was a sport unlike other sports, like you're gonna regulate kids like me at the time, or you not going to track control people.

So what was that like? Have your dad involved? And the reason I ask is that your apparent will talk more about parenting, but also IT seems that he went from saying, okay, you know, little league, other sports, which is more typical to, okay, this kind of an usual sport, sporting.

But your mere interest in IT was enough to get him excited or motivated enough to take you around to these places. That's pretty special. I think that's pretty.

yes. I mean, and in that respect, IT was great to have his support and to rely on him for that. The fact he was always around and he was in charge a lot of the events that sucked because because IT just marked me um as one being favorite um and spoiled and and most of my friends, their parents didn't want them skating.

So even though they were stoked that my dad had was was doing this kind of thing and giving that kind of support, they still were like to dad here, like, this is our thing. This is our seeing. This is our getaway from our parents. I didn't really have a choice in the matter I did. I did at some point tell him my my concerns and my frustrations with IT, but hit him, I want to hear IT he he was very much steadfast like, well, i'm i'm been coming this far like you can we can keep our distance at these events, but people are relying on me to organize them. And so I just had to suck at afterwhile.

Did you push you harder like, you know, if you could prove yourself with escape working, they didn't have to worry about any claims of favorite is because ultimately you can't fake. You can't fake escape, right? right? I mean, there's no deep fake version and a escape boarding. You know you either can do IT or you can't do IT and it's shown in real time. So and I suppose back then I recall you quite a bit skinning or skinny ah I had I had all kinds things .

going against me the time yeah I mean, I don't think .

people will realize this unless they met you in person. But now is there few taller cape waters out there to the sports? Grown so much um but you're pretty tall.

You're like six six, three but O I was not when I was going when I was that age, I was very small um and kind of concerning ly small because by the time I got to be sixteen, I was still I look like I was thirteen. I used to pulled over. I literally like I had a car that I bought with my earnings. I had a honos c one thousand nine hundred seventy seven cb cc and I will get pulled over and then the cops to be like, how are yog sixteen? You look like you were thirteen back there um and then I shot up around age seventeen.

okay. So that's interesting. And we can get back to this when we talk about your almost remarkable levels of ability to recover from physical injuries because, well, to share a little bit of a biological theory here, which is that in the lap will study longer gev ity and perhaps the fastest rate of aging that we ever undergo is puberty, right?

If you think about a kid before puberty, kid after different human being, psychological, often physically as well, some people have a longer art of puberty than others. And that does seem to corporate with a longer life. And so it's kind of interesting, you know, some kids hit puberty and they go through all the markers of puberty.

And like one summer, the kids is very, very long and IT sounds. Like we don't have to talk about when you hit poverty and the other markers, but IT sounds like your gross spirt occurred late. That's a terrific marker of a long life, by the way, because what IT reflects is the onset of a big burst of growth hormones of the pattern italian the brain.

And if you continue to grow for a long period of time, that indicate you gives you a little bit of the slow the line make sense. Oh, so this may um have important and fortunate consequences. So at seventeen, you shot up in my correct in remembering, uh, maybe you said IT, maybe somebody else did that you were um forgive me but so skinny when you were a kid that you actually war elbow pads as me dad yeah that that's a two .

that's a true story for sure and and I took inspiration from others that that I identified with, namely Steve caballero, because he was already and establish pro when I started to come up in the ranks, are giving get noticed at all and he was wearing l pass on his knees in this full page picture of him and winchester doing back there. And I was like that I want to do that and he's small and I feel like that's my goal and I feel like if you can do that, I can do IT was just more like, oh, this I identify with that, and that gives me hope.

And a ZARA called TV also has a pretty severe scholium. Sis.

right? At one point. One point he was turned.

turned pret. Pretty time to to. The writer left, I don't recall which still incredible scape boarder loves TV. He's an north al guy .

so I group no whatever he had is from birth but but IT was more than that his size and I didn't even and know he was many not many but like four years old of me um so I just like, oh there's small guys doing that I I can do IT maybe but when I got tall, when I went through unity, suddenly I had tricks and then suddenly I had the strength and the the heights, the game confidence and so I was said I was like, oh, I can go way higher now and i'm comfortable with these tricks, these intricate board maneuvers and stuff. So that was a huge advantage to me on the the smaller stuff felt different after that, which was harder. But being out the blast happened as was fifty year was a huge event.

Yeah, isn't that wild when the nervous system knows how to do something and then your body changes and you can do the same thing?

But with so much more force, even the bowls looks smaller. When I would stand on something like way, this isn't that big wild?

Well, the reason I asked about this, I think you know people listening generally seem to assume that you know if you become a stanford professor, you become a professional skate water or you festival socket player that that you are just faded to become that right and is clear that it's the confluence of so many different factors um but one of the consistent factors for sure is a sense you just really love doing IT right.

I think I can't imagine getting you profession or excEllent at anything without loving doing IT right and so still at this time when you were say fourteen and fifteen, um did you have any concept of know of pro model? I'm going to none of that. But there was there .

was none of that to be had. So we didn't have these great aspirations because no one had really done that before. There were you could have some success.

Yes, you could have maybe a signature model. But even the top sales of skateboarding then wasn't a career. The prize money was one hundred and fifty dollars for first place, hundred for second, fifty for third.

Couple taxi, gas, some food.

yeah. So let's put in this way, I turned around and I was fourteen by the time I was fifteen and a half and I had a learners permit, I could drive, uh, a scooter. You know, I had six hundred dollars in my bank account and I used that to buy a hda express moped for a year and a half. That was my earnings was six hundred dollars. So clearly .

money wasn't the the dobin hit IT was the IT was the actual escape.

And that there there was no goal of that because just an exist. So I I didn't care like getting I have my own vehicle at age fifteen like I was live in large. I had to the scape work on my own that was amazing.

To be fourteen and be a professional at anything must be um a trip so to speak. Um but what i'm wonnerful about because I came up when um you're early cohort with pop alta. So for those who don't know so call bones for I guess I was a total about like six, seven guys.

There are someone there were a little more prefer than others. They're about six, seven and core guys in the various videos S I mean, you can wear famous right you posters um on its walls who escape boarded. There was a second or maybe was a third surge of popularity and escape boarding um because we would not surge in general popularity and disappear and come back as IT has over decades, keeps coming and going to some extent.

Did you have a conscious awareness of just how you know how much attention was being placed on photos of you, videos of you? And i'm just wondering about the Younger version of you, whether that you realized what was happening. And the reason I ask is because you've always seem to me somebody who through interviews, through videos, through our interactions and for those of no new, much longer than I have, just very grounded like not caught up in IT. Um you know we've never seen headlines about you have just blowing all your money air, no recon cars and know just drawing your life. I mean, i'm sure you made mistakes like any of us but but you seem to have avoided a lot of the pitfalls of quote, quote, famous people and celebrity ies and yet you are a famous person from a very Young age.

Yeah, I I well, I think IT was that I didn't never, I never, that was never a goal. And then when I had a sense of IT, I was very uncomfortable. I mean, I was happy.

I was happy to be successful. I was happy that people recognize me. That was amazing just because I was good at scape boarding. I never imagined something like that. Um and but I was always very I mean, some people thought that I was sort of almost like pumps or arrogant because I wasn't interacting because I was just I was walk off .

to do the last words I would ever used to describe you.

I think that was as more that that that people would see me like I go to rap. I didn't know anybody and I would just start skating and I do on my stuff and they were like, oh, he doesn't talk anyone and and I was like, I don't know, I don't want to do I don't know how .

to act your for teen years old .

broke me out of that because I remember one time there was a kid that was A I me, like, I hold my skateboard. He had my singer model, he said, because, say, how do I get? What are you sure like he wants? He wants around with you. You know, go high. Five of many thing and and I learned to start break out of my comfort zone by doing that enough um but my first go around I mean, I was that was sort of my first a wave of fame i'd say the bonds for eight years and we are so Young that we thought this is forever. And so we are definitely careless with our our money with our actions. And um and at some point my dads saw that he didn't think he was going to be long term because no one had had a long term career, right? So he he encouraged me to to invest, to get property like to to buy a house that was that was my save and Grace because I definitely was spending on cars and .

things that yeah I like .

kind of a little bit beyond my means. I wasn't really considered at all. My money was was ten, nine, nine and comes so wasn't we weren't paying taxes on anything in the end of the year.

You like, oh, you know this much like wait talking about so um for instance, hey, do you want to go to hoi? Yeah okay, invite everyone. Roll on a way. I got to run a place. Okay, you know, when he was on me, because I had the means .

you mentioned, they say we should provide clarify for people. Tony referred to the great easy para.

Yes, he he was the one who put me on the bones reggae when I was still considered sort of a circus act like a know my. My skating was not really established. The stuff that I was doing was largely made fun of because people thought that what I was doing was just more like a free show.

Can you explain more so and let me just say that my the first recollection of you that I still have that image in my mind is the finger flipper.

So for folks that aren't familiar, state board, you know, people right right on transition in the street hAndrail, stairs, you know, people provide familiar all those things, but sabots will right up toward the top of the pool or the ramp, and y'll do something on the so called lior, the coping, that's right, the adv, or they will go ove IT in the air. But I were calling you do the finger flip er i'd never seen anyone flip aboard in the air. I'd seen people do very well.

So move IT is going to be complicated for people just listening, but just is a flip IT upside down and the catched and fingering flip air yeah that I remember that was a job drop right IT was like, so if that was considered circus or circus um like then I don't know I don't know what I was being compared to because at that time we we probably watched that he was in small motion as a recall. We really watched IT three thousand times. You know that summer there's a big group of us that all starts to work in that summer.

I would say kind of just before that in that window is when people were were more um giving me flag for what I was doing because I was mostly doing bordering stuff but I still didn't have the height the heighth .

in terms of the height.

terms of in terms of getting in the air yeah so I was doing all the stuff kind of write a coping level and so people weren't taking that into consideration or giving a much merit because I was just like, oh, he's doing a little bored twist or a bore turn. And then when I started to get some height around the time you saw and started doing those tricks like visibly way up high, that's when the the.

The shift happened in terms of more acceptance, but I was still labeled as as like a trick scatter robot cater. And then you had Christian, a soy, who was all style areas higher than anyone. Anytime he did a trick, IT was going to be so flashy and so amazing.

and rockstar personality.

and rockstar personality. And so in that era, you, I mean, IT was very divided. IT was like, no one liked us both know what I mean.

IT was just so strange to be of that age and of doing something that had never really been established and then something impeded against another skater. We're just trying to make our way through teen years and and skate boarding and um IT got IT was IT was hard. I mean, I was like I got I got bullet, you know?

Yes, I was successful. Yes, I was you. But but I would get, I would get, uh, thash O O magazine would talk about about informant when I would win. Yeah, I remember that .

because I was from northern california. Thash o magazine, skype and magazine from north n california actually wrote for them for a while. And I was a post dog to make some mixture money under a different name, folks.

But you can try and find those articles. They're out there. And then in southern alive, nia was skateboard or mac world, mostly translate skate boarding.

Yeah was a transactions late skate boarding .

and dash magazine the .

rivals right?

Yeah so I recall some of those things that were said IT just is amazing to me um but IT brings about a really important lesson which is you know that kid that gets made fun of if they are determined and they love what they're doing, that's going to be the kid that goes everyone away later. And I know this for sure because i'll never forget there. Remember the back to the city contest that were called in serious co.

So I went to those. They were in the drain fountains in front of city hall. I remember getting there one day, and there was the sky with I like, afford, like her pushing around.

He was doing what I called daffies. He had two escape boards. He was kind of like, weave in around. And I remember thinking service goes, got its issues now. But back then I was rough also for different reasons. I remember her thinking, like this guy is gonna get beat up a hang the market era crew like this guy is going to a get beat down.

Yes, that I was margins always oh so one of the greatest perhaps the greatest streets cape water if you can't really define these things greatest and what not in escape boarding um but you know I remember thinking this guy is just a cook and then I realized you IT was and then I realized he was just like any other kid there, some level. And then a lot of the kids that you've got teeth early on, they stuck with IT. Five years later, i'm seeing them in the magazines.

And I think about this with podcasting too. They're been some pod casters. We've reached out early on and had questions.

And I look at their stuff, and one's initial impression can be, like what? Like what are they doing here? And then you just see them two years later, three years later, and they are doing amazingly well.

You like this guy or goes here for good, they're there are probably can be top of the game in a few years and never count anybody out when you would go to sleep in the night in that euro where you like lying on the pillow going, oh my god, hate me their stuff in the magazines, I gotto push harder. This is hard. Did you talk your dad about IT? I mean, again, it's a lot to bear. Even as an adult, I can only imagine what it's like to bear. As a fifteen year old kid.

I didn't really have a support roup, you know, or any resources to voice those concerns. I just knew I want to keep getting Better. That was that. And so if anything, if I was worried about those voices, if I was worried about the whatever take people had on me, I knew I was going to go back to escape park and learn more tricks um and at some point I had so much of that as a foundation that he was sort of undeniable that like what he can do all the stuff and as IT doesn't just do IT at this home park um and I think that's probably when the tide turned from me is when when I started to do well at other advance um namely up in pipeline which was for the most part of the most frightening pool that .

we could write. The thing was big but I also recall like the the hips, as are call, like the transition, the way they match. Super tight.

lot of her giant hoping super rough. Like if you fell in applying, you're getting shoot up. That is putting your nie heads down.

I didn't know that because from the photos, I wouldn't .

know that I was treasurer IT really worth like IT was. And I wanted to do well at the event, and I would drive up there every weekend like my friend great Smith was a freestyle, but he lived near up lin. And so I would go friday after school straight up, skate at night, skate saturday all day, skate sunday, uh, early and then drive home um kanada. And I just made of my mission to figure out thing out because that was the proving ground for me. And and so if I could skate that I could go ski.

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So it's clear you had an enormous drive. Let's talk a little bit about um the process of trying tricks, the anxiety associated where did you did you and do you have a sort systematic process was IT. You know i'm going to learn the basics first.

Like did you say that? Did you say, okay, i'm to learn how do you stuff you at coping level? Then I want to do a liar. I am going to go bigger.

I can do this or um did you just sort of um try what you wanted to try and you obviously weren't hazard about IT like IT. Seems you're pretty systematic about expLoring what's possible and then pushing forward low by little but yeah maybe you talk a little bit about how you have conceptualize. Okay, tomorrow I wants to try .

this IT IT comes in different forms, but for the most part, I think about how I could combine existing tricks. And would this trick work going into this trick? And could your body position shifts, or would IT all work in unison? And when I approach a new trick, I am saying, i'm saying more in last twenty years, my thought process is I have all the pieces to this i've done every day of IT.

I've done, i've done the first part of the trick in another form. I've done the second part of the grinding of IT or whatever, usually in some other basic way. And then the landing is, well, the landing is from whatever that is.

And if you can throw all those things together and make the timing work, it's gonna work. And I never I never went at something with some hazard approach or thrown caution of the one like, hope this, see what happens. It's always very much like, I know I have all these things and so I just have to put them together.

And I mean, now things are so technical that my same approach that i'm doing hundreds of times, one of them just works. And it's not because I didn't it's not because I committed to that one. It's because of some tiny fractional adjustment that happened that I didn't even know happen and I just worked.

And I mean, that kind of is the course of what tricks are now because there are a playing a moves that i've done over last ten years, even that I only did want because I was too fucked and heart to get to you, and I didn't learn from that one mage. And that that is that hard to accept, because in the past I was learning tricks to have them in my arsenal that I could just throw down at a competition oner demo. I've got that in my pocket these days, like that trick, for instance, I did, I did a three sixty shoot, five motif.

I S let's break that down to three, six, seven. So who's gna take this on? all? Let you take this on. I can try from my knowledge and perspective.

but the chavez is pushing the board with your feet and letting IT spin a full three sixty rotation under your feet in the landing back on IT. It's a trick that people do on using on flat ground. I've learned, i've learned to do IT up on the world walls like I can do three, sixty seven vets kind of in the year.

But i'm doing that. I'm doing a three, six shovel. And then i'm landing on my truck, right.

the one x in of what we call .

five opposition, which is basically rely on the truck. So everything is so precise, I got to do three, six, seven, exactly a certain spot on the wall. I've got to catch IT so that my truck lands when my foot hits IT.

I can't push IT into the truck because that that screws on my baLance. So IT has to land on the truck. I have to land with my weight perfectly set back enough that I can come in backwards because i'm doing this trick and i'm i'm gonna in faky, right?

Three sixty shop five o to coming in forward is as a whole different beast that I could probably do that. To send a few tries. But the idea that I have to land on this thing, baLanced like a teeter daughter and then reverse my energy and come and fake I backend is so hard.

It's so hard to get into the right position. So like any time I try IT, there's like a one in ten chance of even going to get into the position I need, and that's the one I have to commit to. So every time I do that is so intense and IT takes so much so much commitment, ent and so much a mind, I don't even know how to explain .

IT like the .

that you have shut everything else out except this one moment and this one fractional peace that you have to make word and IT i've done at once. And I like, I would love to do IT again, but I know what is is going to take the same on effort. I didn't learn from that one that I made some trick that makes IT happen every time.

It's also technical, and there things can go wrong. That all is, accept that. okay. Did at once in thing about .

the three show at five o fake um was that something that you thought of the night before you decide that day? Do you ever use visualization of you? Ever had learning come to you in a dream or fine that you try try, tried something, went to sleep that night, next day, made IT anything like that? Yes.

sometimes i'll wake up midnight and all right down something because, like, there's track. Oh, I think I can do that. yeah. OK me right down.

See you dream about escape board from time to time?

yeah. Well, yeah, that is shifted a bit after I got hurt. But yeah, I used to dream that I can escape like i'm trying and that IT feels like the brands me a carpet.

I can't get the speed. I can't get the timing. And then as I went through you, this traumatic injury, my dreams s shifted to, oh, I can skate.

I can do all my tricks again. interesting. Yeah, a live piece of science around the can a can get piece.

Or when people feel like they're bolted down in a dream or they can't run away. Yeah, there's this one phase of sleep called rapid I movement sleep, where the brain is very active. The dreams associates with IT tend to be very vivid, and at the same time we are completely paralyzed.

And the ideas that no one really knows why. But that is the case that we're paralyzed to prevent us from acting out our dreams. It's also an interesting news chemical phenomenon because during the is rapid dive movement dreams, they tend to be very intense, but the body can't release a general.

So it's almost like its own form of trauma therapies like you're experiencing this intention in your mind but your body can't react yeah and so often times people have argued that that's why you feel like you want to move and you can't because you actually can. Some people have woken up while still a bit paralyzed in room. Have you ever had that happen?

We wake up actually a couple. My kids have struggled that couple times. Yeah.

red interferences called. It's not dangerous and usually people can jolt themselves out, but it's kind of terrifying. So that's interesting. So we'll get to a discussion about the the recent injury and thankfully, recovery from the injury, not macular ous, because that makes the seem as if it's surprising. Frankly, i'm not surprised that you've recovered, but IT is a spectacular the way you have. But you are saying that in your dreams, before the injury, you would think about escape warning, but you felt like there was a kind of can't do IT .

when I was doing IT. In my dream, there was always some road block that I just cut. I like, why can I get any speed? Why can I? Why can I snap or do this trick?

Um it's more in the moments where it's twilight, moments where i'm kind of awake and i'm thinking about tricks that everything else falls away and I can actually focus on what kind of new moves to come up with. Um an example of that was a recently I went to the x games in japan few years ago uh and I was thinking I was going to go more to show my support. And because they had a vert event, there's not a lot of vert ex anymore.

So if there's a vert event, it's kind of like if you build that, I will come because I want to show my support that's that's kind of where my heart is and they had a best trick event and I thought me maybe I could get in the best trick of anything new though, you know and i'm still recovering from my leg. And then at some point I was falling asleep and I thought, oh, I could do that trip and come in one eighty. I know I could do that with with my current state and not getting them my speed. So to explain what I was doing is, is half cab body very old to back blind?

Okay, we can walk through this body, come up backers to three sixty, right?

So half and I will go on as they approached the top of the ramp. I body real, that means I jump around and then I jump up on my board, and then I make sure that IT lands with my two trucks out and my tail on the coping, which is very precarious. And i've done that and come and fake y, that's the blunt piece.

That's the blunt. So i've done that. And then you have to, you have to use your be to lift up board, come and faky right? I've done, I done that twice and I thought, well, when if there's something I could do like that and then I realized that if I just keep coming around and I come in backside direction, that keeps my body spinning and that might actually be easier IT wasn't, but I figured that out. I think I saw .

a clip of this on.

I did, yeah, I did. I did x games and I was like, I was my last run was, I was, I mean, IT didn't move the middle. I got seven place. But for me, I was a huge moment. I felt .

amazing a bit.

Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, I I, I mean, I was like weeks of preparation and and trying to fix this thing out. I made up twice before the event um on my own alone on my round but um that is an example of of now I was I was literally feel asleep and then I was like have a Better well back black I love with that liminal .

state between wakefulness and sleep is such a beautiful state that if one is open to ideas showing up there, yes, they almost always .

do I try start china the next morning?

Do you ever find that when you're taking walks or in the shower or not thinking about scoped board?

Yeah it's using in the in the sort of mundane e moment that I can inspiration .

ah do you have practices for pure relaxation aside from socialization?

I know I was never I think that's something i've been lacking. I I never was good at warming up, stretching, post warm up um or or or relaxing you know meditation nothing I just I I go scared and at on um and as I got older I realized that's not the best technique. But IT worked so far .

IT has worked. Um so for you to go hopefully a little bit .

warm up with you, I have more of a sort of O C D warm up run that I used to gauge how i'm feeling. But I kind of have to get through that .

like a surgeon when a surgeon about to do a surgery. Um they don't warm up. They just check off the various boxes of this is here that there, make sure that they're comfortable in their environment and then they do they do the the lifesaving .

work yeah yeah my I say my warm up Brown is is kind of basic tricks. But they give me a sense of how how stiff or how I would I need to adjust for, for the rest the day. So I guess it's not so O, C, D, but but I definitely feel like I got a good through that routine.

What feels the best? Like I I know that making a new track feels incredible, especially if you've been at a long time dalling IT in so that you can do IT again and again is its own form of reward. Yeah, but what is that? Maybe the list of two or three things that just feels so good that .

for sure learning new trees not even that that is something that I created but just doing something that i've never done me for when I first learned various backside various no one had done backside various before they don't done in front side um and a various where you you reached down grab your board jump in the air and then turn IT one eighteen under your feet it's like a shovel but you're guiding with your hand I learned that halfway up the pool of the main pool in way air aes with no one around and the feeling I got when I wrote away was something that I never experienced. And this is literally the buzz that i've been chasing ever sense, because that was like I created something .

various below coping was that was .

the button that was IT IT really was. And if you saw video that you be like that thing like what can I say was IT was the first time that I thought I thought of IT um I I went through all the emotions of IT. I do the work and I figured that out and you know no one no one Carried, but at some point I was able to do IT six hundred and air and do a full three sixty very well.

And so that was the building block. But but that feeling was like, no other. I say that. And then just even to to strip everything else away, like the most basic tricks, like a backside all is is an an no hander arial that used to be what I was called back side no handed arial.

IT feels so good because even to this day, people, people say, how is the first day in your feet? And I can't even tell you how the board says on my feet. I just know, I know how to manou IT and I know how to keep the pressure on in the friction going. And facts that always is like, I think it's like a marvel of physics and a clean best to me is feels good as anything that's a beautiful thing to be hold.

I confess i've never done a legitimate backside, only on on a mini rap, sure, but not on vert. So I can't relate to the feeling. But I love, love, love the fact that you brought us back to that early variable below coping feeling, and that that Marks the essence of what feels so good when you do something else.

right? It's through like a it's A. As a new science st, I see is a chemical stamp. It's like a chemical fingerprint of progress, right? I'm also delayed to hear that IT still feels that good to do these things because I don't think anyone can have the kind of lifelong progressions that you've had and it's still going without a not just love of the thing, but love of the feeling that IT brings when no one's around because you said skating your rap by yourself so often.

Are you on your rap with no, no one's filming for in RAM? No, nothing for a video, nothing for a video game. None of that. Maybe there is maybe other guys around goals around and will talk about goals too because one of the big shifts in scape board since I started that there's some amazing female skate boarders now um there's a Young lady in fact that's been escape point in your rap forgive me, I can't .

remember her name .

is IT goodness or goodness gracious I know he is so yeah good so good, so good uh so we will get back to that. But I think that you know people starting any kind of sport or academic career business, anything, I think people assume that you go from zero to one hundred somehow and that there are these people that are just selected by genetics or by lock or by some combination of things to just like get IT and be Better than everybody else. But it's clear that you spend a lot of time alone driving some place escape the next day or alone at the rap yeah um so do you ever reflect on that kind of drive and you know what what that all about? Or is that just so in transit .

t to who you are? I nit I I don't think about IT. I just know I have to do IT. It's like I mean, I win get into IT with my injury but uh but but to go back to what you saying is you think that that people think that, oh, you were chosen for this or genetics and talk, you saw me skate. Yes, when I first started skating, there was no way you would think that I was natural or that I had any future in IT. I was all gangly as the little place I was eating shit left and right like IT just IT wasn't I wasn't good.

I wasn't I wasn't in a natural um i've seen people that are natural and i've seen that how they don't have that drive, they don't have the discipline and it's not wasted, but they just don't they don't you know they don't take advantage of what they have naturally and and for whatever reason, I don't I don't fault anyone for IT um but i've seen both sides of IT and i've also seen other skaters who are just driven and who are not really good gonna sloppy and become the best ensuring als. When we put him on our team, he was just like me. Super gangling y is boards bounced around IT, but he's trying every single trick.

And every time you send me a video, it's some new technique that he's figured out and he didn't really by the untrained eyes, he didn't never still set for and then he became the boss. You know what I mean. So I think it's just you you have to you have to give that as much weight as natural time, if not more. I'd say more .

yeah I would certainly say more for science. And people are in the lab late at night, early in the morning and drilling away not not always the smart s certainly not the um domus, but smart enough to show up when other people are leaving and continue. And I think there has to be a little bit of friction internally. No I maybe maybe externally also but just some friction some i'm gonna show .

you yeah yeah okay my best example of that and I haven't talked about this yeah um because I did a privately but I broke my leg dynamic west something that i've done thousands of times in five five forty yeah so it's it's a one and a half spin in the backside direction. But that particular grab that you do makes IT am interesting because IT makes you kind of flip upside down. So it's kind of about one and half summer salt.

It's not my tricks. Might my girls trick? I learned IT not long after he created IT in one thousand nine hundred eighty four, been doing every sense. Mean, i'm turned about forty years with twice, right? I've gotten heard once, twice, but not bad.

Anyway, a factor run, found out the moment, no speed last year, thinking I could do IT like I was still twenty and got tangled up and and brought my favor. I had a super long recovery. I had a full start.

I had a nonunion fracture which means my bone never connected back itself and I can be pushing itself for their way um and that's all uh in the past, I i've got a second surgery in november and all along in the back of my head is I got to get back to five days. I have to and I can explain why I have to do. I hate that.

That means so much to me. But that is in here. You mean it's not it's not a sense pride.

It's not like I have to prove this anyone. I just have to do IT. And last week I did IT so scary and I prep for IT. I I mean, I even done to like my diet. And I I stopped ed drinking all together.

And I was like, every time I go to the rap, i'm just trying five, forty years, like to get the span, to get to get the landing zone with no intention to make yet, just that I had to get there. And then I had to have this heart to heart with my wife that, you know, he doesn't want to see me get horses and to see me risking myself this age anymore. SHE doesn't want to live through another traumatic injury with me.

And I had to tell her, like, I have to do this. SHE was gracious and accepting, and that's all I I ask for. IT wasn't like, he was like, yeah, you've gotta go do.

IT was like, okay. And so you are. And so he was there. He was my only spectator.

So good. I confess i've seen a video of this. And my first response was f yes.

And my second response was that was really high. Like this is, no, you know, just about coping. Five, this is even, this is a head high. five.

I'm not going to make the same stake I did last time. I try to low thinking. I just get away with that anymore.

So that going high was more of a safety measure, which is ironic. The the the bigger the ramps. For me, the safer IT is because I have a Better landing zone.

I have more time in the air to adjust. And even though IT looks spectacular and a sixteen year as I just like, no, I need that I can scape some a football. I'm no landing zone.

I'm too tall and I moved too slowly now to do that kind of stuff. That's why you don't see me like in the park of vents. So like that, you know you're going to see me on this fourteen four ver rap because that's my happy place and that's where i'm safe. Um but also having my wife there, I just knew I wasn't to get to heard in front of her because I would in such .

trouble the the emotional support and pressure is is a real thing in in the best ways not to focus on the bad aspects of the injury because there are the planning yeah that I will call you and I communicate not long after the site.

Let's call what I was the first break and I remember you said to me over text you said, how long before i'm scape ed working again and ah I said, um skateboard as in pushing or still working as in what you do on vert you know and you said what I do on vert and I said, what seems you are doing a lot of things you are doing delivering good delivery, heat pressure. You do a number of things and you're not have hazard about your career and your body and your health. We'll get into that little bit later.

Some of the things that you've enjoyed as beneficial for you. But um you said i'm calling IT at two months and I said, okay um I believe IT and then I recall that you was at the Oscars or some other award event where you came out about a week later. You came out there, you walked out, is broken fema, and you weren't using any support to walk out.

So you clearly diced whenever support you might have been using, which I think is awesome, by the way. And then pretty soon I was seeing videos of you dropping in. I was videos of you doing kick turns below coping.

I've seen the use of you at coping. And, you know, we have a friend in common, P, K, board. And generally photographer might be back.

And I remember texting, like, I was like, tony, back already. This is, this is super human rates of healing, and I think IT is superhuman rates of healing. Then you mention that you damaged, broke, broke, firmer again. So did you allow more arrest the second time? What was driving you to to get back in .

IT so quickly? But first go around. I just didn't listen to any of the professional advice because I thought, well, i've done i've come this far and i've always been able to push through broken pElvis, broken elbow um nee surgeries.

And I always been the timelines always very shorted for me because I just get back out there and and I get the healing started. But I also am comfortable with what people think is extremely risky. But in this instance, I want to get back out the right away.

And not long after the academy words, uh, I was actually walking with the king at that time and I just the can just to walk out on state to present the words that was my big my big coming out moment but IT was kind of forced and as soon as I walked out to say they got my can, I was polling in the back stage um but I was I was skating kind of a minium and and I was already struggling because I couldn't put my weight on my front foot because my bones still had not connected to itself. So there's a gap in the bone, but there's a there's a nail, but they call a nail, you know big piece of metals that's holding them in place. But I didn't realize how careful I needed to be with that because I was super curious and I decided i'm going to drop in on the minimum like I think i'm ready and IT wasn't the drop in on the minium IT was me getting to the .

top of the instep off my but but I just .

stepped off my board like I would do any other day. But I didn't think I LED with my front foot, and I felt the bone move in that moment. I I really I felt that I felt either twist or get out a place.

And I was in total denial for months because I just said, oh, I just, I just hurts. Now like I, you know, I I get a minor set back and then I finally, eight months in my recovery, seven months in my recovery. I was always in pain.

My skating wasn't progressive. I couldn't get speed. And by all measures, I should be back, at least I be back to a level that I feel good about.

And I won't got x rays. And they said, your bone never connected. You have a non union fracture.

And and every time I skated, so my bones like this, every time I skated, I was pushing IT further away. And so my bomb was like this on the last x ray. And that was the hard truth. So for those .

listening just laterally display, think about a pipe that broken in the middle just once set to the other.

And and as I keep skating and I I could force my skate, like I kind of learn this hack where I can put seventy five percent of my way on my backfill t and twenty five percent my from food and do what I want to do. But IT wasn't where I thought i'd be, and I just hurt all the time.

I mean, really was like, that was my trigger, because I I have a pretty high tolerance span and IT was always her like I would read going to the airport knowing I had to walk to a gate. So I knew something was wrong there. I went to a specialist. Um the deals in non union fractures and he had a very pragmatic, factual approach and he was like, I would do this and take a nail out, take other hardware and put IT together and you cannot move for two months.

Did you obey that? I did really yeah so what .

is chelan? I was not to risk again.

What did you um and do you prioritize things like sleep um nutrition um just you know generally and did you emphasize those things while you were recovering from the .

yeah I I I was very disciplined in my diet in my schedule and my um surprisingly I I was very busy because um I do speaking engagements and suddenly my speaking engagements were getting back left to right mean the point where I did a tour through eap last summer of speaking engagement so that was that was a sober lining against to my my ideal time um and I lean into IT you know I made myself available and I you know it's good money and was it's it's fun to to interact and um but all through all through that of course in the back of my head as like when when can I skate when can I skate and then when I finally started skating IT was night and day with my leg. I felt like I had leaned forward suddenly I was learning tricks every every session relearning tricks um so I just I just lucky that i'd got to live in this time of modern medicine.

Was that two months, the long as you ve ever gone without .

skate's boarding vert, yeah yeah without skating at all.

not even just pushing around. Good for you for being doctors or what is and also and also good for you for deciding that your rate of recovery is going to be whatever is for you because I feel like i'm hearing both things. On the one hand, you listen to the medical professionals.

On the other hand, i'm not hearing, oh, you know, I looked at the average age recovery from this kind of fracture this at it's like it's as if you decided two things that wants that. There are experts who have something to offer me here. I'll follow their advice. And yet i'm the expert at myself. I'm putting myself in your first person, tony, the expert and tony, and i'm going to make sure that I come back one hundred percent yeah or Better .

yeah not Better but um and and I have come to terms with that because I know that i'm not going to be pushing myself the way that I did before I got hurt anymore. There are some tricks now that are way more difficult just because whatever, it's something changed in my body. And Frances, I can't grab slob like I can.

I I can do a consistently that you you might go to grab. Could do that any time over sixty foot gaps, whatever, like I could do. I just grab I knew where my board was.

I knew that was going to hold on my feet. And half the time I try to grab that way, now I don't reach IT or I grab my foot instead. And I I don't know.

I can make the adjustment to fix IT. And so i've just sort of come to terms with well, but not to go to grab anymore. And that's okay. Your kids I had a good run.

Yeah your kids pretty, pretty vast. So there's a lot of other things to reach to aside from the five forty which by the way, congratulations not only is that of five forty but done at least at high. I've seen IT with my own eyes and um and another really great circumstance is your wife there just the two of you and after and the trick that broke the femme in the first place so congratulations on that. Are there other things that you you're thinking, you know, can't wait to get back to that? Um let's suicide slayers for now.

Yeah yeah. I I I want to get my hand plants back away to do I have yet so that like the one hand hands down um I can do them now, but I have seen you do them recently yeah but but I used they they used to be my signature was a touching ever and flapped all the way back and and I can't get a hold of my board to pull IT all the way back like I used to um if I can get that, i'll feel like that is that that was the last mile soon I not here .

to diagnose and treat these specific a skateboard trick isms but between your what you said about the slave and what you saying about this, seems like there's something about about getting your front hand around and and in IT back back behind you so maybe this is like the way that the fear is lining up with your provis and maybe some offer at something rather physical .

theory I am actually working with at best car. He is a he is a doctor of physical therapy and he has helped me immensely through my recovery. And when i'm frustrated with this motion, or that's the same grab actually as a twist, he worked on me before IT and was just contorting my body and my leg into these positions that I don't really even get to when i'm skating just to prepare me for that. And he did, but that's what he took.

It's interesting that we're talking about skate boarding and we're also talking about physical therapies. We're my were asleep .

so growing never image and i'm chocolate .

because not growing up in scape wording um early on for me uh not quite early as you, but pretty early twelve and got out of IT and I can yes, I can still do a thing or to here there, but that's not the point. The point is that the nutrition consisted largely of you know fast food or whatever was around cigarettes and beer were sort of the the energy drinks and and supplements of of the times. This is fortunately change.

But there there was essentially no health promoting tools or aspects to IT at all. But that was back then. But then over time, IT seems it's of all like now I see I saw a couple posts from TV Williams and like he's in the gym, I think I saw danny way early on working with paul check and doing some baLance work network because if he had broken his neck surfing and think, is that sort.

So there seems to have been a big shift over the last fifteen, twenty years where skate's boarders are taking good care of their bodies, like other athletes thinking about the resilience of their bodies, and also generally taking Better care like a lot of them up not to drink and do drugs and and all those sorts of things. So I mean, how does that strike you to see the way that skateboarders evolved towards the option to be much healthy and treated like like a serious sport where you're serious athlete? The word that, you know, even fifteen years ago, twenty years ago, you have called the scared and athlete. Some people might have to be offended.

but people in skateboarding, absolutely yeah well, answer your question. In early days that was part of the the scene and the culture just because that was the antithesis to organize team sports and mainstream culture.

And so I was just like, yeah, there's what we do fuck IT who cares like we drink and we and everyone IT was IT was wild west, right? But as I never into that deeply, because I saw how IT affected people's performances and the skating itself was paramount to me, that is what I want to focus on. That's what I want to be good at and I saw people parking and party in their skills away so I had at least that for thought.

Um and then as skinning got more established popular, more of a career option than people started taking, more serious ly, especially competitors. I mean, but there's such a wide swath of of what scape boarding is and it's a big tent. So to say that it's more organized, yes, it's more organized over here. There's still all these skaters of here party hoping fences don't care about contest, don't want sponsors.

Oh like G, X one thousand, like those kids that bomb hills in service co.

Like that's what I love about is, is the diversity of IT all and that we're all part of the scene. So I I was a competitor that was that was my path to success. And so I appreciate that people take IT more seriously now.

And they do have training, they have resources. I mean, they have sponsors that will pay for this kind of stuff. There was no such thing. I mean, like at our biggest gate contest, we were all staying at stac pro to his parents house the night before, and he would take us out to get speakee because he thought carbo hydrates was going to give us energy the next day.

That was the extent of training in one thousand nine and eighty three, right? But nowadays, IT were treated like high elites athletes, because they are like, if you really look at people there at the top of their field, people like niza houston, you know what I mean, like the dude is a machine. He is, he is one of the most precise gators that we've ever seen.

Or precise athletes, the side of not your common age, you know? Yes, I mazing myself, but what i'm saying is, like this, this is takes hard core dedication precision at latics. M and devotion.

And so now they have the resources to back that up and to keep IT going longer. I mean, yeah, would I be able to do this now? Especially have to getting hurt without the help of a doctor of physical training? Probably not.

I do IT on some level, but I wouldn't get to where I am now. Um and so hey, I think it's awesome. I you know I I never I never wanted to cover IT skateboarding as the thing that no one else like a gatekeeper to IT.

No one else can touch IT. I always thought there was something in escaping that was magical and that was good for mental health. And that was, that was required.

such. Required to passion. And I didn't I never understood why I didn't get bigger through those.

Those living years was always like kids. This speaks to kids like it's their double and it's active and it's exciting. And you can do that as a group, but you can do your own way.

And I don't know all those things. IT took a long time for everyone else to figure IT out. They definitely figured out, I mean, nowaday skaters of the cool kids in school.

It's in the olympics. Like there was always discussion. What IT be was an exhibition sport in the olympics at one point. No, no, no, no. I thought IT was IT for maybe I had to .

run IT teneri an was there was talk of IT um but he never did and and not that I mean, at some point, specially in the late ninety eighty thousands, skating was getting appreciated and and kind of reached that threshold of of is IT mainstream well, it's in some mcDonald commercial so I guess that's prey mainstream and so we already had come of age and I was like, we don't need the olympics were already more popular than a lot of olympics sports, right? So what do we need their validation? And then at some point I became like, the power dynamic shifted.

IT was like, or they need our cool factor. We don't need their validation. And I was like, yeah okay, you guys wanted sure go ahead but hold the events, hold the cofie will participate but we don't need this.

Will you been an amazing ambassador for the sport? That's driven so much of that wider acceptance and progression and invitation into different domains? One of the um things that I definitely talk about is the video game, right? Because I think that the video game changed a lot of things for the general public in terms of their perception.

Escape working. I mean, what is allowed, of course, is this is obvious, but IT allowed kids that weren't going to, you banging up their shins or walk in with a broken restore, you skin up to to do incredible tricks, but in silicon on a screen, right? And to and pretend that they are the the process. Cape water is a what what video games are about.

And yet, when you can see something just like you can magine IT and in a dream, while you're fling a sleep, and you can see something and hear in air, quote, to do something in the video game, IT also is going to inspire a number of kids go outside and grab a real skateboard and try that, or try something like that. So clearly, the video game was a catalyst for what I consider now, the wide acceptance of skate porting as a sport in all its various forms. Could you just talk for a little bit about the genesis of the video game, where you into video games prior to the video game? Um were you into technology generally and and what sort of motivate the interest in the video game? Because IT certainly has changed the face of actual skate boarding and the perception of skate boarding.

Um well, if i've been in the video games since, o mean, I was a kid, you know, playing pong packman musk, he were you name IT and then getting the home systems in television, super antis common or sixty four sanga, say a yeah but but I am and I always love technology.

So when I when I finally started making money in the eighties, my first kind of big purchase in terms of that uh in in terms of electronics was uh common or omega, which was considered one of the highest and uh home computers no alongside mac, but but more graphic or in IT and and more game or in IT. Um and so I was always into that idea that you could do this kind of stuff at home, not just in our kids. And then I got A I got ta call from A P C programmer that wanted to pitch a skate game and had A A crude engine of um scatter that would creese around, go in balls and stuff like that.

And that was all keyboard control. IT was clunk y but IT was happen. And the last thing that we had as skating was seven twenty in the arcade or skater die for home systems for comment city for that was like the last thing that had happened for skate morning um in video games.

And so I went with him. I was excited to go like I got to we got to go in the tando and pitch um we went to middle I you know we went to all these different um console and software manufacturer and we're just told that this is a bad idea. Escape when is now popular home video games are barely a thing.

Why would anyone want to buy a video game about scape boarding? Someone said those exact words to me um at my way and so he got frustrated and he needed to find a job. And I was I was just kind of free floating, so I said, okay, i'm not going to do this, but I feel like you've establish yourself, at least in the video game world industry, that you're interested in doing something so maybe someone does something no call you and like, yeah right sure sure enough.

Like a year later, activism call me. I said, hey, we heard you wants to do a video game. I said, well, yes, I would love you work on the video game.

I'm not a programmer, anything so we have something working on we'd like to show to you. And so I went up to activision. Um they were working on a skate game but I was based on an engine of a again that was already released called apocalypto n grue's illis.

So the first version of my game was Bruce well as on a scape board with a gun strapped his back in a desert wasteland doing kicklighter and IT was awesome. I was, I was truly like, I picked IT up and I got past that visual, and then I started playing. And, and, and I was intuitive.

If the motion felt right, the engine was right. And I was like, this is, this is the baseline of something special. I didn't think I was going to be some big hit. I just thought this is this is going to be appreciated to my skateboarders. And that was my goal.

The entire uh, development process, which was about a year and a half after I sign on through that year and a half, we were going back and forth with fix me bills on cds. I had a modified play station and I would play IT make notes. And I thought my skaters gonna dig this and I was IT and skating was even that popular.

IT was coming to, you know, I was starting to get some traction. What year was this? Again, like ninety eight.

Um so was like x games. We're starting to come into the fold. People are taking note of what scape arding have become at that point. And then I thought this is going to be cool scares going to like IT. And then um not long before the release, they called me and they said, hey, we want um we will offer you buy out of future royalty for this game.

Um because I think you know there's I think if you're gona like IT like what does that mean? I go, we will give you half many dollars, then you don't get royalty is going forward, but you get that money up front. And at that time, my life like to hear somebody a half million dollars seriously sounded like a half a billion dollars, like no one had ever talked about numbers that big to me.

And also, ninety eight was a little bit of a of a quiet .

time for first escape boarding too. Luckily, for skating still was a thing because of inline skating, because in line skinning was huge right late nineties and they were all vert. And so we get scatter has got to sort of write those cotai because IT was, yeah, there are over ramps because everyone's roll blading.

I forgot about that .

that did like and I had honestly like I was the special guest at a couple of inline roller blade shows or was like, this is team roller bay live and especially I guess tony wk the skip border and I was like, eh but he paid the bills yeah um so cancer to like to too from what you're saying verse gating was IT was a thing at least establish in the schemes which was something and enough for us to make a living um so when they offer me this money, I actually he was in a pretty good place um in terms of my I don't know my options, my my trajectory and I felt like and I I had just bought a new home and I thought i'm onna take a chance to see what happens and that that was the best financial decisions I .

made took the equity yeah .

I just let her ride. I was like, now I want to see what happens with this. And as soon as the game was released, IT was getting Stellar reviews. And then I remember, like the very next week afi was released, never soft, saying, okay, we're work on number two, what you want to do like what you mean we ever do in single with what awesome and we are doing like ten amazing.

crazy, amazing. I'm thinking about your decision to not take the cash and to see how that would go. I'm thinking about your decision to buy car at sixteen and yet as a sequence, get pulled over because you look Younger.

I'm thinking about the time went through the graciousness of your parents who took me in because I had no money to get back up to north in california and I couldn't get to hold my mom. They took me to your home, but then they took me to wear your living the next day, which was in fall brk. You don't remember this, but I do. And I know you for this story before, so forgive me, because most people listen, haven't. But remember getting driven up to fall brook yeah the ramps in your backyard I walked in, got introduced to you, you are very gracious said, so what's up said, feel free to push around on the outside was in a two ramps back to black folks spine um sorry, no one latter um I think ray underhill there yeah he .

lived .

very well and as I will call you had pretty vast music collection. We'll talk about music um but IT also seems that you there is couple cars in the driveway and what not but it's cleared to me based on a number of things and that interaction and what I observed there that either you add someone in your rear, either you're dad, you your mom or both or maybe IT had been stay see or maybe with somebody else who was advising you to make very good financial decisions like not spend all your money or continue to spend all your money to invest in things know or maybe I was just instilled you at a Young age, who knows? I'm asking because I think so many people.

Burn their early success, you know what represents a lot of wealth for them early on, they burn that where they start making just bad decisions. You explained before why you tended to avoid drugs and alcohol, and certainly any severe relationship to drugs or alcohol that will keep you from progressive and escape boarding. But you know, the ability to make really good decisions as a Young, famous athlete is more rare than IT is common, even when people have coaches. So i'm curious that, you know, where did that shrub ess and that prudent come from? And was Frankie dad and maybe Nancy also advising you are alone like hey um think smart, be smart because clearly he made some some very smart decisions.

He was definitely a guide in IT. He he was the first one who said you should probe by wheeler, said, I was seventeen so I didn't even know that was possible, but he could. I made a possible um but then after that, I ended buying that home that you went to and I was four acre property and we built these ramps on IT and that was amazing and definitely helps propel my skating to a different level than I imagine.

But at some point that was just a drain and IT was a drain financially. And I was living beyond my means and my income keep dropping because we were talking about not long after that was nine, one and ninety two, the slowest days of skating. And i've got this giant mortgage, and i've got this property and these rams that I can't afford to upkeep. I can barely afford my water bill at one point, you know. And so what you saw might have seemed stable but behind the scenes IT was IT was starting down .

a rebel bird house .

was started ninety two. And when I started birdhouse, I took the equity from that house to start IT because I didn't I burned in my savings from china keep displays going. Um so I took a second market out on that house.

I took my way out, start a bird house, sold the house for what I had taken out and then I moved to my original place that I had on our high school and just. Pull back on expenses. I think that was that was when I really became shrug because I had to I had, I had a first child.

I had an income that was very uncertain, very fluctuating. And I was just eating talk bill and talk roman and people sandwiches and not spending anything and taking every job like the most random demo request. Or we wanted to be a consulting on this commercial because i'm to i'm twenty four.

I'm too old to be the guy skating because there has to be youth, right? But but we want to see what's possible. Can you come up the day before and show us the ropes? And so I would be the start, scatter that filling in to show them the angles and stuff, and then they will go higher. Chat Thomas as a Young kid. And then I would stand around, I game paid, I don't care.

I think I remember this commercial is serial commercial. The .

central commercial was, uh, Chris Miller first of fix. And I was tony the tiger.

You .

guys.

you chat? Yes, yes. I thought the world birdhouse, which is your company, but without telling you what is scape board company, I remember Willy santos was early on. I remember his super nice kid used to see at the contest. Remember thinking well, tony hawks own company .

for stables. I was, we had a team, you know, like was a my stroke germy kine legendary street pioneer Steve bara, who's kind of we call A T V. But street and vert, we had a ocean hall who was, like, our number one amateurs had entered OS map beach. We had a team that was fun.

was IT fun, to move from writer to also rider, but team manger.

owner was IT fun IT just IT was just necessary, I can say, was fun. I mean, yeah, I was IT was fun because we were still just kind of reckless and driving six of us in a van, driving to skate shops across the country and begging them for three hundred box so that we could get gas and food in hotel room and get on our way. Um I don't know, I just but for me I just felt a necessity to to to to that was what I had to do to make a brand happen. And so I was willing to do IT. Um and but he was exhAusting yeah because I had to be the I had to be the the coach and the tour manager and the skater you know I was put myself out there and like the the worst conditions and just rolling my ankle left and right and I was I was all street and this just wasn't my thing was IT was hard but I I I loved that I may happen in my mind .

i'm thinking you had to be tony hawk escape water Frank OK, the organizer yeah and Stacy prod to the yeah because acy i'd been a cross cape water I still think moving is escape border those film ker right skate board just like I still think spite john's the escape water bm, r filmmaker seems as I got to integrate all of those. And I mention that because I am curious.

I think a lot of people probably curious, are you the type person like sit back and a chair and night and think, like, okay, like how many to do that? Are you contemplative? Or is IT really you just identify what needs to be done this year and over the next three years, you set your milestones going to short IT in, I guess, now are back.

back in. Oh, no, everything was just in the moment. We ve got to get here. We ve got to get to dallas by tomorrow, like as soon as the time was ever getting the van, we're gone. I got to get a hotel room IT was just stuff like that IT was IT was very much. But but I I respected I think I learned to respect um punctuality because I travel with playing at skaters that were not I didn't care and job late. I was like that and like I don't know these guys and then when I was in charge was like we're going to be yond d time because we have to respect other people's time and we still were going to be here three o'clock were going to be three um and that's not easy with the skate .

crew my blame bad, as you know, is in the girl to the here in lab podcast I talk about that we've got to mother guys that came over from dc to as filming and IT for us and you know they're so puncture and there's so on IT. And I know you showed up early today right on time, early um early by five minutes. And that is a distinguishing factor, I think, in any occupation, but especially in skateboarding, where there's this kind of loosely sure.

And so if you do shop on time really means a lot. Um the professionalism that you know was instill in you, it's clear the different places where that showing up mention the schultz about the business decisions. I'm curious about another aspect to that which is maybe a little more cyp tic which is you know whether not I was the C D collection that I saw or you're mention of the car.

Um you're just in video games IT seems that one thing that you've done that a lot of guys that I knew because back in, by the way, I was mostly guys now as so we said, women doing IT to women and girls IT seems like you have a lot of other hobby in interest music and sea, but that we never hurt about you getting the distracted or pulled down those lines like we didn't hear about you going and surfing and getting heard surfings that you could not scape. We're getting really in the motorcycles or great racing cars right you know um some people went hard, left out escape boarding into that like can block the late rate can block but that became his main thing. Seems like you knew that slatee boarding was the main frame and stayed with that um and that you have a lot of other interests.

Yeah I think I I well with other sports, especially like montross, I I have this huge respect for motor. Ss, I think it's super exciting. I would love to do IT.

And I know that I would not escape on scale, like I would definitely want to learn the tricks, do lips and flips and whatever. And i'm going to get hurt and I I don't want to risk my sky career for that. So I I I purposely pulled away from that type of thing. Um the last new surgery I had is because I overshot a jump in mamah on my snowboard. So that was the lesson like what doing .

cruse .

on the ground powder you free ride with your brows because I learned my lesson so so yeah you're right. But at the same time, like I still I still love going serving and snowboarding. I don't do him as much, obviously um but but those are part of of what I did all growing up and they're important to me um I did you know do a couple of celebrity car raises like a nice car raises um I told the car in the longest grandpre because the student remind in the wall was like, well, I was fun but i'm not I I don't have the band with to get that serious about IT and .

now you have a family .

of course to of course yeah I mean and those things as fun as they are and as as I don't know as as sort of auxiliary as as they are, they require a lot of time. I mean, just france is that long be screen for. They want you to go stain on off like a week to have and train and and figure out how to truly know how to drive and be safe. And it's like, I know I think that time for that .

yeah that's time you're not escape .

red or with your family.

right? yeah. Right now I feel the same way. If I get pulled away from reading papers and prepping podcast, reading lace research and thinking about experiments, we could do that. I, for more than a couple of days, I started feel in the itch I have feeling this stuff is programmed in the one's a nervous system after a while, like you've been escape warning for so long that if you go a few days IT probably just your system .

is is is like water yes for sure. I mean, um well, just for instance, uh our ramp is uh being torn down on sunday. Today is friday.

I have been turned on on sunday at ten am to be moved to solid city for a big vert event. I'm gone there eight thirty so I can get a session for. I could turn down.

I love IT on father's day. That's my father's day. I'm going to work at A M. On sunday. I love IT.

Speaking of family and lining age a tell us about your kids, you've got some talent to escape borders in your family besides yourself.

I do um well I have four my own and I have two step kids and um they all escape my daughter not so much anymore but all the boys five boys uh are all willing to IT um my older son is the most uh he is the most prominent because he turned pro um and has mean you know has his own following has a name himself uh Riley in his thirty yeah .

he kills IT on street his big .

trees capable he does yeah but that you know there are all good they're all good skaters in their own ways and um it's so fun. I mean, I I didn't of course there is surrounded by at their whole life, especially Riley e because when he was Young, I I didn't really have the means to have childcare, whatever. So I had had taken with me on tourism, what not? So he was always around IT.

So he got good at IT by default, at some point, start to shy away from, because he felt the pressure and my shadow. And I was like, I know this isn't fun. I know people expect me to be super good, or I have to do this stuff.

And so he went shut away from and then found a bunch of his friends and high school that they love skating. He's still good at us. So he that he found his crew and they've all found their crews, uh, complete the independent on me.

And so when we go on vacation, for instance, we we were last year, we were and uh or two years ago, we are on the big on and hawaii. They want to go to ski parks. I don't want to go to skate parks. I on vacation .

also a little harsh stuff is a great way to get hurt that over.

And but then so I go i'm so i'm their sofa and i'm their filmer. I love IT. That's my vacation. But but because they all love you so much, you know I mean and it's just it's so cool like, I mean, how could ever ask for more? It's amazing.

Let's talk about Frank and Nancy a little bit just because I have this kind of odd connection to your family through that is really two or three day interaction change my life forever meeting you was spectacular as a Young escape wording kid but also just the idea that someone would literally take me into their home. I mean, had every reason to not trust me first.

Well, as having no Billy waldman in now explanation needed that people who knew Billy, I hope you do well. I vento heard anything about him, but hope you doing well. But we were wild.

But he basically took me in to your home. He announced, took me in, you know, fed us more, fed me, my another friend with me. And, you know, I just have to say, as you're describing your family, I can only imagine what I must have been like for Frank and Nancy to see you have your kids. Do they get to um live long enough to see um that Riley other kids with skate boards. I Riley .

uh but my dad passed away when Riley was too but so he's the only one of my kids that that he met yeah um my older single uh had kids so he met two of his other branches besides Riley.

Um my mom got to see some of Riley success but uh he suffer from um alzheimer dimension so things of the way but um I I think that my dad would not believe the scape one is in olympics to him that that is the top of the mountain because he was really in other sport. He love sports. He loved the olympics.

He loves, he loved washing face ball. He loved washing baseball. He loves when the olympic were on. He just he loved the competition element and in the hype of that.

And and I think there was part of him that felt like, why isn't skip burning in this, you know? But he knew that there were so many hurdles to get through and so much more acceptance needed to happen. And I don't think you imagine whatever happened.

He was a special that I can still hear his voice. He was a very large guy. I know I was just smaller than I, definitely smaller, like a big presence and and I know i've told you this main times before.

This is actually how we got reconnected. I send you a direct message and said, hey, I met your parents. In fact, they took me in to your home and i'm telling the truth and you'll know i'm telling the truth because they took me to dinner and they ordered black coffee after dinner.

And you know, for years I would order black coffee after doing you as a kid. You're just so impressible. These really nice people took me in.

I like, this is what a really healthy family looks like. I'm grateful to have loving parents. We did, but I didn't have the healthy family structure.

So for me was like, oh my god ness. These people drink black coffee after doing this must be what healthy families do. So by the way, folks don't drink coffee within eight hours are going to sleep .

but I still do .

that but well you doesn't seem to be holding you back um individualized but um yeah it's spectacular that this lining age of you know Frank to you and I I mention in nanc because IT seems like well SHE might not have been at the contest and running around set up tables and doing all IT like SHE clearly was as well .

oh h he was allowed the events too. I mean, they need all hands on deck when I started getting big and no one was taking salaries, you know, as the thing is that people thought, like h you does like cashing on. He never took a money for any of that, and he took so much shit. You know, I maybe just.

he just loved IT.

IT was for you.

I imagine that there was for me.

and I was also for the misfits that I surrounded myself with. And even though he was, he was brush and he was like, a, you know, he was, uh, no, what's the world? He was foreboding and intimidating whatever else he did IT for all those kids that were kind of lost like you.

I mean, he really like he, he loved that he brought them together, that he gave them a sense of self and gave them a sense of purpose. He saw that because he he was that he he really had a rough child od, and he did everything he could throw his adult life to make up for IT with his own kids and with the kids that they surround themselves with. So that's that's what he loved.

But of course, he loved seeing me thrive to, but he loved that he created the safe space and this this sense of community, and saw my mom, my mom was, that was her thing, was getting people together gatherings. You know, we shall get together. And like even even my siblings and I, as much as we want to emulate our parents, we don't do IT as much but as they did and we regret .

that there's still time no.

I mean, we do, but it's checker. We're all drivers. sure.

Yeah the person that comes to mind when when I think about your dad, i'm forgetting the movie, but there's this one colony woods movie where he lives in a neighborhood where I think it's a bunch of Young men. I just remember like that. There's that seen of like clink coming out on his porch and just standing really up, right? Yeah, everything in this front is front lawn, is everything superman's red and just standing there like this immense presence and that's that's how I remember Frank. Yeah.

he was a total softy. That's a thing that's that's, you know, there was a IT was all a front.

but he was certainly very gracious.

You know, you you got to see that side of them more as like, oh, you come on, 我 take out you want to see tony place， let's go like that's not some hard as well that there's .

a tail into the story too, where he actually called my mom. And I think there may have been a statement or two about, hey, this kids, fourteen, like he can be an individual boys club, taking the bus back to lancaster, maybe been some discussion like that. But then they also paid for me to go home. They flew me home.

yeah.

So I think I owe you a couple hundred box for yourself, west flight, whatever airline IT was. Well, it's it's fun and I think important to reminisce about these people because they aren't just your parents, but that they done so much. And through you you I really think that emotions and stories are really like the equivalent of energy in humans.

Know what people energy because that gets Carried forward. Um speaking of which, we share a common love of some particular music. Are you somebody who listens to music to you? So um to inspire you to get ramped up to go escape board, is music an important part of your life?

Yeah, for this way I I had I had a play list for my five, forty the other day.

Okay.

fine tune to that trick. And what would get me motivated and hypes to to do IT you don't have to share with .

us what's on in the playlist unless you choose to but was the high energy, low energy.

high energy well and end some meaningful songs like um new order ceremony. And I see nine nails getting smaller because that was a song we used in one of our big skate tourism. IT was one of the most high energy sections of of the show. Um uh cash this so I I I can't go through all of my forget um uh ganga um uh when again for is uh should I forgot what is IT? Um oh I find that doesn't wear fires up. So I had I had like ten that we're just going if any of those play it's i'm gonna make IT and and I knew that IT was about an hour and half and that as long as i'm going to try IT before I too tired .

to listening in the warehouse listening .

market on random and then, uh the song that I made IT to was, uh, off of that protested album fat of the land. Uh, and it's called climatized mr. I used IT for a birdhouse edit when four one one was the thing.

four one was these little like video, news, letter type things. yeah.

Anyway, so when that song came on, I was feeling that I made IT fantastic.

I love this because, you know, the neuroscientist in me is immediately say, you know, we have this brain that loves to take in information and discard other information. But pair association is so strong yeah and when you coupled that with some sense of reward, like the making of the real below, coping as as as early in life, or making the five, forty years as I come back to, you know, the injury, after the injury.

almost. I loved all that music, but I was induced ated by IT through the skate parks, because that was the soundtrack to this. IT was IT was punk music. IT was sexual and and nine, nine, nine and black flag and devo and acts and bus cox and you know that was that's what I kept hearing and that's what I associate with my best of times .

ah it's in your nervous system yeah there's a few voices you know ranted and to strong and and the Operation .

I Operation I system .

system was .

on that players was on the five forty players all right tim will .

be so happy to hear that and math for me in the baseball and Jesse Michaels is now playing .

again with tim lead singer about new um new game .

what's called they had a name and they they uh they changed IT OK initially IT was, uh, I want to say because they change for reason. But amazing, I was incredible. My year book photo for I think two years running was the cover of Operation I exit shot for the year book photo speaking at which, did you shot for your book photos? Did you graduate high school? I graduate a high school.

but didn't go to any of the advance prom or any of the oxy. I didn't know. I mean, I was.

I was an outcast like I was not, even though I had success in skating. Skating wasn't cool. And I was not homeless with anyone at school except for two other scatters. And we felt very australites. So now, yeah, I did you up for the graduation because because my mom dii wanted, see IT.

yeah. Likewise I graduate, but I could tell you more about the curbs in the parking lot of my high school, and I could about anything that happened in the classroom.

I broke only spring our heads because the spring lead ads were right next to the curb, and there was a double side of curb and so he born slide because i'd get there early and born slide and then i'd just like reading too far and and great sprinkle head and never got caught.

What high school?

Uh, well, I went to A. I went to Sarah high school recently um then I went to u m 3 digito high school which is in north county。 And then I ended up a tory points. I got so bullied at sana ito that I requested to be transferred because I I couldn't go, I couldn't survive there as a skeared. I would have to hide my skateboard in the bushes before class, and then go find IT after the school so that people were in target.

Me, the eight were right, was like a IT, was like a .

john huz fill for sure so just IT was jokes VS nurse. And then skaters were like, not even considered in that realm because they're just going to get they're going to get handed because there are so few of us.

Well, things have change. And not only have things have change such that escape wording is far more popular in, respected in, at least one mark of that is in the olympics, although there are other Marks of respect, certainly, but a huge evolution that i've observed when I was skateboarding as a fourteen year old, and you know, into my close to my twins and I took some time off for sure um hardly any girls, hardly any women.

There were a few like care beth burnside. They got teased, ridiculed. IT was hard on the super heart. Yeah super heart. Now largely through instagram um but some other channels as well. You can see this Young girl race on vert skateboarding Better than a lot of grown men who have been scape boarding for decades I mean um and then there are a number of other ones in the um in street skateboarding and also taking really hard slams like you know so this this is a complete revision of the recent history of skateboarding. So thoughts on that and on this and there are few others, was IT is IT who took a really bad form that was .

filmed neck familia? Yeah, these are tough ladies. Yes, I be doing .

that and for coming .

that this I did the loop SHE did the four, three, six loop first moment to ever do IT so what do you think changed like .

that that paved the way it's just, you know a critical mass of uh females doing IT is IT that um you know sky Brown for for sure .

there were the pioneers as people like care bet inside um and someone hillers Patty hofman was one of the one the first vertiginous to who were they planted the seed and and then there were other women that so good inspiration like oh girls can do this even though they are largely outnumbered and they get hassle for sure and then through the street era um people like a little steamer who paid the way for leg street skating um but then through the years IT IT started to become more common, more accepted, which is done to sake because just always been IT shall have always been accepted.

But the thing that that really tip the scale was when everything was leading up to olympics, there had to be equal divisions in equal disciplines for men and women. And suddenly there was no question of should we have a should we have a woman event like now we have to have a because that's how we that's the road to qualify for this. The dynamic stage and vans parked series, to their credit, they were holding events simultaneously, not they were living qualifiers, but just their own.

And they said, these events are equal across the board, equal prize money, equal attention. And me, just like that. That was a matter of fact, and that shifted a lot. IT really did. And now if you go to a skatepark, you see plenty of there.

Yeah.

often went like literal women, like moms. You know, there are older women that are learning how skate is awesome.

Not that IT matter so much, but does anyone claim to be at the first female? Do five forty on vert? Is that .

sort of a known .

fantastic um and he .

did that OK how he did that he was trying IT. Um so she's trying to trying to much to us ah she's married travel astronauts like the you know like the the al action sports couple. Um and SHE was trying on SHE was he was getting pretty close.

And then we did a big exhibition in paris at the grand play on behalf of quicks over IT was a huge event. They put a half hype up and we did this giant show there, thousands people there. And I was very much um unspoken but expected that I was going to do a one hundred at this event.

Um I think I was I want to see with two thousand ten nine and a no like two thousand nine and and and they organized that we're going to like a case we're going to this and then you know at some point you do one hundred and I was like I I can't guarantee that ever like every time i've ever made IT, it's been pretty spontaneous. I i've set out to do IT and not i've come up sure can't guarantee IT i'll try, i'll try and they they're like, yeah okay and so I knew the whole time with a risky as I okay once expecting that. So I kind of with you the motions of of uh doing my exhibition tracks, you know plain heads and then started try one hundreds.

And at the same time lenzing started trying five, four days because he was feeling that energy. And so IT was this sort of not battle, but definitely we we were trading hits. IT was like, right? Eny ah SHE missed that. And then I uh SHE almost made one like was riding down, you know and and then fell at the flawed autumn.

IT was like, oh, and then I made one hundred and that was kind of the show stopper because like that they expected and everyone, i'm crazy and whatever people are coming down off the grant knee slighting down and we're saying goodyer to the crowd and I look up and linsey put her tail out. They're still people standing on the round and you put the tail out. I was like, I think lenzing once tried again.

Here we go on on the mike. Now he made IT love IT. SHE stole the show like, without question, IT was huge and look IT up on on youtube.

But it's there. Lenny Adams, first, first five, eight. IT was awesome. And then he made IT. And we all grab and put her on her shoulder.

That is, he was. This is awesome. Because these things are like the form minute mile as a barrier than people break that barrier, and then other people break that barrier hit.

I mean, I watched enough of skate boarding in recent years. Sea, you know, like the sky Brown thing. She's phenomenal.

And as SHE saw her family out to dinner here in los Angeles and with her brother and folks are really gracie's really nice. And there again, your parents going to the skate park. Well, after all, she's couldn't drive herself. I think she's at the time she's quite like nine.

One of the biggest shifts, too, is that parents encouraged kisses to skate. Now, can you imagine that when we're Young.

never know there were so many factors telling us to not do what you made us want to do?

IT more sure. Yeah now now kids are like parents pushing them into IT. Get out there. Learn trix that way. That's not what we will be doing.

But it's cool that the pair I think I think with the really cool factor of all that is there are definitely people are age. I am grouping you into my age forty seven um but they have kids and and escape and was such a special time in our life. And then they're rediscovering IT through their kids and they're skating together. And I think that's just so amazing that someone of our age would be like, you know what I used to do that you're into that like let's go and then you can show your kid how do the .

sweeper I could provide you that I have kids yet but when I do also I intend on him healthy enough and ah to do a sweep people can look up sweepers we don't have to explain IT for him but the background or a sweeper yeah so yeah because they .

want they want thing to do IT no and they are doing all these difficult filter .

ics yeah what's you go to on a mate? You're going really take .

out the Younger generation. I can do pretty a pretty regularly on transition .

consistently and new on flat. So where basically you strapped the back of it's an all really but IT wraps around .

the back over your foot yeah um that's kind of my my sneak attack gana scate does rodney .

more and get credit for that trick or yeah to rodney you still in touch with the I absolutely yeah yeah he somebody that um so he deserves deserves a mention in the pioneering of tricks.

Think he's the godfather modern.

Sk, I think of rodney, you and Martin always gones as like the the guys that i'm honor through the um the progression in different partially overlapping directions that at the temple .

for like the first trick you saw me deal. I learned that because I saw rodney do IT on the ground and I thought, well, I can't do on the ground, but I plenty a time in the air 直接。

it's awesome. So awesome that stay. He put you guys together. We we mentioned bones for gaba. We didn't really talk about the architecture of IT from the perspective of escape board progression.

But IT was um come like any good band seem like there was really good chemistry yeah um interpersonally but also um that there was each person had something unique. You scared the way he did my skate, the way he did D V, the way he did. And rodney and and we respect each other.

but we also fell off .

each other to grew up, right? Because drive in the area like, yeah, in fact, Tommy game, the hills of service go in those videos makes IT look easy. But those hills are rough, they're dangerous, and they have real life officials like moving buses.

You'll know he wasn't stopping at top signs. So fantastic. Uh, we could reminisce about all these angles. But the point being that spending time with people who do similar things are the same thing, but do IT differently is one of the best ways to progress is why routinely fly texas and hang out with Peter tea and other podcasts rax remains because they do things differently than I do. Um where do you draw to a preferable inspiration from now like I know you see Jimmy wales that you're quite a lot the enamel Jimmy wales it's eri how good that kid um who also you spend time with besides race. And one of the reasons I ask is that skate's boarding is unique among many sports and that a given session, a gathering uh to escape board, will include an enormous .

world men and ten year old girls, exactly which which .

is incredible. You don't think that soccer you a serious game of soccer between professional car.

Also not that words getting together is that we are. Communicating and influencing each other. I mean, that is like the last conversation I have with race was she's talking about that you gna try five forty and I O i'm kind of working on IT. SHE is what I think because he saw me try and SHE guess I think you need to put little more and he was right .

and she's all over again.

He's ten. And I and I didn't even consider that because i'm just back in my mode and i'm not taking into consideration that I don't have the snap that I had before I got hurt. And he was I mean, that was one key to me making IT and you know that that is but IT, but to me that's just that's represented of sky porting and the inclusive ity of IT in the diversity of IT.

Where is me on fifty five? There's thirty year old, uh, prose that are at the top of the game. There are seventeen year old open commerce men, women, ten year old girl that is doing chest that we've never even thought of or want to do. And it's all part of the the whole mix that's really .

beautiful. Wanted ask you about memorable ia not a topic that I think about much, but I think in a prior conversation of us, you mentioned something about this. So you know there are skate board collectors. There are people that collect stickers. Skate board, there's a whole market and world for this. And um in addition to people wanting self fees with you and they see you imagine there's a long history and continued tradition of people taking a pen, putting your hand and then can you sign this right because you are in this very small but very clearly team group of people where your signature increases the value of things.

So um how does that work uh and how does that feel like if a skateboard who you know there are the tell tale signs of who is and who isn't right um if they walk up to and hey, we sign this, do you feel good about signing IT there? Is that something that you refrain from? And if somebody he's just merely a collector of trader and they're trying to build their portfolio, so to speak, um you can probably also sense that. So not trying to put you in the hot seat here.

What is this question through the years? I was always open to that and and i'm happy to um especially when people are skaters or or skate fans and why not? In the last three years, there has been this new elements of resellers, of people that just go buy signal stuff that nothing do is skating.

They don't care about escaping at all. They just want to get my signatures on an item and sell IT. And they usually do IT on ebay or through their own channels.

Um that's fine at some point. Like few years ago, I respect to the hustle these guys are. They knew that I was going to be at this event.

Okay, they're outside waiting. They're been waiting for hours, all sign a couple of things. But in recent months, even they have figured out how to get my flight info like some hacked into my my actual airline accounts.

Some have uh, sources at certain airports that get the manifest and they sell the information. I found all this out because i've actually held a couple of accountable because I said, look, i'm not gona sign this until you tell me how you knew I was gonna here. I have no business here.

I'm here. If this is a family, no one knows i'm coming here. H, we saw friends said they saw you at the destroy the airport.

Like, no, they didn't. They would know i'm going to anyway, like I saw on twitter, you didn't see IT on twitter. I'm on twitter.

Tell me the truth. There is a guy from tms you to get flying and phone you also to us. Okay, thank you.

But that has increased to a point where it's it's not sustainable. I can. I can please everyone. The last time I flew out of chicago, there were about fifteen people.

One guy had a shopping card for sketch ards, and they all, they all bomb rush me at security before I went to security, thinking that i'm in a sign up like he does. I can't. I can do that.

I am miss my flight and I can't deliniates like I. I am sorry. You guys have like sabotage yourselves. I don't know what to say. And then I went through security and they were four years winning at the gate.

They hit bought tickets, airline tickets, so that they could be passeth ity that they the airline tickets they're not going to use to chase this. wow. So I mean, when people in my autograph, but it's weird and it's intrusive and .

it's kind of creepy yeah just tell them that a neuroscientist told you that you got to get that slob .

er right and if you're .

sign too many autographs that you really weird no thing .

that has popped up and um other than that and and so the tRicky parties when there is a public thing or a public exhibition, whatever, to try to figure out who is the true skate fans and who aren't um using a pretty identifiable but IT IT just IT IT is ruin the experience for people who truly are the groups getting ah well thanks .

for sharing that and we won't tell everyone what to tell tale signs are so that these people don't exploit them to escape waters. The real fans will know they won't you have to worry about whether not they represent accurate because they just will. On the positive side, something that been going to learn more about from you is your philanthropic efforts.

Um I think Kevin rose .

um who's in the tech sector was the first to mention to me that you you guys done some philanthropy together um and maybe you done somewhat gym ebo as well the .

great gym ebo yeah jim and Kevin were board members. Jim is the current board member of the scape project a told about the scape board project um it's it's my own profit. And we try to develop public k parks and in underserved as but more so by by supporting the community and giving them the resources to do so.

Groups that are trying to get scape x in the area, we are the resource center for them. Um we'll give them advice, give them funding, will give them uh our stamp of approval and that can go long way. And uh to date, we've help to fund over almost a thousand skate parks now and seven or eight hundred of which are open.

Um I mean my protest work for sure and and it's because I never I never took for granted the fact that I group near the skate park and that was my home away from home. That was where I found my sense of community, my sense of identity, my micro. And so many kids choose the skybox but have no support in doing so. And so those k parks are a lifeline.

Yeah, can I test they? They absolutely save lives. There is no question.

Where can people find out more about your foundation? We can provide a link, but like word. So where does the funding for these parts actually come from?

From from donations from supporters? IT comes from fundraisers, some corporate uh sometimes funding is is funded through us for specific regions um like the um uh we have a built to play project that's in a michigan in new york and that's funded by the rosa walton during your foundation. Um so they they give us the funding and then we have to give IT to that area. But but it's easy because there's planning of projects and now there's an abundance of skate parts .

in those areas. Love IT. Thank you for doing that. For organizing .

around that is and I get more place to skate.

Curious what's in the immediate horizon, right these days you probably have the option to say yes to things and no to things. You know, you have a family, you have your skateboard career.

Where do you place your priorities in terms of how to carve up your day or your we coming, what would you like to make sure that you do? Or is much of the hours of your waking day for the next, let's just say, five years? Because if you want to extend that out, you can.

well, I, I, anna, be available to my kids for some foremost um and we still have one at home for the next four years so uh, I will make sure that i'm available to her. And in terms of career, I never had great aspirations like I never thought this. This is what I want accomplish.

He was always as very more you trick specific oriented, so is always like, I want to try this and this and this. I would like to continue skating. I don't know if i'll be able to escape IT the love i'm scanning right now in five years, but I know that i'll stopping on the RAM I may not be doing in public, trying to advocate for republic k.

Parks, doing more with the foundation and whatever. I I think I think the way I prioritize my time is what will resonate the furthest and have the best impact on skimping in general. I do feel that i've come to a point where, yes, i'm some unofficial of ambassador to skateboarding and I want to represent IT.

Well, I want I want to be fair in that city. Bring as all kinds of different things. It's not just x games or olympics or or what not is IT IT represents um A A true culture and I want to project that as much as I can and make sure that people understand that. That's also positive. Um and I mean, you really everything that i'm doing now is just kind of fun.

I got IT for the I would say in the last five to ten years, the first time I ve truly enjoyed what skateboarding has provided me in terms of opportunity and what IT brings to me and and what that means to my family like I have a much Better appreciation understanding for IT. And these days it's just like everything's kind of grave, is just so fun. I can't believe I still do for a living. It's crazy. Fifty five years old and I truly ride my skate board as a career like that nuts and I won't in any other way well.

certainly is earned. And I just want to say thank you for a number of things. First of all, um thank you for going to the escape park. Thank you for picking this trajectory.

Thank you for inspiring me and so many other Young people and old people, older people over so many decades now, both with what you did on a skateboard and off the skateboard and including you are resilience and determination to push and continue to progress to the point where you were badly injured and then to push through that, come back at least match what you did previously. And I would wade you that you will exceed your prior scale level going forward. So I want to thank you for your resilience.

I know IT comes from an intrinsic drive. Your love of skateboarding IT just absolutely comes through. I share in some of that, of course, having grown up in IT, but not nearly as much as you, but also just your willingness to stretch out into these different areas like the video game thing or talk about x games, the olympics s because that did allow for a lot of growth and lateral movement of skate porting.

And at the same time, just as you said, to bring IT right back to the fact that scape boarding isn't one thing. IT is not like other sports. It's its own sport and it's its own lifestyle, its own thing. And we do consider you the ambassador for escape boarding. And I speak for many people and I say that we're very grateful that you are because you bring that, that shouders and that prudent to IT, but also that get after a punch act spirit and the goodness that your parents instilling you clearly comes through everything from the philanthropy and onwards. So I can't say enough positive things and or express enough gratitude for your what you've done in for your time here, your legacy and skateboard, but also just in the game of life is clearly cemented.

So thank you. Oh, thank you. I and I appreciate the the the ethos of skate boarding shines through on your shell and just your crew here. Clearly a lot of them come from the skateboard world. So you're you're still supporting IT, whether you know IT or not.

Thanks so much and hopefully will come back and well.

do IT again. Alright, sounds good.

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