There I was sitting inside the control room of a nondescript vocal booth in San Diego. I fidgeted nervously at the first correction that I wanted to suggest. Hesitant, I pressed the red button to speak.
“Tony, can we try that again with less emphasis on the word dead?”
Without even flinching, Tony Hawk looked at me through the glass, adjusted his headphones, gave me a thumbs up and nailed it.
I was only 23 years old and I’d just spent the last year of my life traveling the world putting together a passion project – a documentary on 90’s punk rock, called One Nine Nine Four, which Tony very generously agreed to narrate for us in exchange for any sort of contribution we could make to the Tony Hawk Foundation. I didn’t know him personally at the time, but being a kid that grew up skating, surfing and listening to punk rock in the 90’s, it was a tad surreal to be directing one of my heroes through a script I’d written.
Before that day at the studio I’d somehow managed to convince all of my favorite bands to sit down and speak about the birth, growth and explosion of punk rock in the 90’s. We started with Joey Cape from Lagwagon, ended with Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day and in between sat down with Pennywise, Blink 182, Bad Religion, NOFX and Rancid to name more than a few.
Altogether a surreal experience in itself, but I digress.
So we finish up at the studio and Tony asks me what I’m up to now. I tell him I was probably going to drive back to LA. And then he interjects, “Well, if you like we could go and get lunch and then I’ve got Bucky Lasek and Andy Macdonald to come skate my ramp this afternoon. You’re more than welcome to hang out and shoot us.”
Suffice to say, I took Tony up on his offer and had one of the greatest experiences of my life. Something that I remember so vividly to this day, something that will stay with me forever and something that has made me realize one very important thing; that it’s our personal experiences, not the material posessions that shape us.
Material things come and go, but our experiences, our stories and our memories become part of who we are.
All this led to the creation of my current endeavor, Loqules, a curated marketplace for rad experiences with tastemakers in the lifestyle space.
Enter surfing legend, Taj Burrow.
Having just retired from competitive surfing, Taj was excited about using his passion to help make the world a better place. One of his favorite destinations is the Mentawais in Indonesia, and being aware of the immense poverty and lack of basics like clean drinking water and support for mothers in child birth throughout the region, Taj wanted to team up with SurfAid.
So what’s the experience you ask? Well, basically you get to spend a week on a boat (King Millenium 2) with Taj Burrow, cruising the Mentawais surfing, eating, fishing and hanging out.
However what we’re also doing is organizing a dinner with SurfAid founder Dr Dave Jenkins in Padang to speak about his vision, journey and realities of the situation in Indonesia.
This is such an incredibly unique experience. In the same way that standing atop Tony Hawk’s ramp all those years ago gave me the greatest stoke of my life, I hope this one changes the way you experience the world around you too.
Editor’s Note: To learn more about scoring a dream trip with Taj Burrow, go here.
