Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/24995
"That was rad, Tony." Fade
Black. The End.
Except, of course, it's not "The End." The kid doesn't get a Coke and a smile and a piggyback ride into the su nset. It's just another Saturday for Hawk, who is now facing the rather strange prospect of aging stardom at a time when his sport is in the midst of
where he grew up. "I 've been doing this since I was 14. But it doesn't ever rea lly feel like a job. Skating is almost always sti ll fu n for me." Job or not, fu n or not, skateboarding has been very, very good to Hawk, and he knows it. During his eighties heyday, it earned him a six-figure income, money that saw him through skateboar.s:ling's lean years and even financed his skateboard comp;�y, Birdhouse. He and Per Welinder started Birdhouse five years ago by mortgaging the home Hawk bought when he was 18. Hawk's father, Fra nk, convinced him to buy that house,
�e�ing it as a safe investment. For years Frank Hawk was a
big part of Tony's career-his whole fa mily was-but Dad in particular.
Frank sta rted the National Skateboarding
Hawk says. "By the time I was a senior, I 'was traveling so much with skating that I was never around. People knew there was a guy named Tony Hawk who went to their high school, but they didn't know me. And it was fine with me because I had friends and a life in the skating world. It was never a problem. The same is basically true today. "
Association (NSA) in 1982 to clean up skateboarding's image, no doubt' wanting to ensure that skating provided a good envi ronment fo r his son. Such behavior could be interpreted as a bit stage father-ish, and as Tony says, "When you're 15, you're just not always psyched to have your dad that involved in your life." But Frank's involvement meant Tony never had to recon cile devoting much of his life to skateboarding. His family is sti ll very much part of his career even though Frank recently passed away. His sister' Pat helps administrate Birdhouse and his brother, Steve, is working with him on a special reissue of the seventies magazine, Skateboarder. "I only had two close friends in high school, that's it,"
Except today he's TWENTY-NINE, living in the suburbs with his wife and son. Skateboarding-like that other formerly fringe obsession, rock 'n' roll
'fe'eds on youth, sucks its marrow, spits it out and snarls. But just as rock has evolved from fad to cultural staple, so now has skateboarding, and Hawk is one of
its most enduring figures. "It seems like a lot of older guys are coming back to skating," says Hawk, "along with a whole new crop of kids who seem more serious about it as a
face of physics. Sti ll, it wasn't too long a�t",a become the fi rst skater to execute a if if if 0 IQj
sport and not a fad. It's stabil ized, found its niche, maybe even some longevity. " Age has made him less gung-ho on tricks that tempt fate and spit in the r
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