Tony Hawk Teaches Us to "Ride"

I'm here with Tony Hawk at Stand Up for Skate Parks and we're continuing to raise money. We have the kids here today from Watts. What does it feel like having these kind of people come out and support and seeing the kids and how excited they get?

Oh, that's what it's all about. And the best thing is the people who come here that donate money get to literally see the concrete evidence of the work we're doing. You know, they see the kids that are benefiting from it. They see the videos of the of the skateparks and and they see us being at the grand openings and so, uh, I think it's really important to have all the the a real face with the work we're doing.

Well, last year when we talked to you, you had been doing so many great things. How did it all get started?

I saw a need for communities to be supported in their quest for skateparks. They just weren't getting support and I felt like I could change that. And last year we raised a million dollars here and, uh, we've given away $2.4 million to date and helped start almost 400 skateparks.

Twitter has been something that you've kind of taken over. You do the Twitter hunts.

Oh, yeah. It's all kind of a secret tryna get people to figure out the clues as we as we go, but, um, we've we're hiding stuff all over the world, you know, literally people in almost every English-speaking country we have hiding stuff for for them to tweet out the locations and see you get to.

Was this your idea? Did you come up with this on your own?

Yeah. Yeah. Watch what you asked for.

Now, with this new game, Ride, I know that you're pretty involved in your video games. What did it take to put this together?

Basically, I brought the idea to Activision, uh, Activision a couple years ago. And I just I think it's time that we do a board, that we do a game with a board controller. Um, and, uh, they were excited at the prospect. I honestly didn't know how it would all transpire. And then once, um, they put a team on it, the Rumble Moto in Chicago, and I saw the board, I knew it was I knew that it was the right thing to do.

Did you have to like do different trials, get on the board and figure out like how

We have a graveyard of prototype boards.

I love it.

That are kind of rough, but, um, but they're awesome.

I want to learn from the best. Okay. So, you just show me the basics and I'm not normally a skateboarder.

To be honest, this game is for anyone. I mean, you don't have to be a pro skater and we have sort of a an an beginner level, so the the hardest learning curve is to learn how to turn and the turning is sort of guided for you on this beginning level. So, all you need is the timing. So, if you wanna do like an ollie, you snap up the board just kinda quickly, right? Okay. And if you wanna do a manual or a wheelie, you just bring it up slowly. You see them doing it right there. And then once you do an ollie, you can you sort of rotate it either direction, you can flick it and and that's when that sets them off doing these tricks.

No idea.

And then just drag your foot across to to push. That's it. Boom, you're going. And then just jump up. That's it. You are skating. Look at you. Look at me. Nice. She's just five-o-d across the entire rooftop. I think you've done this before.

Well, I I'm a computer nerd, so I was online last night. You are literally a pro skater. There you go. Wow, that was impressive. Yay! That was fun.