Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1477 - Tony Hawk
Uploaded: 2020-05-20T19:00:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1477 - Tony Hawk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-05-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1477 - Tony Hawk' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-05-20. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1477 - Tony Hawk

and we're rolling how are you Tony awesome thank you my pleasure thanks for
having thanks for coming
here man yeah hey thanks for inviting me it's an honor it's interesting to see
you even just
fuck around with your skateboard just the way you maneuver it so you're so adept
it's really
weird like the way you move your feet and just pick it up and oh I mean it
really is just at
this point kind of extension our body it seems like and it's I guess it's weird
I don't think
about how comfortable I am and a lot of times we'll be in a city or something
or just like now
I didn't know where to park right so I just parked somewhere kind of close and
just I go skate and I
feel way better about doing that than like parking and then walking somewhere
and it just you know I
know I can get around people and sort of be indiscreet and and uh stealthy indiscreet
well I'm just saying
like skateboard is indiscreet that's ridiculous that might be I do get weird
looks for sure for sure yeah
they'll I get a lot of do a kickflips out from car window really yeah oh that's
funny yeah that's
my curse that I that I that's my burden I carry I'm seeing these new skateboards
that are they look
like convertibles where as these guys flip the board the wheels flip up and go
oh yeah that's a that's
that's sort of a phenomenon sort of a social media thing going on ah like so
you can see it in slow
mo is that what it is no where the board is actually a contraption right yeah
yeah I don't I don't really
understand what that is there's a there's a select few people doing that yeah
and I've seen a couple
where they actually have figured out how to make their board grind and then do
a flip around a rail as
as they jump back on it oh boy yeah that's it's very specialized though I can't
say that's a movement
it's just a few key people that are doing it how many bones do you have to
break to perfect that
but I see this dude sliding down rails I'm like how many times do you fuck that
up and snap a forearm
I well skating went through a different different waves of disciplines
basically and in the early 90s
it was all street right and so what I did was was vert skating that was kind of
dying out so I I was
skating street a lot too and I realized I was not fit to be a street skater the
third time I rolled my ankle
like both ankles twice then the third time the other one I was like I don't
want to do handrails anymore
this is not working for me this impact is I'm not gonna be able to skate
anymore if I keep doing this
yeah I see these kids like when you whenever you go like near like a large
office building that has a lot of
outdoor space and you see them using the rails and stuff I'm like how many
breaks can you have
before like I there I think that it's a little deceiving because people do know
how to fall
relatively safely from from stuff like that but they get addicted right they're
doing that probably
every day yeah for sure and and there's there's all kinds of different styles
so there's textiles
where it's more people are skating ledges and benches and they're you know they're
flipping their board
grinding flipping out stuff like that where it's low impact but super technical
and then there's just the
stuntmen who are doing the big rails the big gaps um you know jumping fences
and how did this happen
like what was like how did it go from just riding a skateboard like when I was
a kid um you and I are
the same age but when I was I guess I was probably like 11 or 12 I had a
skateboard I was just riding
it on the street like all my friends would just ride a skateboard on the street
like what happened
like how did it get to be like grinding across benches and railings like I
think there's a well
there's a pretty deep history there of how it got there but uh skating was yeah
just more like a
transportation toy and then it was really the the dogtown crew that took it to
a new level where it
was like oh you can use this to do aerials and skate swimming pools and they
were just trying to
emulate their surfing and so then skate parks started cropping up skating got
popular in the late 70s
early 80s and then it was all swimming pools and then uh maybe like four years
later the skateboarding kind
of started falling in popularity the the skate parks couldn't get their
insurance anymore because the
liability was crazy oh yeah and so then the streets became the skate park
because there was nowhere else
to go and there was this there were a few key skaters that that figured out how
to use like the urban
landscape as a skate park and then that was it like it was all bets are off
skating kind of took off in
the underground as the street culture street sport and then people started
doing handrails ledges benches
stairs because they just didn't have parks how much of an impact did the
internet have on it because it
seems like once kids could see all these youtube videos of people doing all
this crazy it must
have really accelerated it uh i i think what it did i mean especially in the
last 10 years it even the
playing field you didn't have to live in southern california you didn't have to
live in new york or be
near where the industry is you could just be in your little town as long as you're
putting out content
and it's progressive you're gonna get noticed and i think that's awesome oh
yeah that is awesome yeah
yeah that's one of the cool things about it like you said evened out the
playing field
yeah and and you know people are making careers as skaters now in the most
unlikely places
well you are the lance armstrong of skating and this is what i mean i don't
mean that you got caught
doing drugs what i mean is that you you're the guy like when people talk about
professional skaters
tony hawk like i don't know a single bike rider other than lance armstrong i
mean greg um there was
that other guy greg lamond yeah see but i can't remember him real quick but for
you it's that's got
to be strange because like you were the first and you're for sure the most
prominent like how did you
pull that off uh well mostly longevity by surviving the first wave of skating
in the 80s well it was
actually kind of the second wave of skating in the 80s where i had a pretty
good career um i was doing
really well in competition especially in the in the mid to late 80s and then as
skating kind of went
underground i never quit and started my own skate company in 1992 and then when
the x games came
into play i was still kind of on top of my game i did really well there and i
think a lot of people
carried over my name from that that first round where they were skaters in the
80s and now maybe their
kids skate and they're like oh i remember that guy you know and their kids are
watching me on the x games
and then when our video game came out in 1999 that's when everything changed
for sure well you were famous for
skating when you were like 17 or something right uh i turned pro when i was 14
yeah and then but i mean
that when i say that it seems it might seem magical but at the time skating was
this little tiny scene
so when i first when i literally went pro i filled was filling out an entry
form to a competition and i had
already reached the top of the amateur ranks and there was a little box that
said pro and a little box that
said am so i clicked i checked the pro box and that was it i was pro no one was
offering me a contract
no one had champagne you know what i mean and and like my coach was i'll never
forget stacy perelta
was looking over my shoulder and i checked it and he's like okay that's it that
was it yeah wow but
you had a coach uh we had it we had a team manager um he he's the one who put
me on what is now
considered the bones brigade but the company was pal perelta and that was sort
of the elite crew of
skaters in the in the early 80s um and i was the super young newbie on the team
like super skinny dorky
kid and a lot of the guys that were established were like this guy really what
do you what is that jim
oh is that you that's me at age 17. wow time flies does it freak you out
looking at that um
i think it's i mean i see that photo making the rounds so uh it's cool i'm
actually so by the time i
turned 17 i was kind of doing well in competition and making money so i'm
literally sitting outside
of my house that i bought while i was a senior in high school in that photo
which was a challenge
trying to stay focused on school work when you have the party house that's
crazy you own a house
yeah wow a duplex but yeah it was my own place but you know like when you're a
senior
oh this so-and-so's parents are out of town parties at his house like my
parents were never home
so everyone's going to my house but what did your parents think about you
buying a house it was
my dad's idea really yeah because he saw me really not understanding finances
or or how lucky
i was and i was just throwing money away you know on cars and trips and sharper
image just the most
ridiculous things and then he's like i really think you should invest your
money did you get a massage
chair sharp image massage chair get one of those no but i bought between okay
this is a long story
but my sister and i went in on a tanning bed together it was like i used it
once she used it because she
it was helpful to her skin i'm not going to say why but you know she had a
legitimate reason for it
but i was like yeah tanning bed like i'm never going to go tan but you know you
got to have it where did you
live at the time in uh north county san diego carlsbad you don't need a tanning
bed exactly yeah that was
it the first time i went i was like why am i laying in there i could just go to
the i could just go outside
350 days a year yeah that's hilarious but um i mean it's it almost you know
when you're that age and
and you're you're doing well you think that somehow that's like a status symbol
did you sleep in that house by yourself when you were 17 no i had three
roommates
oh god that's so crazy same age one was a little bit older he was a good friend
of mine pro skater
and he was the only guy that actually had a job and he was tortured for like
two years
because we were up super late all the time making noise and he'd have to get up
at you know 7am go to
work he was doing he was doing uh line stripping like um back when you'd have
to uh color separate
for magazines and stuff like that um what a bummer for him such a bummer yeah
and still try like he's
still trying to make it as a pro skater but clearly he had to get a job and it
must be an exhausted too
yeah he would leave these kind of nasty notes for us in the morning so were you
in high school like so
you're a senior year in high school you had your own place did you do any
school work at all i did yeah
um but you must have been like well this i can already buy a house i i don't
know i i think it was
more because my parents valued education my mom was an educator she was
actually like taught in a um
college oh wow so i i felt that i was going to be a disappointment if i didn't
at least graduate high
school and i was always pretty advanced like i was in the gifted program and
you know i was a grade ahead
in a lot of the subjects so by the time i was a senior i only needed four
classes to graduate um so i
went to school until lunchtime every day and then i was out oh wow um and then
i got my diploma and my dad
not strongly suggested i go look at colleges and so just to humor him i went
looking at like a
you know a city college in our area and looked around the campus like yeah oh
that's cool i guess
sure and i just knew that it was my opportunity to really chase this and to
embrace all these
opportunities i was getting i mean i was i was literally out of high school
onto a hollywood movie
set gleaming the cube oh that's right so i i was out just graduated high school
and then moved to north
hollywood for two months to shoot the movie that was like what 86 it was it was
shot in 88 i think 87
wow god i'm remembering that now wow what what a craz