July 28-August 3, 2005

mixpicks

Free Fallin'

by Brian Howard

skate

The Gravity Games and X Games are all well and good. And with softball and baseball recently dropped from the Olympic roster, the debate over whether skateboarding, like its winter cousin snowboarding, should be made an event in the summer Olympiad is heating up. But who wants to compete all the time? Events like Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam exist because these sports are essentially about having fun. It's sort of the three-ring circus (or Ice Capades maybe?) of board-, BMX- and motocross sports. The HuckJam gives these sports' stars a chance to show off without playing for points, all set to the jams of appropriately monickered turntablist DJ Aero.

"The HuckJam is the antithesis to competition," explains Hawk. "It is our sports as entertainment — including choreography and freestyle elements, without judges or timed runs."

The athlete lineup includes skaters Hawk, Andy MacDonald and Sergie Ventura; BMXers Mat Hoffman and the State College duo of Chad Kagy and Kevin Robinson; and motocrossers Twitch and Drake McElroy.

What's got Hawk most stoked this year is the HuckJam's "new launch setup — a 45-foot drop that sends us flying across a 40-foot gap and up a 20-foot quarter-pipe. It is the biggest portable ramp in existence and allows us to go to twice as big as previous years."

Which is sort of where it's always been at for Hawk, who quit competing five years ago and says he wouldn't return to competition just to try to win an Olympic medal. "If the Olympics had a clue," he offers, "they would run a skating event similar to the X Games and not structure it or confine it too much."

Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam Fri., July 29, 7 p.m., (village opens at 4:30 p.m.), $25-$85, Wachovia Center, 3601 S. Broad St., 215-336-3600, www.boomboomhuckjam.com.