Photo of Hawk by Jordin Althaus / Getty Images
When he's not busy cranking 900s in private skateparks, guest-judging Beat Bobby Flay, interviewing Pharrell on the radio, and doing all the other things Extremely Famous People do, Tony Hawk slogs through the drudgery of everyday life just like the rest of us. He goes to the airport. He attends his son's graduation. He buys regular water from the regular deli. What separates Tony Hawk from us lowly plebes, however, is that he is Tony Hawk; and being Tony Hawk, as he accomplishes these mundane tasks, people occasionally notice that he is Tony Hawk—a phenomenon he apparently finds fascinating, and loves to document on Twitter.
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He regales his followers with tales of being spotted in the wild almost religiously, always sticking to the "them: / me:" format, which he first adopted in October of 2018.
He has since developed an obsession with it, flooding his timeline with accounts of strangers saying essentially the same thing to him—"Hey, you're Tony Hawk!"—which is pretty much the only thing one can say upon seeing Tony Hawk in public. For whatever reason, Tony Hawk really, really wants you to know that this has happened at coffee shops:
At rental car agencies:
At Disneyland:
On escalators:
In San Diego:
At the airport, repeatedly:
It is beyond clear that Tony Hawk knows he does this with alarming frequency—evidenced by "I'm sorry if these encounters seem redundant" above—but still, he insists on forging on, laboriously crafting tweet upon tweet about being confronted by some stranger. The question is why: What strange, powerful force within him demands it? What compels him, week after week, to remind us that he has been identified yet again by some passerby?The cynical among us might argue that as he slides inexorably out of cultural relevancy, Tony Hawk desperately needs to remind us that he's still here, still famous. Others might say he’s trying to communicate that he’s fed up with it all, his stream of tweets a not-so-subtle hint to leave him the hell alone.But no. Tony Hawk lives for this shit. He thinks it is the funniest thing in the world, and he will keep thinking it is the funniest thing in the world, and keep tweeting about it, for the rest of his life. So if you find yourself lucky enough to spot him waiting in line at CVS, or walking his dog, or videotaping you while your car erupts in flames, do him a favor: Tell him, "Hey, you're Tony Hawk!" I can guarantee you that he will love it, and I can say with 99 percent certainty that, once again, for the ten millionth time, he will do a tweet about it, hit send, and smile.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.