Skateboarding idol Tony Hawk leads beginners through an introductory course, starting with selecting the right equipment and ending with intermediate tricks. Hawk teaches the basics of several of the most popular styles, including street, vert, and grinds on rails, with help from Kris Markovich and Brian Sumner, two other pro skaters. The 39-minute video starts out with Hawk and his sidekicks demonstrating balance on the board and the correct way to push and turn. Then they move on to the ollie, kickflip, shove- it, heelflip, and 180s, and finally more complicated moves like dropping into the mini-ramp and how to kickturn and rock-to-fakie. For the finale, they teach the correct way to boardslide on a rail. These pros spend about five minutes explaining in detail how to carry out each trick correctly (and incorrectly--all of the pros take some entertaining intentional falls showing how not to do a trick; fortunately, they wear helmets and encourage all skaters to wear them). A helpful popup dialogue box offers information about the subject. This well-produced video is fun to watch, whether or not you are trying to learn tricks, since it also contains skateboarding humor and the culture of boarder life. It's a great video for beginners, and it will still be useful once you master the basics. It also teaches more advanced tricks that will provide a challenge for quite a long time, since, as Hawk himself says, it takes years to master them. --Neal Marks
