Southern California is the birthplace of skateboard culture and, even though skateparks may be found worldwide today, it is where these parks continue to flourish as architects, engineers and skateboarders collaborate to refine their designs. The artist Amir Zaki grew up skateboarding, so he has an understanding of these spaces and, as someone who has spent years photographing the built and natural landscape of California, he has a deep appreciation of the large concrete structures not only as sculptural forms, but also as significant features of the contemporary landscape, belonging to a tradition of architecture and public art. To capture the images in this book, Zaki photographed in the early-morning light, climbing inside the bowls and pipes while there were no skaters around. Each photograph is a composite of dozens of shots taken with a digital camera mounted on a motorized tripod head. The resulting images are incredibly high resolution and can be printed at a large scale with no loss of detail. Their look is unusual in that Zaki's lens is somewhat telephoto, which has the effect of flattening space, yet the angle of view is often quite wide, which exaggerates spatial depth. The technology also allows Zaki to photograph certain areas from difficult positions that would otherwise be impossible to capture. Zaki makes the point that, by climbing deep inside these spaces, the visual experience is fundamentally different from viewing them from outside. In his text, Tony Hawk - one of world's best-known professional skateboarders - describes how Zaki's photographs of empty skateparks and open skies evoke memories of the idyllic freedom and the sense of potential that he felt when he first visited a skatepark as a child and saw skaters flying like birds in and out of the concrete pools and bowls. Hawk has skated in some of the parks featured in this book, and for him several of Zaki's images, taken from the skater's perspective, recall the experience of trying to learn a particular trick. A beautiful full pipe that looks like a barrelling wave may be, for Hawk and other seasoned skateboarders, a perfect example of function and form fitting together flawlessly in a well-designed skatepark. In his essay, the Los Angeles-based architect Peter Zellner offers a different perspective. Skateparks are made by excavating large open areas of land within city parks. The forms inside them may represent ocean waves, mountainous terrain and other features from nature, but they are permanently frozen in cement like Brutalist architecture. Every shape, line, transition, hip, tombstone, coping, stair, flow, tile, bowl, pipe, spine, rail, ledge, roll-in, kidney, clover, square and bank serves a specific purpose - to provide a challenging thrill and maximum pleasure for the rider. In this sense, skateparks epitomize function over form. In Zaki's mesmerizing photographs, however, these concrete landscapes suggest a more complex and integrated relationship with the history of design and architecture in Southern California.

Waking in the middle of the night whilst on holiday, Tony Hawks declares an epiphany to his barely conscious partner Fran. Fed up of living in a city where the only contact with his neighbours in three years was a dispute over a boundary fence, his mind has been made up and it's time for a change... of postcode. At the age of 53, Tony is finally ready to renounce his London lifestyle and head for the countryside, and to his enormous surprise, Fran agrees. Once Upon a Time in the West... Country tells the story of how a series of events lead Tony and Fran to uproot their city lives for a rural alternative in deepest Devon. Full of Tony's trademark mixture of humour, hope, adventure and absurdity, this book will chart their journey as they adapt from the relative ease of city life to the vagaries of a village community. But between organic gardening courses, attending village meetings and the impending birth of his first child, Tony still has time for one last adventure, cycling coast to coast with a mini pig called Titch. Full of eclectic characters - including the best neighbour in the world - Once Upon a Time in the West... Country is the heartwarming and hilarious tale of Tony Hawks' new life in the country.

Have you ever made a drunken ben? Worse, still, have you eveer tried to win one? In attempting to hitchhike round Ireland wich a fridge, Tony Hawks did both, and his foolhardiness led him to one of the best experiences of his life. Joined by his trusty traveling companion-cum-domestic appliance, he made his way from Dublin to Donegal, from Sligo through Mayo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow--and back again to Dublin. In their month of madness, Tony and his fridge met a real prince, a bogus king, and the fridge got christened. They surfed together, entered a bachelor festival, and one of them had sex without the other knowing. And unexpectedly, the fridge itself became a momentary focus for the people of Ireland.
An international bestseller, "Round Ireland with a Fridge" is a classic travel adventure in the tradition of Bill Bryson with a dash of Dave Barry.

Test Your Tony IQ ...

Don't worry, this isn't some busted quiz that counts for anything. It's a simple true or false test about the most famous skateboarder in the world. There's a lot about Tony Hawk's life that might surprise you. He didn't skate out of the crib landing every trick he attempted. He had tons of ups and downs on and off his skateboard -- sometimes he landed and sometimes he slammed. Here he takes you behind the scenes of the skateboard world and describes what it's like to be Tony Hawk: Professional Skateboarder.

True or False

a. Tony Hawk ate chewing gum from between Steve Caballero's toes.

b. As a child, Tony was so competitive that he pelted his mother with tennis balls in order to win a tennis match.

c. Tony failed to land a trick for more than fifteen years.

d. Tony was such a spastic nightmare as a child that he was expelled from his preschool.

e. Tony was such a small kid that he looked three grades younger and was often picked on by bullies.

'All I knew about Moldova were the names of eleven men printed on the inside back pages of my newspaper. None of them sounded to me like they were any good at tennis ...' An eccentric wager finds Tony Hawks, a man who loves an unusual challenge, bound for the little-known Eastern European state of Moldova. His mission: to track down members of the country's football team and persuade them to play him at tennis. The bizarre quest ultimately has little to do with tennis or football, but instead turns into an extraordinary journey involving the Moldovan underworld, gypsies, chronic power shortages, near kidnap, and a surprisingly tender relationship with his host family. Follow the fortunes of Tony in this hilarious and often moving adventure as it takes him from Moldova, onwards to Northern Ireland, leading to an exciting denouement in Nazareth - and the naked truth of the bet's final outcome ...

Whilst in Ireland for an International Song Competition, Tony Hawks was amazed to see a hitch-hiker, trying to thumb a lift, but with a fridge. This seemed amazingly optimistic - his Irish friends, however, thought nothing of it at all. "I had clearly arrived in a country", writes Tony, "where the qualification for ‘eccentric’ involved a great deal more than that to which I had become used". Years pass... but the fridge incident haunts our author.

Until one night, heavy with drink, he finds himself arguing about Ireland with a friend. It is, he insists, a "magical place", so magical in fact, that a man could even get a lift with a fridge. The next morning there is a note by the bed. "I hereby bet Tony Hawks the sum of One Hundred Pounds that he cannot hitch hike around the circumference of Ireland with a fridge within one calendar month." The document was signed. The bet was made. This book is the story of Tony’s adventures through that incredible month. The people he meets, the difficulties, the triumphs. The fridge.

'If you had to pick two things you wanted - if you had to - what would you pick?' I hesitated. This was a bigger question than usually got asked at these post-match debriefs. 'I suppose the honest answer would be,' I said, still accessing the last pieces of required data from a jumbled mind, 'meeting my soul mate, and finding an idyllic house abroad somewhere.' Inspired by breathtaking views and romantic dreams of finding love in the mountains, Tony Hawks impulsively buys a house in the French Pyrenees. Here, he plans to finally fulfil his childhood fantasy of mastering the piano, untroubled by the problems of the world. In reality, the chaotic story of Tony's hopelessly ill-conceived house purchase reads like the definitive guide to how not to buy a house in France. It finds him flirting with the removal business in a disastrous attempt to transport his piano to France in a dodgy white van; foolishly electing to build a swimming pool himself; and expanding his relationship repertoire when he starts co-habiting, not with an exquisite French beauty, but with a middle-aged builder from West London. As Tony and his friends haplessly attempt to fit into village life, they learn more about themselves and each other than they ever imagined.

It doesn't take much - "£100 is usually sufficient" - to persuade Tony Hawks to take off on notoriously bizarre and hilarious adventures in response to a bet. And so it is, a pointless argument with a friend concludes in a bet - that Tony can't beat all eleven members of the Moldovan soccer team at tennis. And with the loser of the bet agreeing to strip naked on Balham High Road and sing the Moldovan national anthem, this one was just too good to resist.

The ensuing unpredictable and often hilarious adventure sees him being taken in by Moldovan gypsies and narrowly avoid kidnap in Transnistria. It sees him smuggle his way on to the Moldovan National Team coach in Coleraine and witness (almost) divine intervention in the Holy Land.

In this inspiring and exceptionally funny book, Tony Hawks has done it again, proving against all odds that there is no reason in the world why you can't do something a bit stupid and prove all of your doubters wrong. Or at least that was the idea....