11 minute read
Tony Hawk and Vincent Matheron
Birdman & the Joker
Dynamic duo: Tony Hawk and Vincent Matheron in Encinitas, California, on March 24, 2021. “Tony has had the greatest success in skateboarding and yet he’s the humblest guy I’ve ever met,” says Matheron
One is the most famous skateboarder of all time, the other a young skater with his destiny yet to unfold. Thirty years separates TONY HAWK and VINCENT MATHERON, but what connects them is mutual respect, a love of their craft and a shared mission to push it forward
Vincent Matheron
ony is up for the story with Vincent, but now Vincent has broken his ankle and is going back to France for an operation.” It was in June last year – when The Red Bulletin received this WhatsApp message from California – that we conceded 2020 truly was a crock of shit. It looked as if the opportunity for a crossover story with Tony and Vincent was buried for ever.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First, some introductions… ‘Tony’ is Tony Hawk – skateboard pioneer, inventor of an insane number of tricks, architect of modern skateboarding, and one of the world’s most influential actionsports entrepreneurs. Nicknamed ‘Birdman’ – a reference to both his name and his ability in the air – the 53-year-old is a media icon whose name appears on the most successful skateboarding video-game franchise of all time (the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series); who warranted his own ‘Got Milk?’ US print ad (a lactose-tolerant A-lister club that also includes Britney Spears, Serena Williams and Kermit the Frog); and who has even featured several Hollywood films including Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, the first three Jackass movies and Sharknado 5: Global Swarming. In short, he’s a superstar.
‘Vincent’ is 23-year-old French skateboarder Vincent Matheron. When Matheron was just four, his father and uncle took him to the famous Prado Bowl beachfront skatepark in his hometown of Marseille, and he hasn’t stopped skating since. Relaxed, with an endearing personality, Matheron has
“T a skill for making others laugh. “My nickname is ‘The Joker’,” he tells us from his apartment in Encinitas, California. He also has an instinct for seizing the opportunities his passions present. When an 11-year-old Matheron was encouraged by his future manager, skater-turned-agent Jérémie Grynblat, to take part in skate competitions, the youngster didn’t hesitate, although out of respect for his parents – his mother is a teacher, his father a refrigeration technician – he made sure not to neglect his school work. Matheron took his science baccalaureate before enrolling to study PE, sports science and technology, but it wasn’t all plain sailing. “[The teachers] wanted me to be good at sports I’d never done; I wanted to be graded for skateboarding, not badminton. And with all the skate competitions, I didn’t really have time to do any work. The school wasn’t very flexible; they didn’t really understand what I was doing.” So, at the end of 2019, he gave up on that and moved to the US. And that’s where The Joker met the Birdman.
Rolling with the punches
“I was super-close friends with his sons and that’s how it all happened,” says Matheron of meeting Hawk. “Tony is always at competitions as a host or commentator for US TV and he always brings his family; it’s almost part of the deal. I’d meet them at competitions, especially Miles and Calvin [Goodman – Hawk’s stepsons, 21 and 18 respectively] and they became my
Tony Hawk
Flip side: it’s a case of each to his own at the Hawk family’s skatepark, but while Tony is content to focus on his favoured vert skating, he admires Matheron’s willingness to mix styles
Tony Hawk
best friends in the US. Tony speaks a bit of French, and I have a big mouth, so we got on well. I’d talk to him the way I would to anyone, and I think he appreciated that. He can tell when people are trying to get something out of him. I had no interest in trying to get anything out of him.”
“Vincent is someone who’s easy to get along with and doesn’t expect very much,” says Hawk, whose family were kind enough to put Matheron up for a couple of months when he arrived in California. The Frenchman lived in a house in their garden “between the pool and the skatepark”. Hawk even invited Matheron to use his ramps, which brings us full circle to where he got that injury in early June last year.
“I had a trimalleolar [three-part] fracture in my right ankle,” recalls Matheron a year later. “I broke my medial, lateral and posterior malleoli. I still have 15 screws, three pins and two plates in. I should have had all those removed in March, but I’d prefer to wait until after this summer’s competitions.”
Out of action, Matheron returned to France. “I went back to my parents’ place, but I didn’t have a bed there any more,” he says. “My brother was in my old room, so my father put a mattress on the living-room floor.” It was a literal ocean away from the Hawk family garden, and Matheron, who had been reaching new heights in California, wasn’t on top form. “The summer was approaching and I was injured – bedridden for a month and a half, and on crutches for a month and a half after that. Three months of doing nothing. I was in a bad way.”
What followed was an intense period of rehabilitation for Matheron, first at a clinic in Capbreton, south-west France, then at the Red Bull Athlete Performance Center in Thalgau, Austria. Once his doctor gave him the go-ahead, the skater returned to the US to resume his sport, reconnecting with Miles and Calvin. Birdman was never far away.
“Vincent is unique,” says Hawk. “He has his own style and isn’t just trying to do the tricks that are cool right now. You can be successful in skating without the absolute best skills if you’re fun to watch and fun to connect with. Vincent has the skills but also a very good personality, and that can take you further. Even if you’re the best skater, if nobody wants to work with you it only goes so far. You need to be someone who others enjoy being around.”
As far as Matheron is concerned, Hawk practises everything he preaches in that regard. “Others in his position might look down on you,” says the young skater. “Tony has had the greatest success in skateboarding and yet he’s the humblest guy I’ve ever met. I have so much respect for that.”
This cross-generational courtesy is something Hawk believes to be one of skate culture’s most positive characteristics – there’s a reverence from the younger generation to the scene’s pioneers and elders; a high regard for those who rode the
Tony Hawk
sidewalk before them. “I think the respect now is greater than ever,” says Hawk, “because of the information available to [the current generation]. Now, someone like Vincent can understand the origins of the tricks he does; the reasons why people do certain styles or techniques. Ten or 15 years ago, those generations didn’t easily have access to that information.”
Birdman begins
Hawk’s skateboarding story began at the age of nine, when his older brother gave him his first board. By the time he was 14, in 1982, he’d turned pro, but the rulebook on what that meant was still largely unwritten. Among Hawk’s mentors was Stacy Peralta, one of the Z-Boys – the legendary surfers-turnedskaters whose experiments in the drought-drained backyard pools of mid-’70s California laid the foundation for modern aerial skate tricks. By the ’80s, Peralta was a successful skatebrand owner, team manager and film director who devised a visionary and sophisticated aesthetic around skateboard culture with, among others, his famous Bones Brigade team, which brought together Hawk and other phenomenal skaters such as Steve Caballero and Tommy Guerrero.
“[Peralta] gave us the opportunity to do things beyond the skate industry, like commercials, movies, other forms of promotion – he showed us that skateboarding can be more than just a hobby,” says Hawk. Peralta also taught him not to focus solely on skills or practice but to develop an overarching, inquiring and diverse approach to his passion. “If you want to have any longevity, if you want to have a long career, you have to think outside of your industry,” Hawk adds.
In 1992, Hawk formed his own skate company, Birdhouse, but no matter what activities he engaged in, it was the lessons he learned from his sport that guided him. “A lot of people who
Board meeting: two generations of skateboarding talent talk tricks during down time in California
don’t skate, they just give up, but when you skate you know you have to keep trying, keep trying, keep trying until you get it. It’s about taking risks, enjoying taking risks, the value of perseverance – trying over and over to do something, not just physically but also in business. Skateboarding is a community, but it’s more about doing it yourself. It teaches you to find your own path and create your own style.”
As Hawk learnt from Peralta’s perseverance before him, so now Matheron does from Hawk. “Tony is a really good coach,” says the Frenchman. “Among other things, he taught me how to do a ramp trick called the ‘invert’ [a one-handed handstand at the top of a ramp]. He’d give me tips: ‘Keep your head more like this. Place your hand between your legs – it’ll help.’ He’d film me, then we’d watch the videos. I posted a clip to Instagram saying, ‘Filmed by Tony Hawk – thanks!’ Can you imagine him teaching you to do a trick he invented?”
Breaking borders
Matheron may have studied sports science at school, but he has also done his history homework; he’s particularly well-informed about the challenges Hawk set himself in those early days before the scene enjoyed mainstream exposure. One event stands out for Matheron: a literal and figurative pivotal moment that helped transform the sport into a global phenomenon and Hawk into its de facto figurehead. This was the San Francisco X-Games in 1999, when he landed a neverbefore-recorded two-and-a-half-revolution aerial spin, ‘the 900’. “Before then, he was only known in the skateboarding scene,” remarks Matheron, who was just a year old at the time. “[Suddenly] the whole world found out about him. Guys like Tony paved the way for us to do something even bigger.”
The last time Hawk publicly performed the 900 was in 2016, on its 17th anniversary. He was 48 and hinted it was likely the last time he’d attempt it. Not bad considering he’d declared his retirement from competitive skating right after the 1999 X-Games. Yet today Hawk remains a dominant presence in the scene. “I never quit skating,” he says. “I continue focusing on what I’m best at: my style [ramps] and being able to push it further. I stayed relevant, I guess.”
Hawk is frank about his lack of desire to pursue other styles – “I don’t care to fit in something else like street skating” – but through his social networks he actively encourages the modern generation to adopt new techniques: “I like to amplify them, to show them to the world. If I see a new style, I want to champion the person doing it.” For Hawk, one of those people is Matheron. “With Vincent, what I like is that it’s a new generation of skating that isn’t defined by vert [ramp], pool [bowl] or street skating. He does everything, and that’s exciting, because we need less division in skateboarding. Vincent could bridge the gap; he’s a good all-round skateboarder. He enjoys the adventure and isn’t focused on a career. If he continues to challenge himself, he can go much further than he ever imagined.”
For Matheron, there could be no greater incentive to keep pushing himself than the encouragement of a man whose name remains synonymous with skating. “It’s thanks to Tony that we are where we are today,” he says. “All the bowl tricks, all the airs – he invented those. They say he invented 150 tricks. There’s one he created that’s called ‘the Madonna’ because he was wearing a Madonna T-shirt the day he did it the first time. And a version of the Madonna is called ‘the Sean Penn’ because Madonna was going out with [the actor] at the time. Tony has tons of stories to tell, he’s seen and heard it all in the world of skateboarding, he has a major video game named after him… It’s great listening to someone who knows what they’re talking about, who was there when it happened.”
“It’s nice what Vincent said,” says Hawk with a smile. “I’m happy that those opportunities are opened to him, and if I had something to do with it, I’m proud. I think he’s capable of taking advantage of these opportunities now and he can do it in a good way.”
As our interview winds up, Hawk has just one final trick to share. “My best secret,” he says, laughing, “is whether you’re skating, travelling, or doing business… be on time!” tonyhawk.com; Instagram: @vincent_matheron
