Tony Hawk, the man/child legend of skateboarding from Southern California has spent 10 years running his nonprofit organization, the Tony Hawk Foundation, which builds free skateparks for at-risk youth in low-income communities. They have built more than 500 parks throughout every state in the nation, as well as supported international skate programs such as Skateistan* in Afghanistan.
Ben Harper, the popular two-time Grammy award-winning singer songwriter, grew up in Pomona skateboarding. As a teen, he approached Tony Hawk at a local skatepark and found his skate hero to be approachable and a regular guy. Fast forward to 2012, Ben is still a skater, as are his sons. Ben recently joined the Tony Hawk Foundation as an enthusiastic board member.
Last year, Ben had an inspiration one day last year. He looked at a broken board and saw a canvas. Music strongly influences skaters, and he imagined song lyrics filling the broken boards to create pieces of art. Better yet, have famous pro skaters approach famous musicians and see if the resulting boards can be auctioned. Ben himself contributed his lyrics to two boards: “Burn One Down” on a Bob Burnquist board and “God Fearing Man” on a Rodney Mullen board.
Tony Hawk went “for gold” and reached out to Paul McCartney. To his continued amazement, Paul wrote the lyrics to “Blackbird” on a board that Tony had demo’d on his first ride in India. When Tony met the former Beatle during the project, Paul said he tried skating once and fell — horrifying Tony that the sport he popularized could injure his musical hero. The price on this board has risen to $18,000 in the first week of bidding.
Particularly touching is the board that Bucky Lasek had inked by Adam Yauch (MCA of the Beastie Boys) with the song “Bodhisattva Vow.” Bucky did not realize that Adam was sick at the time of the project, and sadly Adam died in May, 2012. Proceeds from the auction of this special board (over $10,000 at press time) will go to benefit a skatepark project in New York City.
These one-of-a-kind skateboards are on display at the GRAMMY Museum grammymuseum.org in downtown Los Angeles from December 3 through the final day of the auction on December 13 at 7 pm.
*Skateistan us.skateistan.org in Kabul provides an opportunity to children in a war-torn city to participate in low-cost, accessible sport. It is possibly the only sport where girls participate equally with boys, skating with their headscarves wrapped flowing behind.
Photos by Michele McManmon dominoartz.com and Tony Hawk Foundation
Karen Henry is an Associate Editor at LA YOGA who volunteers in a variety of capacities for nonprofit organizations and artists around Los Angeles. She practices yoga as a counterbalance to her daily impact sports and is a mother of four grown children who also practice yoga . Now, she’s working on teaching yoga and joy of life to the grandkids!