The 30 Most Influential Skaters Of All Time

By Blair Alley
Tue, Dec 20 2011 1:18 am | Comments

2. HAWK.

Crossbone Lien air, 1985. Photo: BRITTAIN

On taking skateboarding to the mainstream:

As far as endorsements and commercialization, I was the first one to dare to go there. I didn’t care about the backlash of it. I had been in skating for so long that I was never trying to covet it. I always thought there should be a bigger audience for it and appreciated it. I never knew why they didn’t, and so when I had the opportunity to get bigger endorsements, so to speak, my only concern was to get final approval and control over how they present skateboarding. No one else had that opportunity or desire because most of the guys who were in the position to do this had just started to become more successful. I had already had a wave of success in the ’80s and I had seen it come and go and seen people do it with a passion and not get compensated for it. I was happy to use McDonald’s marketing dollars to bring more people into skating.