Skateboarding ’s appeal typically starts with disbelief. Strangers love to stop skaters on the street to interrogate the ollie. How does the board stay attached to your feet like that? You sure there aren’t magnets in there somewhere? Thirty-year-old pro skater Jimmy Wilkins gets that kind of reaction from skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.
“He’s unlocked some ancient secret of how to do ollies,” Hawk says. “Before Jimmy came along, the highest you would see anyone do a frontside or backside ollie was maybe five or six feet if you’re lucky, and he’s consistently going eight or nine. Jimmy figured out this way of scooping his board and keeping it on his feet.
It’s refreshing, but it’s also confounding because ...
how?” Watching him navigate the 13-and-a-half-foot tall, 72-foot-wide vert ramp that takes up most of the square footage inside Hawk’s unmarked stucco office tucked away in a nondescript business park in Vista, California, Wilkins melts the senses. Skateboarding is most notably a visual medium. That alchemy that keeps the board tethered to the feet, the balance, the air, the speed, style, fashion, danger, and the seemingly impossible intersection of them all.
But up close, and most importantly, under your feet, the allure is equally sonic. Skating is loud on purpose. On a vert ramp — massive U-shaped half-pipes with walls that go fully vertical at the top — the beautifully spastic soundtrack of endless onomatopoeia eases into a calming trance.
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