Hawk Drops In on London
by: Brad
Lilley
EXPN.com
Home of the dreaded foot-and-mouth disease and Jack The Ripper, we
are talking about good-old mother England. This is where the sheep are
nervous and so are the farmers. In fact, you can still smell the stench of
burning sheep.
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| Tony Hawk puts
on a great show. |
Stop No. 1 of The Tony Hawk Gigantic Skate Park Tour was at Play
Station Park in a London suburb. The park was located underneath a highway
overpass. A fat crowd of two to three thousand blokes were on hand to
witness history in the making. Bucky Lasek, Bam Margera, Kris Marcovich,
Steve Berra and the Bird Man himself, Tony Hawk, handled the skate board
duties.
BMX riders Mat Hoffman, Roof Top (Mike Escamilla) and the host of X
today, Rick Thorne (Thorney) were tearing things up as usual. The street
demo was insane. Steve Berra was busting switch kick flips off a three to
four foot ledge and Kris Markovitch was doing these huge blindside 360s
over a 7-foot roller. MTV star Bam Margera was laying down these 20-foot
nose grinds to the cheers of the crowd.
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| EXPN2Day host
Rick Thorne with the air, Mat Hoffman in the
background. |
The vert demo was pretty much off the Richter scale. Charles Lasek,
oops, I mean Bucky throwing down Nollie kick flips to tail slides. Tony
had his usual plethora of tricks: 540 variels, 720s and crowd pleasing
inverts. I will never understand why crowds scream and yell when somebody
does an invert a trick that was perfected in the early '80s.
The demo lasted about four hours, but that wasn't enough; Kris, Bam
and Steve decided to have an impromptu expression session on the street
course that lasted another hour. You would have thought they had had
enough after the first four hours. Sometimes I think these guys are
androids or something. The crowd got their money's worth even though it
was a free event.
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| Jackass star
Bam Margera with sick grindage. |
The tour bus we used was sweet. It was complete with two
refrigerators, two DVD players and two VCRs. This bus is the very same bus
that old school-rockers Guns 'n Roses will be using when we are done with
it. Instead of calling it the Tony Hawk Gigantic Skate Park Tour, I think
it should be called The Tony Hawk Rock Star Tour. Our bus driver, Ian,
started to freak out when all the kids from the demo surrounded the bus,
chanting "Tony, Tony, Tony." I think he thought they were gonna tip the
bus over.
What a day! Our next stop is Paris, France, for the Van's Big Air
Show. Stop No. 1 in the books; one down and, like, fifteen to go.
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