NPR News

Excerpt: 'How Did I Get Here?'

NPR | By Tony Hawk

Published October 27, 2010 at 12:06 PM EDT

In 2001, I got invited to do a demo at the grand opening of a public skatepark near Chicago. The community that invited me was affluent—they could afford to fly in a celebrity skater from California as part of their opening-day fanfare. I arrived the day before the big event, and they asked if I wanted to ride the park that afternoon, alone. I jumped at the chance, figuring I'd give it a test run before I skated the place in front of a crowd.

The park, unfortunately, was a joke—a nonsensical arrangement of poorly constructed obstacles. There was no sense of flow: A set of stairs abutted a bank, so if you ollied down the stairs, you'd run into the bank, and if you rode down the bank, you'd slam into the stairs. The ledges were six inches high instead of the standard two feet. And there was a bizarre, narrow, winding sidewalk with tiny unrideable berms on either side. It felt like the park had been designed by someone who knew nothing about skateboarding, and had been built by whatever sidewalk contractor happened to make the lowest bid.

I rolled around the place for a while, blowing easy tricks, trying to find a zone where I could actually do some real skating. After a while, I just gave up.

Some of the parks-and-recreation officials approached and asked me how I liked their new facility. I didn't to want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I also didn't want to lie. I said, "Honestly? It's pretty bad."

And they said: "You know what? That's what all the local kids have been saying. But we told them, 'Just wait until Tony Hawk gets here. He'll show you how to ride it.'"

Because of my failed test flight, they decided to bring in a vert ramp to make sure I'd have something to skate for the big demo the next day. After I was finished, they carted away the ramp and gave the kids their crappy skatepark.

Back home, as I started telling this story to friends, it occurred to me that I was in a position to help stop such foolishness from recurring—to fix the ongoing disconnect between the people in positions to build public skateparks and the kids who ride them.

Skateboarding was going through an upswing in popularity at the time, and this one looked like it would stick. The X Games and my video game had introduced skating to a whole new market: spectators. People who'd never stepped foot on a skateboard were now stopping pros like Bob Burnquist and Andy Macdonald on the street, asking for autographs.

More significantly, young kids were buying skateboards like never before; there were more than 12 million skateboarders in the United States in 2001, but only about 2,000 skateparks. And a lot of those parks were bad—as I'd just learned firsthand outside Chicago.

I also knew that many communities were resistant to building any kind of skatepark. The impoverished ones couldn't afford it. Others were worried about liability. And some feared a skatepark would attract too many punks.

But here's the thing: Kids are going to skate whether or not civic leaders create a place for them to do it. So they end up skating in spots that city officials or school administrators or local business owners have deemed off-limits. That means youngsters who'd never before been in serious trouble suddenly find themselves getting ticketed or arrested or suspended—simply because they want to pursue a sport that they're passionate about. And once a kid gets on the wrong side of the law, for whatever reason, his world can speed downhill.