How Did I Get Here by Tony Hawk & Pat Hawk

Author:Tony Hawk & Pat Hawk
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780470930212
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2010-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

Blackjack, Brawls, and the Pensacola Nine

We did three seasons of the Gigantic Skatepark Tour. It was crazy, both on the road and back at the 900 Films headquarters. Skate tours are always pretty rowdy, but this one was over the top. We had a well-equipped bus and a collection of big, uncontained personalities, like Bam Margera (future MTV star), Sal Masekela (future X Games commentator and E! TV announcer), Jason Ellis (future trash-talking radio host on Sirius), Mike Vallely (future star of the TV show Drive), and Rob Wells (aka Robert Earl, whose life back then was an ongoing piece of performance art).

The skating and BMX riding was also sick, with an amazing array of athletes: Shaun White, Mat Hoffman, Danny Way, Bucky Lasek, Bob Burnquist, Andy Macdonald, Eric Koston, Brian Sumner, Andrew Reynolds, Kris Markovich, and Steve Berra.

On the bus, we played a lot of blackjack, and pulled a lot of pranks. We made a rule that every time someone got dealt a legitimate blackjack, they’d get a scratch-off lotto ticket. One night, after Sal had lost $3,500 to our cameraman Trent Kamerman (his real name, I swear), we gave Sal one of those fake $10,000 lotto tickets. He got flat-out punked, and we all had a good laugh. It’s on film here: facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1194898751291.

Another time Shaun White secretly poured a weird potion into Sal’s cocktail. It was supposed to turn liquid to Jell-O but didn’t quite work. Sal took a sip and decided that Kris had spit in his drink, so he spewed it down Kris’s back. That triggered a full-on brawl.

One of my favorite memories came during a demo in Pensacola, Florida, where there were a bunch of hecklers in the crowd. After a few failed attempts, I pulled a 720 on the vert ramp—a maneuver I’ve made hundreds of times—and Sal convinced the crowd that I’d just made a rare 900. They went wild. From then on, anytime I made a 720, we called it a Pensacola Nine.

Meanwhile, back at the 900 Films headquarters, the editors and loggers were working 24-hour shifts to meet ESPN’s delivery deadlines. People slept on couches, under desks, in their chairs, and the trashcans overflowed with fast-food remnants and Red Bull cans.

That TV series turned out to be a terrific start-up experience for an action sports production company. Fortunately, the show was something of a success, and everyone learned how to create quality episodes on deadline. It also enabled the people with real talent to rise to the top. One of our interns, Matt Haring, was a shy 16-year-old when he started at 900 Films doing odd jobs and logging footage after school. He’d taken video production in high school and was a skater, but had no work experience whatsoever. Ten years later, he’s our top editor.

Dear Tony,

I’m really in a hole. I’m the only skater in my school, and I don’t get any appreciation for the two tricks I can do: an ollie and a shove-it. I try my balls off to learn new tricks, but I can’t get my ollies high enough.

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