I never get nervous during an interview. Never. Bring on Michael, Janet, Bush I and II, Marilyn and Charles Manson. See how Saddam likes my questions of mass destruction. Bin Laden, no problem. Today, for the first time in my strange career of prying into the lives of others, I have butterflies, dry mouth, sweaty palms. I remind myself that it’s only a skateboarder, but the smarter part of myself shouts back—this is not only a skateboarder, but the top skateboarder in the history of the sport, idiot! I am pacing, biting my nails, reduced to a nervous lump before he even darkens the door of Aaron Chang’s photo studio. My greatest comfort is that back in the day his competitors must have felt much worse when faced with the news that they were going to skate against Tony Hawk.

For the record, Tony Hawk is:
• The inventor of nearly 100 skateboard tricks.
• The name behind and a co-designer of the
Tony Hawk Pro Skater series.
• A sport’s figure recognized around the world.
• Arguably the number-one action sports star in the world today.

Like Ali in his prime. Worse. Better. No athlete in our time has ever been so dominant for so long. Maybe I’m just a geekie groupie at heart, salivating at the thought of getting the Tony Hawk decks spread before me, autographed by him. But take away those 186,000 miles per second reflexes. Subtract the years when wheels were mere extensions of magic feet, and you are left with a flesh and blood man, a man who was once a hyperactive boy without much direction. He grew up eating when he was hungry, drinking when he was thirsty, refusing to touch his vegetables and crapping in his diapers.
    My job gets a little easier when I realize that he was once just another kid on the block struggling to ride a bicycle in a straight line. So, how does that kid become the best in the world at something that millions of other kids are obsessed with? What made him roll harder, faster and longer than the rest of the pack?
    I’m mid-thought, when he enters wearing hooded sweatshirt, jeans and (presumably his own model) skate shoes. He hugs friends and shakes hands with those he has never met, including me. I wouldn’t call him warm, but there’s no rock-star vibe about him. In fact, if you weren’t familiar with his face and vertical frame, you might never know that you are in the presence of one of the world’s greatest athletes.
    He’s looks taller and more serious than I had imagined, the seriousness a possible result of his lengthy recover from a bad fall, caused by a trick that went awry. Something about him reminds me of the predatory bird that some distant relative of his was no doubt named for. He moves fluidly and without excess. His nose is sharp, and his eyes sometimes jerk to track abrupt sounds. Sitting on the couch for his interview, I get the feeling that he could fall asleep there for days if he could—maybe the strain of raising three boys or the lingering effects of pain medication. That’s enough to deal with and I decide not to question him about his recent divorce. When the cameras quit rolling and he is not being spoken to, he looks a little bit sad.
    We knew the myth, now we wanted to know the man. Who is Tony Hawk when the wheels quit spinning and the ramps have all closed down for the night?

Risen Magazine: Have you ever been fat?
Tony Hawk: No, but I have a lot of potential because my dad was the same build as I am until he stopped being active, and then he blew up. I have the same eating habits that he did, so…

RM: What are your eating habits?
TH: Constant eating, four or five meals a day.

RM: Do you have any recurring pain from your injuries?
TH: Not really. I had the worst injury of my career last November, and it’s been the hardest to come back from. It’s hard to get my strength back. I can do my moves, but it’s hard to get the speed up for them. If I skate too long one day, I really feel it the next. I’m not used to that long comeback process. Before this my only real injury was a broken elbow. This time I fractured my pelvis and my skull and broke my thumb, so I guess I made up for lost time.

RM: What happened?
TH: I was doing a full loop and didn’t have enough speed and I fell all the way. I tried to jump to my feet, but I ended up landing on my hip and my head.

RM: Were you out?
TH: I was out, and I woke up in an ambulance.

RM: What did you think when you woke up?
TH: My two younger kids were there [at the skate session] because they had these chimps that skate, and the first thing that came to my mind was, where are my boys? My friend had been there and I knew that he was capable of taking care of them. I was supposed to pick up my oldest son from school and I looked at my watch and I thought, Aw, I’m late. In the ambulance they were saying, “Don’t worry about it, it’s all handled,” and I just started trying to remember what took place that day, thinking, I jumped and…okay I got it; I remember.

RM: Have you ever been in the middle of a trick and thought, “Oh no, I shouldn’t have done that?”
TH: Yeah, definitely, especially ones that require a great deal of commitment. You’re just not feeling up to it, or you’re not prepared.

RM: You’ve been everywhere; where does a pro athlete go on vacation?
TH: I just like to stay home. To be a pro skater these days requires a lot of travel. It’s not like you want to go away on vacation, because you’re just going away again.

RM: What’s the longest that you’ve skated in one day?
TH: I’ve been on some pretty heavy video shoots for five or six hours. Those are the most tiring because they expect you to do your hardest stuff.

RM: As a kid, were you a natural, did you work hard, or both?
TH: I don’t think that anyone who saw me skate in my early years would have said that I had natural ability. I was really skinny, and I had a weird style, and I looked like I was about to fall all the time. I just worked really hard at skating.

RM: Apparently you were hyper as a kid; were you on Ritalin or anything?
TH: [Laughs] No, it was before all of that. Back then they just called it hyper and you moved on.

RM: If you had to look for a job outside of the skate industry, where nobody knew you, what would you do?
TH: I’d probably work with computers or do video editing, something with video and sound, because I’ve always been into it. People call me for tech support and with computer problems.

RM: Did you help to design your Pro Skater series?
TH: Yeah, every single one, from start to finish.

RM: Is it fun?
TH: It’s super fun; you get to play video games and consider it work.

RM: Some kid out there only knows you through the video games; what do they do when they realize that Tony Hawk is a real person?
TH: I’d like to think that people know me as a real person. Usually people realize when playing the game that these characters are based in reality.

RM: Have you ever had an experience where somebody didn’t know the difference?
TH: I got an e-mail through our fan club site. It was from a parent saying, “I’m looking for information on the Tony Hawk, and I realized that you may indeed just be a video character, and I wondered if anyone had any information, and if it’s a real person.”

RM: How did you feel about that?
TH: I thought it was ironic.

RM: What drives you?
TH: Learning new stuff. To explore the unknown and to do things that people maybe thought were impossible, but things that I thought I was capable of.

RM: Are you learning new things as a skater?
TH: Yeah, all the time. That’s the only reason I consider myself a professional and that I’m out there doing demos, because I feel like my skills are still improving and I can justify doing it on a public level.

RM: You’re obviously a competitive person; does it bother you to see a comp that you haven’t entered, knowing that you could win it?
TH: Not really. I competed for so long, and I was expected to do well and keep my standings up, and I’ve had enough. I’m very happy with what I’m doing now.

RM: How do you channel your competitive nature?
TH: Through my skating, and challenges in the industry. I don’t need the challenges of having to stay on my skateboard for 45 seconds in front of judges. If I wanted to make some big comeback in competition I’d be under so much scrutiny; it wouldn’t even be fun for me.

RM: Do you let your kids watch Viva La Bam, or Jackass?
TH: [Laughs] My 11-year-old is mature enough to handle Jackass the TV show, not the movie. There’re certain parts of it [the movie] that I’d let him watch, but not all of it. My other kids are 4 and 2—they think that the funniest show on earth is the Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. My 2-year-old calls it the funny show.
RM: Do you think that shows like Jackass are dangerous to kids?
TH: You know, some kids are daredevils and maybe that will inspire them to be daredevilish and get on camera. At the same time kids are always crazy, and parents are always going to blame whatever their influences might be.

RM: I recently saw two moms in the park. Their kids were on the swings and they both had helmets on.
TH: [Laughs hard] That’s great. In the U.S., people really want to place blame. You know, the whole Janet Jackson thing…we can handle seeing a boob on TV—we’re not all going to explode and become perverts.

RM: Would you consider doing your own reality TV show?
TH: Uh, not really. There’s nothing in my private life that I’d be afraid to show; I just don’t know that anyone would be that interested in my private life. I just wouldn’t want to expose my kids to that.

RM: Do you know Bam Margera?
TH: Yes.

RM: Is he the character that we see on TV?
TH: He’s very calculated. He may look like he does everything on a whim, but he has all that stuff thought out very, very well. It’s not fabricated, but it’s much more planned than people think it is. He has a lot of great ideas.

RM: Have you ever been in a fistfight?
TH: Only when I was really, really young. It was in the schoolyard.

RM: How’d you do?
TH: I didn’t do very well, but I was laughing at the guy because he was beating me up over a basketball game. I was laughing