Lifestyle
Tony Hawk Hopes Enthusiasm for Vert Skating Can Bring it Back to Olympics
Tony Hawk took skateboarding to new heights in 1999 when, high above a halfpipe at the X Games, he began furiously spinning, completing two and a half turns in the air before gliding gracefully back onto the ramp.
The 900 — named for the number of degrees of rotation the move requires — had seemed impossible, but Mr. Hawk, his sport’s biggest star, had landed it, rewriting the rules of what could be done on a skateboard and exposing the sport to a far more mainstream audience.
Then, shortly after his moment of triumph, Mr. Hawk’s form of gravity-defying skating began fading away, nearly to the point of extinction. It was replaced by a street style that was more easily learned at skate parks, with an entire generation of skaters leaving the giant ramps behind.
That, however, is starting to change.
Social media has been flooded in recent months with videos of prepubescent skateboarders launching themselves off ramps and flying into the air, landing the kinds of tricks that experienced skaters have been reluctant to attempt. They are shifting the paradigm with their gravity-defying moves, and inspiring other kids around the world to try the same.
Mr. Hawk’s style of vertical skating — “vert” to those who practice it — is making a comeback, and he is desperate to turn that momentum into a return of the event at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
Vert is skateboarding in its most spectacular form. Its simplicity, combined with the pure excitement in its perilous maneuvers, makes it easy for those who don’t skate to understand.
Mr. Hawk, thanks to his 900 and the wildly popular video game that followed in its wake, “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater,” had cemented himself as the face of the sport in the early 2000s. But, unbeknown to his new admirers, his dedication to vert was a case of clinging to the past.
“It’s still kind of considered niche,” Mr. Hawk said in an interview, discussing the current state of vert skateboarding. “That’s what’s hard for me to accept.”
The reality is that Mr. Hawk’s accomplishments on vert ramps had simply made the practice seem more popular than it was. Renton Millar, a former professional skater and the head of the Vert Skating Commission for World Skate, the sport’s governing body, said vert skaters like Mr. Hawk have typically been a minority, “who stand out because it is so rad.”
Enter people like Tom Schaar, a 25-year-old skater who many view as vert’s next big star and a potential bridge between older generations and the next one — the kids who are finding the sport through social media.
Mr. Schaar, who is signed to Mr. Hawk’s Birdhouse skateboard company, was born the year Mr. Hawk landed his first 900. He rode his first real vert ramp at age six, and later managed to land a 900 and a 1080 in the same year. He was 12 years old.
“The 900 took a lot longer,” Mr. Schaar said of learning the two difficult tricks. “Once you get over the fear of kind of doing those extra spins, they kind of all just blur together into one big spinning mess.”
Vert rewards the type of consequence-blind actions that are typical of an adolescent, and adolescents are shaping the style’s future.
“Young skaters have more resources,” Mr. Hawk said. “They have training facilities now, and children are encouraged to start skating. That wasn’t the case when we were young. Children were discouraged from skating. It was a bad influence, with no future.”
Mr. Hawk said it took him 10 years of attempting it before he landed the 900, finally achieving the feat when he was 31 years old. Now, he watches in awe as young skaters build on his accomplishments and those of his peers. Last year, Arisa Trew became the first female skater to land a 900. She was 13 years old at the time.
“Some of the kids, as soon as they start riding, they are fascinated with aerials and they know what is possible,” Mr. Hawk said. “To them, a 540 is just a starting point. A 540 wasn’t even created until I was in my teens, you know?”
Mr. Hawk, ever the evangelist, knows what he wants to happen next. The Summer Olympics are heading to Los Angeles in 2028. Southern California is the global epicenter of skateboarding, and Mr. Hawk has been, as he puts it, “hustling” to get vert added as an event. It would increase the visibility of the form and, Mr. Hawk believes, lead to more vert ramps being built. To help get things started, he’s willing to put his own equipment on the line.
“I would give them my ramp,” Mr. Hawk said feverishly. “I would say ‘Here’s the terrain. Find a place for it, and it’s all yours.’ I have the best vert ramp in the world, and it’s portable. It can be assembled in a couple of hours. It’s all yours.”
The International Olympic Committee will issue its final decision on vert and other events for the 2028 Olympics at its next executive board meeting on April 9.
Many skaters believe having a vert competition is an obvious choice for the Olympics, but it was left out of the 2020 and 2024 Games, Mr. Hawk said, because of bureaucratic challenges, and an overall lack of vert skaters at the time.
Mr. Schaar, who also excels at park-style skating, took home a silver medal in that event at the 2024 Olympics. But he competes in that style out of necessity; vert remains his primary passion.
“When my grandma’s watching the Olympics, street and park are very technical for someone who doesn’t understand skating,” Mr. Schaar said.
Mr. Hawk said that at the time of the discussions to add skateboarding to the 2020 Games, he knew there were not enough vert skaters left to constitute a competitive field. As the sport’s popularity has grown, however, so has his public advocacy.
“The gap between genders and the quality of skating around the globe was big back then,” said Luca Basilico, who oversees skateboarding for World Skate. “It was another time. But we’re not there anymore.”
To get to this point, the sport has had to let go of its past.
By the time he landed the 900, Mr. Hawk and his cohort — holdovers from the 1980s when vert was the dominant style of skateboarding — were aging out of their professional careers. Very few vert skaters were coming up behind them, leaving Mr. Hawk as one of the few loud voices pushing for it to continue.
“People who skate today, especially those who are 25 and older, they will all tell you that they started skating because of Tony Hawk in some way,” said Jimmy Wilkins, a pre-eminent vert skater. “Even if that’s not the case, they probably grew up skating in a park he built for them.”
The young skaters reviving the art of vert on Instagram, however, are not so closely tied to Mr. Hawk. They were born after his big moments. Their innovation and advancement of the form is its own, new thing.
Elliot Sloan, a 36-year-old vert skater who went pro in 2008, described a “huge gap” between generational cohorts of vert skaters, which had made his own pursuit fairly lonely. He considered himself lucky to have been a part of a sport that was still alive, thanks in large part to Mr. Hawk’s successes in the late 1990s.
Mr. Hawk’s accomplishments are far in the past, however, and Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Sloan are decidedly vert elders. And the skaters coming up behind them are getting incredibly good, incredibly fast.
“I’ve just seen so many of these kids start coming up being like seven years old, and I’m thinking ‘This kid’s pretty good,’” Mr. Sloan said. “And then the next thing you know, I’m competing against him.”
“The greatest thing in the vert resurgence is the bit of groundswell that it has with the kids,” said Mr. Millar. “There’s a number of vert facilities around the world, where, in the past, there was almost none.”
While the rise of young vert skaters has shocked some veterans, it has allowed Mr. Hawk to keep pushing it back into the public eye. But no matter the era, the popularity or the visibility of the sport, it cannot be separated from the man himself, who has stuck to his old habits, despite his official retirement.
“I’ve gotta go skate,” he said at the conclusion of an interview. His friend Bucky Lasek, another legend of the 1990s, was coming over. They were going to spend the day on Mr. Hawk’s personal ramp.
Sunday Puzzle
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This week’s challenge
Today’s puzzle is a tribute to Mimi. Every answer is a familiar two word phrase or name in which each word starts with the letters MI-.
Ex. Assignment for soldiers –> MILITARY MISSION
1. Pageant title for a contestant from Detroit
2. One of the Twin Cities
3. Nickname for the river through New Orleans
4. Super short skirt
5. Neighborhood in Los Angeles that contains Museum Row
6. Just over four times the distance from the earth to the moon
7. Goateed sing-along conductor of old TV
8. American financier who pioneered so-called “junk bonds”
9. Little accident
10. Land-based weapon in America’s nuclear arsenal
11. In “Snow White,” the evil queen’s words before “on the wall”
Last week’s challenge
Last week’s challenge comes from Benita Rice, of Salem, Ore. Name a famous foreign landmark (5,4). Change the eighth letter to a V and rearrange the result to make an adjective that describes this landmark. What landmark is it?
Answer
Notre Dame –> Renovated
Winner
Chee Sing Lee of Bangor, Maine
This week’s challenge
This week’s challenge comes from James Ellison, of Jefferson City, Mo. Think of a popular movie of the past decade. Change the last letter in its title. The result will suggest a lawsuit between two politicians of the late 20th century — one Republican and one Democrat. What’s the movie and who are the people?
If you know the answer to the challenge, submit it below by Thursday, April 23 at 3 p.m. ET. Listeners whose answers are selected win a chance to play the on-air puzzle.
This story is part of Image’s April’s Thresholds issue, a tour of L.A. architecture as it’s actually experienced.
A landmark is a landmark because it tells you that you’re home now — the piece of earth you’ve chosen to inhabit saying, “You’ve made it back, congratulations.” We identify our cities with their landmarks, and because we identify with our cities, we identify with the landmarks too. They are us and we are them, mirroring each other through eternity. A city like New York or Chicago, with the Chrysler Building, the Bean, etc., has landmarks that exist in the world’s popular consciousness. But L.A.’s most cherished landmarks belong to us and us alone, a secret you’re let in on if you live here long enough and pay attention.
The Fashion Nova baddie in horizontal sprawl off the Vertigo, for example, is an emblem for those in the know. Our twisted version of a capitalist guardian angel, patron saint of spandex in a cropped matching set. Welcome to El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Fashion Nova. Merging on the 110 South from the 10 East while the sunset burns and traffic thickens is a miracle in more ways than one, and in the spirit of compulsively performing the sign of the cross when you pass a church on the freeway, this billboard is deserving of its own acknowledgment.
It may not be the landmark L.A. asked for, but in Sayre Gomez’s painting “Vertigo,” you begin to understand why it’s the one we deserve. At the opening for “Precious Moments,” Gomez’s solo show at David Kordansky, the room was vibrating. A game of energetic ping-pong unfolded underneath the gallery’s fluorescent light, beams of identification, recollections or stabs of grief bouncing off each piece in the exhibition. People were seeing hyperspecific parts of a city they love reflected in a hyperspecific way — for better and for worse. Recognition has two edges and they both happen to be sharp. Gomez twists the knife deeper for a good cause: He wants you not just to look but to really see.
In his work exist iconic signs of beloved local establishments — like the Playpen — the blinding glint reflecting off downtown’s skyline, telephone poles regarded as totems. The line to see Gomez’s replica of L.A.’s graffiti towers, “Oceanwide Plaza,” snaked through the gallery’s courtyard. Once inside, at least three graffiti writers whose names were blasted on the replica pointed it out proudly, even gave out stickers to take home. The truth can be beautiful and it can be ugly — in this case it’s both — on the flip side showing up in the form of smog, tattered flags and an abandoned graffiti tower that starkly represents the pitfalls of capitalism and greed, a neon arrow pointing to the homelessness crisis.
Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave.
— Sayre Gomez
In the main gallery, I was stuck on “Vertigo.” On the 12-foot canvas, my eye went to the place out of focus: the thin strip of billboard in the background featuring a young woman with sand-dune hips, patent knee-high boots and long black hair laid up on her side, wearing cat ears and a tiger bodysuit as flush as second skin. The model made the kind of eye contact that felt dangerous — might cause an accident if you’re not careful. “#1 Halloween Destination … FASHION NOVA,” it read. I knew her, anyone who has driven through the two main arteries of Los Angeles knows her. The black-and-white smiley motif of the Vertigo, an events space, sat right next to her face, just happy to be there, it seemed, above a painted sign that says “Ready to Party?”
The sky was the color of cotton candy, but the stale kind that’s been hardening in a plastic bag for days after the fair. Something rancid about it. In the foreground of the painting was a car encampment with a tattered floral sheet woven through the windows, cloth tarps and couch cushions creating a shield against the elements. Small plastic children’s toys lined at the top of the car — dinosaurs and dump trucks and sharks — creating their own shrunken skyline in front of the Vertigo, signaling that young kids likely lived there. It’s less juxtaposition for juxtaposition’s sake and more an accurate reflection of the breakneck duality of living in a place like L.A.
Even angels exist within the context of their environments. Our Fashion Nova baddie hangs off the Vertigo, a building that has used its ad space as physical clickbait and political posturing for over a decade. It’s promoting the kind of fast fashion brand that’s been regarded as a case study on the industry’s environmental impact. In the years the billboard has been up, it’s looked over dozens and dozens of car encampments like the one depicted in Gomez’s piece.
She feels dubious, yes. But no less like ours.
Julissa James: I’ve lived in L.A. for 13 years now. For me, the city and the architecture of the city is less the Frank Lloyd Wrights and Frank Gehrys — there’s that — but other landmarks that signal, “Oh, I’m home.” The Fashion Nova baddie above the Vertigo has always been that for me. Your piece is layered and there’s so much more to it than just that, but that’s the first thing I saw and was like, “Whoa. I need to talk to Sayre. We need to talk about ‘Vertigo.’”
Sayre Gomez: It’s like L.A.’s Statue of Liberty. It’s the city of anti-landmarks, you know what I mean? I mean, there’s the Hollywood sign, which I think is so telling, because it’s the remnants of a real estate venture. The city is built by real estate schemes and 100 years later we’re feeling the effects of it. You’ve got empty skyscrapers and a massive homeless catastrophe. L.A. doesn’t really have real landmarks. It has anti-landmarks.
JJ: When did the Fashion Nova billboard above the Vertigo click for you as something that felt representative of the city, or something that you wanted to depict?
SG: My studio is in Boyle Heights, so I pass that billboard multiple times a week. This is my 20th year in L.A. and that building’s always been a big mystery to me. It was empty when I moved here before this guy Shawn Farr bought it and turned it into Casa Vertigo. I think he probably makes more money on it with the ad space than anything. I know nobody who has ever been there. Very mysterious to me. So that’s what I was drawn to.
(Paul Salveson from David Kordansky Gallery)
The Vertigo has always been mysterious to me. And that whole fashion industry is mysterious to me — the kind of shmatta, American Apparel-adjacent, or maybe coming out of the wake of that. These kinds of businesses, or the representations of these businesses, how do they function and how do they flourish? Is it aboveboard? What more perfectly encapsulates that than that building? It’s this weird thing you can’t quite figure out but somehow it has a lot of money and then it’s an event space, supposedly billed as that. Clearly it’s this big ad thing, and I’m very interested in the changing dynamics of capital. The capital of yesteryear, which was based on the brick and mortar, where things are being made in a specific location, maybe on an assembly line or in a specific way, to a kind of capital that is based solely on advertising or on viewership. These beautiful buildings acting as pedestals for some kind of ad space, you know? It becomes an anti-landmark for me. Something where I’m like, “Oh, there’s that thing again.”
JJ: It’s this gorgeous Beaux Arts building …
SG: It’s a Freemason building!
JJ: When I’ve talked to some people about the Vertigo, they’re like, “the Fashion Nova building?”
SG: They always have the woman in the same pose — same pose, different clothes. If you remember before Fashion Nova, they would have these provocative ad campaigns or provocative slogans. “Twerk Miley” was up, remember that? They did a Trump one: “TRUMP NOW.” They did one for Kanye when he ran for president. The 10 and the 110 are literally the crossroads of the city, so it’s really poised to be a special building. It has a special designation because of the location.
JJ: Talk to me about the process of doing this piece. Where did it start and how did it evolve?
SG: I was cruising around that vicinity trying to see if I could get a good vantage point to take photos of Vertigo. And then I stumbled upon this car — the car that’s in the foreground of the painting. Anytime I see an encampment that has kids’ toys, things that reference back to the lives of children, it hits hard. But I like to lay it all out there. I like to make things confrontational. I want it to be difficult. The painting isn’t based on a one-to-one photo [Gomez paints from a composite rendering of images he’s taken around town], but I knew that I wanted to use that car, and I knew I wanted to get the Vertigo building, and so I started just messing around with different iterations. I could never find a good angle to take a good photo of the building, so I just went on Vertigo’s website and I was like, “I’m just using these.” I switched the sky and put a more moody, atmospheric sky in.
JJ: Which I loved, because we know that feeling — you’re merging onto the 110 and you see a beautiful sunset. The euphoria of like, “L.A. is the best city in the world.” But you know what? What I found so interesting about your piece is that it was revealing to me about myself, but also about so many of us that live in L.A. and have lived here for years and have developed a jadedness. When I saw your piece, immediately I was like, “Oh my God, the Vertigo! The Vertigo! The Vertigo!” And then I was like, “OK, wait, hold on, there’s so much more going on here.” But the fact that my eye went to that first instead of the car encampment, the kids’ toys, brought up a lot of questions about my own relationship to the city and the things that we choose to see, the things that maybe we’ve seen so much of that we subconsciously filter it out. Why was it important for you to put these two things up against each other in this way?
SG: Because the Vertigo is something everybody who lives here recognizes as central to a sort of framework of Los Angeles. And I think the encampment has become that as well. It’s connecting these integral components — something that’s more revelatory and more fun with something that’s more grave. That’s what I’m doing in my work at large. I use the sunsets and the beauty to create a dialogue, to entice people to sort of look a little bit at how things are contextualized, how things act, what’s actually happening. I don’t make things in a vacuum. I was working on this show and I was going to really push this agenda of incorporating more of my experience with my kids into the work. That’s also a double-edged sword. I wanted to interject some levity, because the work can get so dark. I wanted to bring in some iconography from their world and things that they get excited about. When you’re juxtaposing that with really stark things, it becomes darker. I want to thicken the stock a little bit. Make things a little more complex.
Phil Pritchard of the Hockey Hall of Fame works the 2019 NHL Awards at the Mandalay Bay Events Center on June 19, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
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