Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Tony Hawk #6.



The Birdman flips his board.

With the recent release of the film All This Mayhem, my Ben and Tas Pappas post has been getting a lot of traffic. I have not seen the video, but I've been reading about the aftermath from the 900. Tas has made the claim that Tony pulled some strings to keep him out of the best trick contest on ESPN in 1999. Skateboarding journalism stepped up and interviewed many of the people involved in the event to get all the facts straight about this particular contest. It does not appear that there was any sort of conspiracy by Tony to keep Tas off ESPN. But then again, the conspiracy theorists would like you to believe that.

Given my track record of not watching movies, I doubt I will ever watch All This Mayhem. Plus it's made by Vice and after the shenanigans they pulled to kick Death By Audio out so they could have a fancy new office, I'm over all things Vice.

Sorry, Australia. Don't hate me.

Steve Sherman snapped the photo sequence.

Thrasher - October 1993 Volume 13 Number 10

5 comments:

Justin said...

Tony's own words:

http://skateboarding.transworld.net/news/tony-hawk-responds-to-allegations-made-in-all-this-mayhem/#SxvfuQ6m40kFXhpG.97

Jenkem asks the guys involved in the contest:

http://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2015/06/22/did-tony-hawk-steal-the-900/

rnc said...

This is an awesome ad, mainly because I had all four of those airwalks.

The read at Jenkem was really interesting. I love Hawk, my thing is I wouldn't put anything past ESPN to try to do whatever it takes to get the biggest story they can.

Totally unrelated question you don't have to address: I've just been wondering about the origin of the mall grab lately. Somehow as early as 6th grade (1986) I knew not to grab my board that way. I just wonder how we all knew that??

As always thanks for the time you put in.

ERL said...

Two things were factual in that documentary. Two Pro skaters got heavily into drugs, and one of them died. Sad story, delusional tales.

Justin said...

I always wanted a pair of the NTS2s.

I do not know where the term mall grab came from. I don't think I ever carried my board that way. I could be wrong. I remember in 97 or 98 grabbing my board by the truck for some reason and getting a sliver of metal in my finger. I've made it a point to never touch my trucks. I don't think I was touching them much before then.

It seems like Michael Burnett has popularized the term in recent years.

I'm always amazed at little basic things I can do on a skateboard. Like we figured this stuff out in a small town thousands of miles from California with few videos and word of mouth. Compared to what some of the kids end up doing these days and how awkward they look doing it, it boggles my mind at times. I'm not hating on kids trying and learning, just observing.

I'm going to take this question out of the comments and field it to the masses tomorrow.

nonickname said...

habitat a few years back made a shoe that was so close to the 86 lows I did a double take thinking they were a reissue