Tony Hawk

📍Serra Mesa, San Diego, California, USA

“Tony Hawk was born in San Diego in May 1968 and grew up in Serra Mesa, a quiet suburban neighbourhood of 1950s and 1960s houses on a mesa above Mission Valley. He was the youngest of four children, born when his parents, Frank and Nancy, were in their forties, and his siblings were much older. He has described himself as a hyperactive, tantrum-throwing, fiercely competitive child who was hard to manage, and whose energy needed an outlet. He found it when he was nine. His older brother, Steve, gave him a blue plastic hand-me-down skateboard, and Tony was hooked. His parents supported him completely: his father, Frank, built a ramp in the driveway, drove him to skate parks all over Southern California, and even founded the California Amateur Skateboard League and the National Skateboard Association to give young skaters proper competitions. Tony spent his days at the local skate parks, especially the Del Mar Skate Ranch, practising endlessly, and as a skinny kid he invented new tricks to make up for his lack of power. By twelve he was sponsored, and by fourteen he was a professional skateboarder. He went on to dominate vert skating, inventing dozens of tricks, and in 1999 he landed the first 900, a two-and-a-half-turn spin, at the X Games. The Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games made him famous to a generation, and his foundation has helped build hundreds of public skate parks across the United States. He has always credited his father, his number one fan, for making it all possible.”

Sources: everand.com goodreads.com Wikipedia: Tony Hawk