For many celebrities, being recognized by fans in public is something that can’t be avoided even if they wanted to. But for skating legend Tony Hawk, the opposite is true. Hawk is rarely recognized by fans in public, leading him to have countless hilarious stories about how he frequently has encounters with people who don’t realize he’s the actual Tony Hawk. Hawk often shares those accounts on his Twitter account, but now he’s got a new story to share. Someone finally recognized Hawk.
On Twitter, Hawk shared an exchange he had with a nurse in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. The nurse initially noted that he looked familiar and then that he sounded familiar. She asked him to lower his mask and recognized the skating legend, telling him that she got into skating because of the video game Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
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The story had an even more charming part when another nurse confirmed that the first nurse not only still skates but had gotten hurt at some point and was out for a week, to which Hawk advised “don’t do a kickflip.”
In waiting room of my wife’s neurologist (because migraines)
— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) May 26, 2021
Nurse: you look familiar
Me: that’s cool
Nurse: your voice is familiar too. Is it bad if I ask you to lower your mask?
Me: I guess not since you’re the nurse
Nurse: you’re Tony Hawk! I got into skating from playing THPS
Actually getting recognized is a nice change of pace for Hawk who late last year shared another hilarious interaction in which he did not get so easily recognized. In that encounter, which took place in December at a COVID testing site, the woman checking him and two of his children in asked if they were related to Tony Hawk. When he replied that they were, she still wasn’t quite convinced and Hawk replied “we are all directly related to him”.
As for the encounter with the nurse who did recognize him, it’s interesting that the nurse credited Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as being the game that got her into skating. A portion of the documentary about the legendary game, Pretending I’m a Superman, spoke about how the game inspired young women to skate and included interviews talking about how the diversity in the game — which featured both a Black skateboarder Kareem Campbell, and a female skateboarder, Elissa Steamer — changed the sport.
What do you think about Tony Hawk finally being recognized? Let us know your thoughts or even your favorite story about how the legendary skater was not recognized in the comment section.
Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
