The Tony Hawk Show

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Paris' Grand Palais was transformed into a skateboarding Mecca this weekend as Tony Hawk and pals rolled into town.

From Friday 21 to Saturday 22 November, Quiksilver transformed the awe-inspiring amphitheatre that is the "Big Palace" into a palatial skate haven for newbie kids and world-class pros alike.

Thanks to an all inclusive 'come one, come all' policy, the doors of the Grand Palais were flung open to the general public for free during the day, and the echoes of kids trying to land their first ollies reverberated around Paris' monument to Art Nouveau.

Things hit a climax on Saturday night when the world's greatest skater took to Europe's biggest vert ramp to entertain the sold-out crowd. And he wasn't alone.

Andy MacDonald, Kevin Staab, Jesse Fritsch, Sergie Ventura, Brazil's Sandro Dias and France's Jean Postec all showed up to drop in and get involved. But the true star of the show (next to the Hawkmeister himself) had to be Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins, who held it down for the girls with her man-sized cojones.

For over two hours, Hawk and co. treated the crowd to a flurry of back-to-back 5s, old-school handplants and super slick synchronised doubles (and triples) as the world's greatest vert skaters dropped in together to go tête à tête, against a soundtrack of Rage and Beasties from back in the day.

Hawk did the deed and threw down a 900. But it was Lyn-Z who took ownership of the night's pièce de résistance, and made it into the history books as the first female to ever land a 540 McTwist!

Needless to say the crowd went insane. It was skateboarding's night in the Grand Palais, and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins ruled supreme.

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The Tony Hawk Show (text) by Andrea Kurland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK License.