‘Behind Right, Down + Circle: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’, a book about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with Author Cole Nowicki
Book promo shot by ECW Press
1999; the year that was feared to be the last ever, the year The Sopranos and The Matrix came out, the year that Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ reached the top of the charts, but most importantly of all it was the year that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was launched.
Paired with Tony Hawks 900 at the X Games, 1999 could well have been the biggest ever year for skateboarding in mainstream culture, and it’s pretty much all thanks to Tony himself.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater introduced the world to skateboarding, professional skateboarders, the way skateboarders spoke, the music skateboarders were listening to and skateboarding culture as a whole in a way they hadn’t seen before.
Recently, Cole Nowicki a writer and skateboarder from Canada wrote all about the cultural impact of the game in his book, Right, Down + Circle: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I caught up with him to talk about the book, the game and its impact on him as a kid and skateboarder growing up in Northern Alberta.
If you want to read more from Cole subscribe to his weekly newsletter on Substack, Simple Magic. It might be the best bit of skateboard nerdery on the internet.
Book launch shot (with Tony's Cameo video playing in the background) by Jen Sookfong Lee
So, yesterday, Tony Hawk released what he claims is his last ever video part. Did you watch it?
Oo yeah.
How good was it?
You know, it’s funny because there is a chapter in the book on this practice he has where he retires tricks as he gets older as he feels like they are beyond his physical means. This video part he says is his last part and then you watch it, and you are like; are you sure Tony, are you sure this is your last part, this is pretty fucked up [laughs].
I just don’t understand how someone at that age who has been through everything he’s been through can still skate to that level.
He broke his femur, got the surgery, needed to get another surgery because he started skating again too soon and then recovered enough to do a frontside 360 powerslide to backside 5-0 on his vert ramp. He is not only unparalleled in terms of the career he’s had but just literally what he has done on a skateboard. It is pretty mind-boggling to see. I loved that part.
I loved it too; I honestly believe he should win Skater of The Year this year. I think this is the perfect segue into the book you have recently published, Right, Down + Circle: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. A book about the cultural impact of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. You’ve said that you came up with the idea to write the book from a short essay you wrote for your newsletter, Simple Magic, out of all of the newsletters you’ve written, why was this the one you decided to turn into a book?
The book is a part of a series that my publisher, ECW Press does called Pop Classics, where writers focus on a piece of pop culture ephemera or notoriety. I saw that there was a call for submissions, and I was thinking about some of the pieces that I’ve done and that one stood out as one that I could flesh out a little further.
Why did you choose the video game as opposed to Tony Hawk himself or something broader?
I think Tony Hawk is very much a cultural figure in himself. The video game is what brought him into the wider public sphere, that was the Trojan horse for him as a personality and also for skateboarding. I thought it was interesting to focus on that, then you can touch on other things surrounding the game, like the history of video games, the soundtrack and how that was influential alongside the skateboarding in the game. There is more to focus on with the game than just the guy and there have also been Tony Hawk biographies before too.
Yeah, for sure, there was the documentary too, which probably came out around the time you were writing this, right?
Yeah, I was already working on the book, I reached out to Tony to interview him, but he was unavailable because he had just broken his femur, which he did I think the day the trailer launched for the documentary.
Did you guys end up getting in contact about the book?
No, I never got to talk to him, unfortunately. I tried. Afterwards, I did reach out via Cameo [laughs] and sent him a book. He posted about it, I’m not sure if he has read it, but he has at least seen it and held it because he took a photo of it.
Wait you reached out to him through Cameo?
Yeah, that was sort of my last resort plan. I had reached out through the proper channels of his representation, first for an interview, but they said he was unavailable but thank you for your time, they were very kind. Then I reached out once I had a draft of the book done to see if he wanted to read it and I didn’t hear back. I sent him an Instagram DM, but I imagine he probably gets a thousand of them a day. Then it was getting towards the book launch in September, and I was like I have to get something going here, I have to reach out to the man. So, I got a Cameo where I requested that he just shout out the book, say whatever the hell he wants about it and I’ll play it at the book launch, which he did. He said in the Cameo that he wanted a copy of the book, so I reached out to his representation again and was like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this Cameo, Tony wants the book’ and they responded almost immediately. I think he has this nice little scheme going on here, you just pay for the Cameo, and you get in touch [laughs].
[Laughs] That’s incredible. As someone who had just started skateboarding around the time of the release of the first game, what impact did the game have on you?
For me personally, it kept me skateboarding while growing up in Northern Alberta where you could only skate outside for six months of the year. It kept me connected to skateboarding in the way that it does, I was able to do the tricks that I would never be able to do in real life, and it kept me interested in skateboarding. It did the same thing that it did for so many other people, it introduced me to music that I wouldn’t have heard of otherwise, and it introduced me to skateboarders I didn’t know and I got interested in skateboarding culture, which then inspired me to get into it a little further. It led me to go get skate magazines. I'd go to the local grocery store to get the Transworld, the only skateboarding magazine we got in town. My older brother got me into skateboarding, but it was the video game that kept me going after he stopped.
The book has elements of an autobiography in there. How was it writing a text that was both informative for the readers but also personal to you?
I think including personal elements helps the reader get engaged as well because either they’ve had a similar experience or they can relate to it on a level that maybe parallels of experience of their own, whether it’s through another video game or piece of pop culture. It was easy for me because it is my lived experience and then I just tied it into the subject matter at hand.
It’s funny for me to talk to you about this because I am twenty-two and a product of EA Skate, my friends and I in primary school were playing the game before I even started skateboarding. Starting skateboarding for me was adjacent to that game. Why do you think the EA Skate series didn’t have the same cultural effect?
Well, I think Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came first and had a substantial effect on pop culture maybe not to the point where they started skateboarding but getting them aware enough to where once another game like EA Skate came out, they were interested. EA Skate took the mantle once the Tony Hawk games started depreciating in quality over the years. EA Skate had the same effect for a lot of people. The fact that it was more of a simulator it got people to nerd out about skateboarding on an even deeper level.
Switch tailblock shot by Carter Spinks
Yeah, you’re right about the nerding out, simulator element, it is closer to real skateboarding.
Yeah, that is what Tony Hawk wanted too. He wanted a game that was easier to play, accessible and basically an arcade version of skateboarding. I talk about it in the book, there is a game Thrasher Skate and Destroy. That game is very hard, it is not easy to play it is a pseudo-simulator. Tony Hawk was originally attached to that game with Rockstar. Once he started to realise that the learning curve of that game was a little bit steeper than he wanted, that’s when he was approached by Activision and Neversoft and that’s when he jumped ship for something that he thought was a little bit more user-friendly.
Do you think the game would’ve had as much of an impact if his name wasn’t attached to it?
I don’t think so. I think Tony is what brought it to the fore, there is a lot that went into that too. When the game was launched, he was essentially at the height of his career and notoriety. He just had his Sportscenter highlight of landing the 900 at the X Games which was a month before the game was released. For the everyday person they generally know who Tony Hawk is so if he is co-signing a video game you are probably going to assume it is going to be good.
The game had such a large cultural impact that we still see today. Do you think this was the first real step of skateboarding entering the mainstream?
I don’t know if it was the first real step, but I think it helped carry it firmly into the mainstream. X Games was already happening, it was on NBC, so skateboarding was getting that big-time exposure. I think that in conjunction with the game helped, for sure.
The soundtrack is synonymous with the game, there are Tony Hawks Pro Skater cover bands, do you think the soundtrack helped cement the game's legacy?
I think it did have a big part of it for sure. For a lot of folks that was their first introduction to punk music that maybe isn’t the most sanitised version of what they would’ve got from their local record store. It helped represent whether accurate or not what the sort of attitude of skateboarding and skateboarders. I think it played a big part in what carried the game going for as long as it has been in pop culture. If I remember correctly I don’t think the bands got paid very much either.
It’s funny they didn’t get paid that much, because think about how beneficial it was for a band like Goldfinger anyway.
Yeah, I don’t think people understood the reach that video games had at that point. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater wasn’t the first game to have actual recorded music in it but it was one of the first to have a soundtrack that took off like that. The impact goes far beyond what the check they would’ve got. In the book, there is a quote from an interview with the lead singer from Goldfinger which talks about going on tour opening for The Bloodhound Gang and when they would play Superman, they would get a bigger crowd reaction than anyone else on the tour and that’s because of the video game.
The way video games work, if you play a video game for long enough and if it has a soundtrack, you’re going to have those songs drilled into your brain. It helps people build connections to those songs in a pretty unique way. In terms of having a soundtrack take off like that, it did a lot for those bands at that moment. A band like Primus were probably fine but a band like Goldfinger, it bumped them up to a level they weren’t at before.
Blunt front heel GIF was filmed by Will Pearson from recent video kitty
Is Tony Hawks Pro Skater the first video game with a soundtrack that was that influential? I can’t think of any other video games with a soundtrack that is referenced so regularly.
From my research, it seems like the most popular for sure.
What is your favourite fact that you found out about the game while making the book?
When the skaters were first featured in the game they got a tidy check, that from all reported accounts was $100,000 to be in the game. In the subsequent games, an unnamed skateboarder approached Neversoft and said they would do it for free and that led to those $100,000 cheques getting dramatically cut. As they realised, they didn’t have to pay people as much money as they thought to be in the game.
Do you have anything else you’d like to say about the book or anyone you’d like to thank?
Thank you to you for wanting to chat with me. I hope if people pick up the book, they enjoy it. Physically the book is a pretty slim title so it is the perfect stocking stuffer for this Christmas!.