On March 7, 2022, three days ago, 53-year-old pro skateboarder Tony Hawk broke his femur on a bad McTwist attempt. In an article linked on his Twitter, he said he didn't have enough speed, and caught a sketchy grab, and crumpled on landing, breaking his femur. For those of you who don't know, that's the really big bone in the top half of your leg, one of the worst things to break. So good vibes and much luck healing to Tony, as he heals up and makes the long recovery back from that injury.
If you've read my blog much, you know I was a BMX and skateboard industry guy in the 1980's and early 1990's. So my stories I tell in this blog, and previous blogs, are my memories of working and hanging out with the riders and skaters back in the day. I never actually met Tony Hawk, but I was at a couple video shoots at Tony's Fallbrook house, and saw him at contests events now and then. I just never introduced myself, because we didn't really do that in those days.
In 1988, I was working at Unreel Productions, the video company owned by Vision Skateboards. I was basically a production assistant, mostly making copies of different videos for people in the Vision empire all day. But Don Hoffman, the head of Unreel had this crazy idea of getting action sports on TV, which WAS NOT happening in the 1980's. So Unreel produced five well produced TV shows, called the Sports on the Edge Series. We ended up syndicating the series across the U.S., six years before the X-Games started in 1995. The series included bodyboarding, skateboarding, BMX racing, BMX freestyle, and snowboarding. Unreel actually tried to sell the series to ESPN in 1989, but the suits there said, "No one wants to watch skateboarding on TV, and what the hell is snowboarding?" So we hired a woman to syndicate the series, which actually played really well, and got good ratings, across the U.S..
For the skateboarding show, we at Unreel worked with National Skateboard Association to put on the biggest skateboard contest ever at the time. Following the huge progression in ramp construction in the Bones Brigade 3/Animal Chin video, we had a vert/spine/mini ramp combo built, as you can see in the video clip above. Spine ramps were brand new then, and mini ramps were only a couple of years old, so this contest broke new ground in that way. It was also unusual then to have a skate event in a big arena then, with a "huge" crowd of 3,000 spectators. Most skate contests at that time were outside, where you could just walk up and watch in most cases.
Someone also came up with the idea for this crazy, head to head format, rather than a big jam format like we see today. I think I was there was a jam to figure out the top 10 or so skaters, and then they skated head to head against each other, which you can also see in this clip above. So one guy would skate, and then the other, and you had to lose twice to get eliminated, much like a basketball tournament or something like that. The main result was it wore the skaters out. So this was a really huge, crazy, big event for skateboarding at the time. Unreel hired SoCal radio D.J. The Poorman from KROQ to host, with Skatemaster Tate and Vision pro skater Ken Park for color commentary. To top it all off, Unreel hired this crazy punk band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play after the contest.
Not surprisingly for vert skating in 1988, the contest came down to Tony Hawk versus Christian Hosoi for the win. Hawk was the master of hard, technical vert tricks, and Hosoi was the master of big , high, super stylish airs, and flow. Crazy, head-to-head format aside, it actually made for a really cool live event, and a great TV show. When you watch the video above, you see why Tony and Christian were continually battling it out for the top spot in vert, they both ripped, in completely different ways. Tony got the win on that day, but it could have gone either way after those final runs.
That's it for my look back at an epic skate contest from the 80's. You can find more clips of Skate Escape on YouTube. The show got made into a home video later, their may be a few VHS copies in someone's collection still. Here's the Joe Rogan podcast from 2020 with Tony, which I was listening to while writing this blog post. Again, best wishes to Tony as he heals and recovers from his broken femur. Like everyone, I hope he's able to get mobile again, and back on a ramp as soon as possible.
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