Legendary skater Tony Hawk breaks down 21 increasingly complex skateboarding tricks, from a standard ollie to a kickflip to a McTwist to a 1080 to a couple of tricks that have never been done. As someone who has always been in awe of what skaters can do but hasn’t logged much on-board time myself, I learned a lot from this.
See also a beginning skater learning how to do a kickflip in under 6 hours.
Here’s Kevin Staab, Tony Hawk, and Greg Smith watching a 1983 video of free style skateboarder Rodney Mullen. “Look at him just creating modern street skating, right there”. “Yeah, he goes through this run twice. I’ve seen this video before.” The 1983 version of Tony Hawk makes an appearance at around 3:50 trying to figure out how to ride 2 boards.
This Mullen video from 1984 is even cooler to watch, but there’s no commentary. 1984, by the way, is pretty much the most talked about year on this site.
At 42 years old, with the smile crinkles around his eyes to prove it, Tony Hawk can still do a 900 on a skateboard.
According to Wikipedia, Hawk is one of only four men in the world who have done this trick (he first did it in 1999). He announced on Twitter that he’d done the trick — “P.S. I made a 9” — and on his way out of town left one of his boards at the airport for a lucky fan to find. (thx, dens)