Ryan Sheckler Welcome to the circus
When skateboarding wunderkind Ryan Sheckler comes to town, the whole goddamn show is never far behind.
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London's Bond Street Station is under a marketing attack. Slap bang in the middle of this subterranean cesspit, a gigantic poster of a fresh young face beams down over the crowds. It’s the face of Ryan Sheckler – skate prodigy-turned-teenage heartthrob – and right underneath there’s a video of him doing a 360 flip down a flight of stairs. Just 100 metres down the road, another mammoth Sheckler grins out of Footlocker's Oxford Street store. Skating's big superstar is in town for the launch of his new signature skate shoe. And, clearly, they want you to know about it.
Away from the frenzy, inside a plush hotel suite, Ryan sits and waits for the show to begin. I find him flicking absent-mindedly through a shop catalogue, ignoring the small entourage pointing a camera at his face. As I put out my arm, he snaps into business mode, shaking my hand firmly. When I mention the posters, his eyes light up. “Yeah, I haven’t seen that yet, but I saw it on someone’s phone. It’s cool,” he says. “I mean, it still trips me out, it’s crazy to see big pictures of me on the street. But it’s a good feeling.”
Ryan may be smaller than I’d imagined, but he’s suitably attired, sporting a backwards baseball cap emblazoned with the Red Bull logo, chunky diamond ear studs and a diamond-encrusted ring (a look he once described to younghollywood.com as “keeping it original gangsta”). Along with the many tattoos on his arms, several fresh large scabs and even larger scars act as a healthy reminder that, beyond all the hype, Ryan Sheckler is a skater first and foremost. And a very good skater at that.
In 2003, a thirteen-year-old Sheckler became the youngest ever athlete to claim gold at the X Games after winning the park contest. That year, he also won the Gravity Games, Slam City Jam and Vans Triple Crown events – victories that propelled him straight into the limelight. With brand sponsorship thrown at him from every angle, Sheckler officially entered the world of professional skateboarding, and spent the following few years touring America, entering contests and, of course, winning - a lot.
“I was always travelling to skate contests, but I’d have loved to have been able to hang out with my friends more,” he says. “I’ve missed out on a ton of shit but if you take skateboarding and compare it to a high school life - I got paid to travel the world and skateboard, so really I don’t care what I missed out on.”
The more Ryan skated, the more people took note. In 2007, Ryan was given his own reality TV show called The Life of Ryan, a fly-on-the-wall documentary that has run for three seasons on MTV. With his fresh face and teeny-bopper fan base, Sheckler was soon vying with the likes of Zac Efron as America’s number one teenage heartthrob, and guest appearances on shows such as American Idol did his position no harm.
So is he happy with how he comes across in the show? While every other question has been met with an instant response, this one brings visible hesitation. “The first two series were good,” he begins, “and I had no problems with it because that’s what was happening in my life. Everyone was cool. But then the backlash and the haters came.”
‘Haters’ are something that he’s all too familiar with. Despite Sheckler’s huge credentials – he’s won a shitload, is on the Plan B team (the A-list of skateboarding, skills-wise) and his part in the upcoming Plan B vid is rumoured to be insane - on core skate forums across the Internet comments range from the childish to the obscene. It could, of course, just be a case of tall poppy syndrome – the need some people feel to cut others down to size.
“It’s stupid ’cause any of these dudes that are talking shit on me would take what I have at the drop of a hat,” he says, defiantly. “They are just haters, I don’t have any respect for them. No one cares about them, that’s why they hate. So keep on hating, it’s great! I had fun doing the show, these guys can’t tell me what to do.”
Soon enough, my allotted fifteen minutes are up and Ryan goes back to flicking through his catalogue, without a glimmer of interest. As the entourage leave the hotel to make its way to the Footlocker store for the launch, Ryan steps away from the crowd with an air of youthful awkwardness. That boy, shunning small talk to cross Oxford Street by himself, says so much more than any media-savvy bravado.
As a gaggle of teenage girls flock around for autographs and photos, Ryan politely obliges, smiling and putting his arms around them. Something he said early suddenly springs to mind: “If I could do half of what Tony Hawk did, I’d be psyched. I’m definitely trying to follow in his footsteps and be the face of skateboarding.” And, for some people at least, that’s exactly what he is: the face of skateboarding, in a reality-TV age.
On my way back to the tube, I pass the Sheckler monument and pause for a moment to watch that perfect 360 flip. No matter what the circus demands, skateboarding is the one thing it’ll never take away from him.
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Ryan Sheckler (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (8)
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IM OUT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....TnUj3EA
Ryan Sheckler talking to Carl the Van. Yes, Ryan Sheckler is talking to an actual van! I literally shit myself laughing at this!
"not the face, not the face!"