Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off

Damn it.

Fuck!

Fuck!

I'm willing to struggle through the learning process,

even change my approach

just to figure out how to do it.

I never want to back down from a challenge.

If you're convinced that you're going to fail,

that will come to fruition.

I was willing to get hurt along the way,

but I didn't visualize myself getting hurt along the way.

I always approached it like, "This is going to work."

"I'm going to figure this out."

My mom used to like to tell the story

that when she would play tennis with me,

I would purposely just try to hit her with the balls.

She scolded me at one point.

She's like,

"I think you're trying to hit me, Tony.

"I'm not going to play with you

if you're just trying to hurt me."

I don't know what my disorder was,

but I was definitely difficult.

I was determined to have my way

to the point of being very combative.

My mom would say that I was--

she just said I was very determined.

I was really young,

but I remember my mom was so frustrated with me

'cause I just wouldn't do what she said.

I wanted to do something, I wanted to do something else,

I--and she finally just said,

"If you don't stop being difficult,

I'm going to flush myself down the toilet."

I didn't believe it, I didn't care, I didn't quit,

and she went in the bathroom and flushed the toilet and hid.

She watched me lean over, the toilet is swirling, going,

"My mommy!"

- I think she is in the beauty parlor.

Oh, really?

both: Hi.

- I'm gonna pull her out whenever she's done.

Okay.

All right, thank you.

- Thank you. Bye-bye.

Hi, Mom.

Hi, Mom, it's Tony.

How are you?

How have you been? You look good.

I leave for Montreal next week

for another one of those skate contests.

Keegan is turning 18 in a couple weeks...

Which is a frightening prospect.

And then once Calvin is out, we only have Kady.

It's gonna be crazy.

But I guess by that time,

the older kids will move back in.

Isn't that what they do?

Maybe not. Your kids didn't.

'Cause you taught us to be independent.

It was always a big deal

that my mom was 43 when she had me.

People would say,

"Oh, she's much older," you know?

And, "There are lots of risks involved."

- Tony and I are 20 years apart.

I was a junior in college

when my mom told me she was pregnant.

- I was a senior in high school.

All of Tony's siblings, including me, we're older.

- I'm 12 1/2 years older than Tony,

so when he was young, especially,

our relationship was almost as much...

paternal as fraternal.

- I was basically an only child,

and my parents were old enough to be my grandparents.

- He was stuck at home with my mom and dad

at a time when their marriage wasn't so great.

My dad wasn't working a lot.

He had been retired from the Navy

and kind of finding his way.

My brother was a surfer.

He drove him, you know, dawn patrol to get the waves.

My sister was a singer.

He was hauling all their band gear.

He was the coach of our baseball team.

The first time I ever went to bat in Little League,

I was probably about eight or nine.

I knew I was gonna hit it. I was gonna get a home run.

Failure was not an option.

I didn't even consider what would happen if I struck out.

And then I remember striking out

and thinking the world had ended.

I always felt a little misplaced

in all of those sports.

I couldn't do the physical things

that most of my peers could do

because they were bigger and they were stronger,

and so I was always just feeling uncomfortable

and kind of disappointed in myself.

- People would say, "Oh, you have adult children,

and you have-- and you have Tony?"

She goes, "Yeah, he's our little mistake."

- I really do think that that played a role

in his, um...his psyche.

That she would have had an abortion if she could have

in some ways, I think,

maybe made him want to prove himself.

- Bye, Mom. I love you. We'll see you soon, okay?

- Thanks for the visit. Enjoy your lunch.

Do you see me now?

My mom was always careful with her words,

always positive.

And then, I think, one day,

I was just pushing her buttons,

and she's like, "You know, you're just full of it.

You're just full of it, Tony. Full of it."

I'm like, "What?" She goes, "You're full of...

"shit.

You're full of shit."

And I was like...

- Tony was a bit of a dick when he was little.

Stubborn as fuck.

He and my dad would bicker like crazy.

I got along with Tony way better

when it was just the two of us.

So I would often go off-- we'd go off,

go to the beach or go someplace.

- And I remember he and his friend were skating

in the alleyway,

and there was another skateboard,

this older one that was just sitting there,

and I said, "Well, can I try that one?"

I just was going down the alley,

yelling back, "How do I turn? How do I turn?"

And then I eventually ran into the fence.

It wasn't like the skies parted

and there was some great revelation.

It was more like, "Oh, this is hard."

- You know, that skateboard has gone on to be kind of a thing.

It's now--we-- it's in the Smithsonian.

Freedom.

I'm moving fast, but I'm in control

and I'm flowing.

I could just cruise the landscape.

Going down hills.

Terrible ramps in our driveway.

Everything about it spoke to me.

He just needed focus,

and so when he started focusing and skateboarding,

he changed.

He just calmed down.

He just walked through the world

with a lot more kind of maturity and generosity.

- The main skate park in San Diego was called Oasis.

It was just under a freeway overpass.

And we would see it, and it was like,

"Oh, there's Oasis."

Older kids going way faster

than I had ever seen anyone on a skateboard.

And it just looked scary as hell.

There were these five craters,

and I was going down the crater and up

and then down the crater and up,

and I thought that was super cool.

And this big kid came flying up,

and he jumped over the middle crater,

and I was like, "How did that just happen?"

I just couldn't believe what I saw,

and I said, "Oh, this is it.

I'm doing this. This is my life."

I quit playing baseball and basketball.

- I remember once when I was home from college,

my mom asked me to go pick him up

at the Oasis skate park

because dinner was almost ready.

So I was just gonna run down there and grab him,

but he was in the process

of learning frontside rock and rolls.

And he was getting close, and so of course,

you know, the closer you get, the more you slam, and--

but he was young enough

where he was actually crying, I think, over this.

And I'm like, "Tony, come on, we got to go."

And he's like, "I'm gonna make"--

Just, I wasn't even there, you know?

And then finally, he made one clean and rolled away.

And it was like everything kind of lifted.

And he didn't, like, run over and give me a high five.

It was like-- "Okay."

And I've seen that in him a bunch

when he's learning something.

He'll get really pissed off,

and then as soon as he makes it,

he's back to being his nice, normal Tony Hawk self.

- I knew of Stacy's name because of the Dogtown crew.

And so I knew more of his reputation

than his skating.

Stacy had been there.

You know, he'd blazed the trail.