On this episode of Don't Read The Comments, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk is revealing the secret to skateboarding in his mid-50s and reminiscing on some of his most notable life moments: from landing a 900 at 48 to the creation of his video game.
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00:00 I don't understand how skaters don't hurt themselves more.
00:03 We do.
00:04 We just don't complain about it a lot.
00:06 And I went through a pretty horrific injury last year,
00:08 broke my femur.
00:09 I got back on my skateboard too soon
00:12 and I ended up making the bones misaligned.
00:15 So they never actually connected back to themselves.
00:17 So I had another surgery, had the bones realigned.
00:20 I'm lucky to live in this age of modern medicine.
00:23 Yes.
00:24 Hey, I'm Tony Hawk.
00:25 As you know, the internet is full of a lot of people
00:28 and a lot of varying opinions.
00:31 So today I'm going to read all of them.
00:34 No, I'm gonna read some of them
00:35 and respond to even less of them.
00:37 This is Don't Read the Comments.
00:39 So here we go.
00:40 Did he know who you were?
00:48 I met Tupac at the American Music Awards in 1994 backstage.
00:53 He was standing alone.
00:54 I recognized him.
00:55 I was very excited.
00:56 He was very cool.
00:57 Very affable.
00:59 He did not know who I was.
01:01 My dream of cloning Tony Hawk is now one step closer.
01:04 Cloney Hawk.
01:05 We did a promotion with Liquid Death, canned water.
01:08 The idea was that I gave some of my blood
01:10 and then they use that as paint for a hundred skateboards.
01:12 I was inspired by the band Kiss
01:14 who did that with comic books in the seventies.
01:16 And I'm not gonna lie, once I did this promotion
01:19 and I did it on the hundred decks,
01:21 I bought one of the Kiss comic books.
01:22 So now I have that with that skateboard next to each other.
01:25 So it's come full circle.
01:26 People who don't understand how Clark Kent can pass
01:28 as Superman have never seen Tony Hawk without a skateboard.
01:31 I think my favorite one was,
01:32 I was at one of the TSA security checkpoints.
01:35 It was in Anchorage, Alaska.
01:37 I was coming back from a heli snowboarding trip.
01:39 And the woman said, "Anthony Hawk.
01:41 Oh, like Tony Hawk."
01:42 And I said, "Exactly."
01:43 And she said, "Oh, I wonder what he's up to these days."
01:46 And I said, "This."
01:48 And she looked at me blankly and handed me my ID
01:50 and I went on the plane.
01:51 Let's put it this way.
01:52 I can get dinner reservations with my name,
01:54 but show up and people would know it's me.
01:57 Here's a fun travel hack.
01:58 If you're traveling within the US,
01:59 you can carry your skateboard and put it in the overhead.
02:01 So when I carry my skateboard,
02:03 people think somehow that I'm trying to draw attention
02:06 to myself or like, "Look, it's me, it's me."
02:08 That's not the case.
02:09 It makes getting to your gate a lot faster
02:11 if you're stealthy.
02:13 That's all I'm saying about that.
02:14 Mike Tyson about to become a skateboarder with Tony Hawk.
02:17 So I did Mike Tyson's podcast.
02:20 I wanna make a video of me giving the skateboard to Mike.
02:22 That's all I cared about.
02:23 Literally as I arrived,
02:25 I had a skateboard in my hand to hand him.
02:27 And he was one of the first people I saw when I walked in.
02:30 I said, "Mike, I have the skateboard that I wanna give you."
02:32 He's like, "Oh, give me that thing."
02:33 And he immediately puts it on the ground.
02:35 And luckily my friend just happened
02:37 to already turn on the camera.
02:39 'Cause Mike puts it on the ground,
02:40 starts doing what we call a tic-tac.
02:42 He hit this chair and immediately just falls,
02:46 got up and checked to see if his wife was watching,
02:48 which she wasn't.
02:50 But he's like, "Don't tell her, don't tell her."
02:51 I was like, "Everyone has it on camera."
02:53 What do you mean, don't tell her?
02:55 How is this guy still in such amazing shape?
02:57 I don't know if I'm in amazing shape,
02:58 but I guess I'm in pretty good shape for a 55 year old.
03:01 My only secret is consistency.
03:03 I just never stopped skating for any great length of time.
03:07 Even if I'm not skating,
03:08 I'm trying to go surfing or just stay in motion.
03:10 That's my big secret.
03:12 Rotational feats in sports get increasingly difficult
03:14 as body weight and size increase.
03:16 Tony Hawk doing it in 2016 as a 48 year old man,
03:18 that's a feat a hundred times more impressive
03:20 than young Tony Hawk doing it.
03:21 I thank you.
03:22 And it did feel a hundred times more difficult.
03:25 So I agree with that assessment.
03:29 I wonder if Tony Hawk was the one who picked the music.
03:32 That soundtrack was legendary.
03:34 My contributions were more of the older songs
03:38 that were in there, the sort of original punk,
03:40 stuff like Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Joy Division.
03:43 The newer ones were the amazing crew at Activision
03:46 because they had such a great music team
03:47 who eventually went on to do Guitar Hero.
03:49 So it was the perfect storm of contributions.
03:53 They announced that they were going to do
03:54 a whole bunch of new emojis.
03:55 And the skateboard that they showed
03:59 was straight out of the early 80s.
04:02 When I approached the emoji guy
04:06 about trying to modernize what they had presented
04:11 as the first version of the skateboard emoji,
04:13 I just sent him a picture of my skateboard.
04:15 So the skateboard emoji is literally my skateboard.
04:18 I ride bigger wheels than most skaters
04:19 'cause I skate big ramps.
04:21 And so I like to keep my speed up.
04:22 So that's why the skateboard emoji has big wheels.
04:24 I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry.
04:26 I collect movie props.
04:27 And more specifically, I collect anything
04:29 to do with skateboarding and movie props.
04:31 Most recently, I bought a skateboard
04:33 that was used in the movie "Hook" with Rob Williams
04:36 and one of the hoverboards from "Back to the Future."
04:41 And the hoverboard is actually signed by the cast,
04:44 Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox,
04:46 Michael J. Fox, the Cowabunga young man,
04:48 and I can't tell you the validation I got
04:51 when I saw those comments.
04:53 He unwittingly inspired a generation to start skating.
04:55 So I thanked him for that.
04:57 And he apologized for unleashing
04:59 the storm of skateboarding onto the world.
05:02 Very on-brand, Michael J. Fox.
05:04 Apparently Tony Hawk can sing too?
05:08 I don't know, it depends on who you ask.
05:10 [laughs]
05:11 I was on "The Masked Singer."
05:12 I sang a Cure song.
05:14 I was the elephant and I was the first voted off.
05:16 I stand by my performance.
05:17 I was on key.
05:18 They just didn't like the Cure.
05:20 Haters.
05:21 [laughs]
05:22 I am in the Weird Al Yankovic video
05:25 for "Smells Like Nirvana."
05:26 Our team manager for Birdhouse Skateboards
05:29 called me up and said,
05:30 "Hey, do you wanna be in a Weird Al video?"
05:31 And I didn't even ask any questions.
05:32 I said, "Yes, absolutely.
05:34 "Tell me where and when."
05:35 I'm not very visible 'cause I was sort of in the background
05:38 and the shoot went to like 2 or 3 a.m.
05:39 I didn't stay for the bitter end.
05:41 But there's one sweeping shot of the crowd in the bleachers
05:45 and you can see me there.
05:46 How young is too young to start teaching my kids to skate?
05:49 I don't like putting an age on it.
05:50 I feel like my kids were just surrounded by it
05:53 and they picked up on it very early on,
05:56 not long after they learned to walk.
05:57 That's not Elmo, that is, oh, it's Murray.
06:00 Yes.
06:01 I was actually in New York with Cadence,
06:03 who had been recently born.
06:05 They were shooting a Sesame Street thing
06:07 right near where we were.
06:08 And someone from the crew recognized me and said,
06:10 "Hey, Tony, you wanna do something with us?"
06:12 "Sure, here's a skateboard."
06:14 They had a skateboard.
06:15 And so I counted the wheels on a skateboard
06:17 and that's how I got on Sesame Street.
06:19 - Count 'em for me.
06:20 - One, two, three, four.
06:24 - Four wheels.
06:25 [laughing]
06:26 - Was walking by Murray in the streets of New York.
06:29 You need to get dressed up like an old man
06:31 and go shred a skate park and freak people out.
06:33 [laughing]
06:34 Do I need to dress up like an old man?
06:36 No, I went as Larry David for Halloween a few years ago.
06:38 I don't know if Larry ever saw it.
06:40 Every Halloween, those pictures come back around.
06:44 If there were a burger order called the Tony Hawk,
06:46 what would be on it?
06:47 Oh man, I feel like kinda old school.
06:52 It would be definitely ketchup and mustard.
06:55 Pickles, lettuce, and if you're feeling Californian,
07:00 a little avocado.
07:02 Is that taboo?
07:03 That's it, old school.
07:05 Okay, so I heard what the internet had to say
07:08 and I responded, hopefully enough.
07:11 Thanks for watching.
07:12 [upbeat music]
07:15 [BLANK_AUDIO]