How Did I Get Here Read Online Free Page A

borrowed $8,000 from my parents (who couldn’t really afford it), and cobbled together an editing system. I actually got paid to edit a few videos, but soon realized I didn’t have the contacts, equipment, or resolve to make a living at it.
    In early 1994, Birdhouse was on life support, and Per and I discussed pulling the plug. Vert skating (on big halfpipes—my specialty) was dying, so I had stopped competing and was putting more time into the business. I still had a ramp at home, and I was actually skating better than ever (learning new tricks, like heelflip varial liens), but no one was watching. I often skated alone.
    As a parting shot to my pro skating career, I asked the Birdhouse art department to use an image of the Titanic on my last signature-model board. It seemed like a good metaphor: the supposedly unsinkable ship, sinking.
    Fortunately, my “retirement” didn’t last long. For one thing, I never really took to the 9-to-5 desk-job thing. Per and I quickly realized that it was better for the company if I spent more time in the public eye, doing demos and competing, so the company could profit from my high profile. We licensed my old hawk skull graphic from Powell, and began making more products bearing my name.
    We got lucky, because 1995 was the year that ESPN debuted something called the Extreme Games (now the X Games) in Rhode Island. I wasn’t sure what to expect when the network invited me to compete, since ESPN was all about big-ticket sports like baseball and basketball, but I figured it was worth the risk. The producers went to great lengths to tell the stories of a few select athletes in hopes of giving viewers an emotional attachment to the competitors. That was crucial to the games’ success, because mainstream America at that point knew very little about skating or BMX riding. And since I was the best-known skater at the time, ESPN devoted an inordinate amount of airtime to me.
    I was stoked to win the vert contest and place second in the street event, but felt embarrassed when I saw the final show. A lot of world-class skaters—friends of mine—never even made it on the air, while I became the face of skateboarding for millions of viewers. Suddenly, people who’d never touched a skateboard were stopping me in airports and restaurants. Sales of my decks skyrocketed in the following years, and the skate industry itself started to benefit from an upswing.
    Bootleg Braggadocio
    Per and I also owned a distribution company called Blitz, which we used to incubate a variety of small skate brands, such as Baker, Flip, Hook-Ups, SK8MAFIA, The Firm, and Fury. Most of them were the brainchildren of former pros who came in as co-owners.
    Those were interesting times. While we helped those brands broaden their distribution and range of products, the owners loved to stir shit up. That was part of the charm, actually: watching misanthropic businessmen compete to see who had the biggest balls when it came to breaking the rules of business. It could also be pretty scary, especially when we lampooned mainstream corporations by repurposing their logos and putting them on skate decks and T-shirts.
    Needless to say, we received a lot of terse cease-and-desist letters, but most of those arrived after we’d already ceased and desisted; skateboard graphics rarely last more than one selling season. More often than not, we’d produce and distribute so few of the offending products that the company whose logo got violated would never notice. We did get sued a few times—and usually ended up signing settlement agreements that prohibited me from even talking about those cases. Sorry.
    I learned one important lesson through all of this: If you think you or one of your business partners has done something that might get you sued, spend what it takes to hire the best lawyers you can find.
    The attorneys didn’t always give great advice. A very big candy manufacturer once sued us because it didn’t like the way one of