The Special Meter Underground 2: Chair Hops and Sit Flips
Special guest Jake Walker and I discuss Paulie 'Wheels of Fury' Ryan, never truly being an 'outsider' in skateboarding, and actually being progressive by making a little shit of a disabled character
Welcome back to THE SPECIAL METER: a series about the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video game series and the culture surrounding them. If you missed the first five posts, check them out here:
The Special Meter 2: ‘Ollie the Magic Bum’ and Skateboarding’s Portrayal Problem
The Special Meter 3: Tony Hawk Made Skateboarding So Big that Even 9/11 Couldn’t Take It Away
The Special Meter 4: Last Shot at the Jocks
The Special Meter Underground: You Don’t Pay to Get In, But You Pay to Get Out
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As always, some song choices for your reading/skating pleasure.
The opening of Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 brings us back to the shitty town in New Jersey that Underground started in. The ramps are still made of junk, but now there’s a crowd of people cheering on our yet-to-be-customized main character. An unmarked van pulls up, the skater slams into it, and a faceless figure throws him in. A young-looking Bam Margera (thanks to both age and PS2-era graphics) introduces us to what’s going on: A tour with two teams, one led by him, one led by Tony Hawk, where you go around the world ranking up points for outrageous stunts.
THUG2 was sort of piggybacking off of the lingering excitement over Jackass: The Movie, which had come out just two years prior. Jackass was always linked with skate culture, and the early 2000s were the golden years for kids jumping off of stuff, whether they had a skateboard under their feet or not. Bam Margera was a burgeoning A-lister now with his own spin-off that had just debuted on MTV, so it made a lot of sense for the Tony Hawk franchise to give him a bit of (or a lot of) the spotlight. Where Hawk was one face of skateboarding subculture - squeaky clean and endorsement ready - Margera was another. They were two sides of a skateboarding spectrum, the angel and devil on skateboarding’s shoulders, personifying that split in the video game that acted as skateboarding’s de facto ambassador and bridge to the culture at large.
THUG2 had to expand on a franchise that had already leaned heavily into the cinematic. It had to build to stay relevant. In doing so, it brought in even more craziness, side-missions, characters and activities that didn’t even involve a skateboard. It fell over itself at times to deliver the cheapest gross-out gag or not-even-veiled double entendre to capture the South Park generation. And like much of those TV shows of the time, a lot of jokes haven’t aged especially well.
One could argue that it’s the one that strayed the farthest from skateboarding all together. It’s me. I’m one. Skateboarding was almost incidental, the same way it was in many a Jackass stunt. A skateboard is present and maybe even used as a key prop, but it’s not a skateboarding show.
But skateboarding isn’t a singular thing, as I’ve gotten into plenty of times in this series. There is no capital-S Skateboarding monolith. There are many different “skateboardings” and many different skateboarders, evidenced by the two teams brought on here.
Which brings me to Team Bam’s final pick in that opening scene:
In an effort for all of us to relive our gym class nightmares, your character is one of only two players left to be chosen. What makes it “worse” in the moment is that it’s down to you, the professional skateboarder at the height of his or her powers, or Paulie “Wheels of Fury” Ryan, the “10-year-old skating madman” in an electric wheelchair, with most of his body covered in a cast, headgear, and a hat that said “Loser.”
Paulie is ecstatic at Bam’s introduction, and does a wheelie out of joy. The main character gets indignant, Paulie kicks him in the shin, and Bam chooses him, meaning you’re on Tony Hawk’s team, but were picked last.
The joke, of course, is that you not only got picked after every skater, you even got picked after a disabled person. To quote Paulie’s hat: LOSER.
There’s a lot more to the inclusion of Paulie than being a cheap gag at the expense of the disabled community, though.
If we’re looking at this game as equal parts Tony Hawk, skateboarding culture overall, and (most importantly) Jackass, then we have to look at the latter’s relationship with diversity and inclusion. Because, if you look past the gross-out stunts, poop, etc., you find a surprisingly solid history of taking people from groups that were traditionally the butts of jokes and bringing them into the fold, the same (or even on higher ground) as everyone else.
When I announced this project, I got a repost from a dude named Jake Walker about this game. Jake was something of a viral sensation in his youth, after a clip of him drifting in his electric wheelchair got memed to infinity.
Jake’s got spinal muscular atrophy, which means he’s been in a wheelchair his whole life. Like a lot of dudes around my age, Jake found a lot of music he liked from the Tony Hawk games, and now fronts the punk band Faulty Wires, which just put out an EP called “Punk Isn’t Dead … But Maybe It’s Disabled.” They also put out a cover of The Menzingers’ “In Remission” (a personal favorite of mine).
Anyway, Jake reposted my announcement and said “Can’t wait for the deep dive on Paulie ‘Wheels of Fury’ Ryan when he gets to THUG2.”
I had totally forgotten about Paulie. Maybe because this game was packed to the absolute gills with stuff, or maybe because I didn’t like Paulie that much. He was kind of a little asshole in the game. But he added a fun element the same way introducing Steve-O did. You could even play as him in the game and skate with him in the wheelchair, doing “chairflips” instead of kickflips. Remembering Paulie thanks to Jake, I thought more about how the Tony Hawk series served that ambassador role to people who not only didn’t skate, but couldn’t skate in the traditional sense of standing on a skateboard.
So I asked Jake if he’d like to discuss Paulie, THUG2, skateboarding and more, from his perspective as someone who uses a wheelchair in his daily life, but also loves skateboarding and skateboarding culture.
So, here’s my interview with Jake Walker:
I’m really glad you reminded me about Paulie. I don’t have a PS2 anymore, so I can’t go back as easily to the old games. I’ve had to watch clips and operate mostly from memory. And before I could even get to really dig into Underground 2, you reminded me about Paulie, and it immediately was like, ‘Oh my god. I remember that.’ Do you remember what it was like for you when you first saw Paulie in the game?
When Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 came out, I was probably … I don’t know, man, maybe like 11 or 12, something like that. So, in a lot of ways, it was almost shocking to see a disabled 10-year-old in a video game series I had been playing for years at that point. And, you know, it’s funny, because Paulie is not … he’s not, like, a character that you’re supposed to love for who he is.
He’s kind of a dick.
Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole. And I appreciate that this was a game that wasn’t afraid to have characters like that, you know? It’s really before its time in that way. And that is to say, Paulie isn’t a main character. He’s just another one of the skaters on the tour. But I think that is also cool.
It’s a weird thing to think of it as progress to say, ‘They brought in a disabled character, and he sucks.’ You’re supposed to almost dislike him.
Right. And I think that so often disabled people are kind of assigned to either being, like, vague sources of inspiration or an object of pity. And the truth is that Paulie is neither of those. He’s just, like, an annoying, shitty kid. And, yeah, Paulie is a disabled character, but he’s not even the only disabled character in the game when you consider Jason “Wee Man” Acuña is in the game as well. And so, I read a lot about this idea that Jackass has a very unique way of being, like, inclusive assholes if that makes sense. If you watch those movies and those shows, and there are disabled people, there are people of color, and I think that because this Tony Hawk game is, in essence, Jackass: Pro Skater, I think that we see a lot of those ideas in the characters that are presented.
On that Jackass thing, I’ve read other things about how it did a lot for like LGBTQ awareness and acceptance just through a bunch of dudes who were not afraid of male affection. Tough guys holding hands, all about male affection and male companionship.
And this was, what, like the mid-to-early 2000s? “Don’t say gay” and things like that. I read exactly what you’re talking about. But I think that goes even further. I mean, you look at every Jackass show and movie, and they have disabled people in them. And you might not notice it, once again, because in the movie, disability isn’t the center. It’s just them as their friends.
I remember they had the dude from Murderball and strapped a rocket to him.
Yeah! Exactly. They launched him off that dock. And like I said, Wee Man has always been there, and always been just a part of everything like everyone else. And I didn’t want to turn this into an “I love Jackass” type of thing, but it’s very obvious the influence is there.
And I think you made a really good point that it is sort of like Jackass: The Game where it’s almost co-branded. That was the thing I was thinking of first when I thought of this game.
Yeah. In the tutorial of this game, you’re in the legendary Tony Hawk Warehouse, and you learn how to do all the skating in the Warehouse, and then it opens up and you’re in the half-pipe with Bam. Underground showed that Tony Hawk could be more than just, like, doing as many tricks as you can in two minutes. I think Underground 2 might be close to the perfect version of all of that. I know some people would say American Wasteland would be that, but really, I think that this is the pinnacle of the series. And not necessarily in terms of quality or gameplay, but this is the point where I think that Tony Hawk—not him the skater, but Tony Hawk the series—I think it best knew what it was in this era of the game.
That’s interesting that you say that. I kind of see it as the one where they might’ve veered too far into the cinematic aspect of it and almost lost its way. So it’s interesting that you say that, because there’s not a right and wrong here.
I guess my thought is that 1 through 4 probably have the best gameplay, but that was all that they focus on. And I think you see them, especially in Underground, try to push that envelope. I could see the argument that it got too theatrical and too silly, but I don’t know. I think Underground 1, 2 and Wasteland, I think of that as the sweet spot. That was where they still had the skating, where they also had a little bit more than that.
What was, and is, your relationship to skateboarding in general as someone who couldn’t participate in the same way as others?
I obviously didn’t skate myself, right? I grew up with two brothers. One’s four years older than me, and the other’s four years younger than me, and we were kids that played outside for our entire youth. And so it wasn’t always skateboarding, but you would see us every once in a while where my older brother would be skitching my chair, and my baby brother would be behind him. It was fun as shit. And you don’t realize at that time how cool that is, if that makes sense.
Yeah, you’re just doing it cause you’re a kid and it’s what you want to do. You make your own fun and then kind of look back on it differently when you’re older and think, “Wow, that was really something cool.”
I grew up in a household where I wasn’t allowed to give in to my limitations. I had to learn how to adapt and figure out how to do the things that I wanted to. And yeah, I may not have been skating, but in that time I started, like, drifting my electric wheelchair. And for me, that was my skating. I even did a part, like a video. So I think that, even if you literally can’t do the thing, you can still be a part of the culture and do it in your own way.
I think that even extends to guys on a skateboard. There are so many different kinds of skateboarding. Like, if skateboarding were only vert skating and one guy decides to skate on a bench, you could argue, “Oh, well that’s not really skateboarding,” but it is.
My thing was that even before I got into the culture of skating, I really liked skate parts. Just the idea of dudes doing cool tricks to music. And so for me, I got to an age where it was like, I want to do a thing like that even if I can’t do exactly that. And yeah, you end up at a mall in Mexico with wet floors, and you just slide your chair sideways and set it to music, and it’s the same, you know?
As someone in the music world now, do you have a favorite song off of the Underground 2 or really any Tony Hawk soundtrack?
It’s tough. With the soundtracks, after 1 and 2, I have a really hard time knowing what game has what song. Like, alright, I remember Alkaline Trio …
Yeah, that was Underground. I think it was “Armageddon” was in it.
I don’t remember which one it was, but I remember Alkaline Trio had a song for one of those games. And, oh, it’s such a banger. I think you’re right. I think it is “Armageddon,” but I can’t remember.
Yeah then they did the “Wash Away” cover for American Wasteland
Yeah dude. Big Alkaline Trio fan.
Alkaline Trio does, in fact, rock. Huge thanks to Jake for taking the time to chat for this post!
Today’s Snakes and Sparklers musical guest is Francis of Delirium.
Oh, hey, thanks for scrolling down. The biggest thing with Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 was that it was sort of a Jackass game, too, with Steve-O, Wee Man and obviously Bam. I wrote before about Tony Hawk’s paycheck from those first games, but in researching this story, found a clip of Wee Man and Steve-O talking about the game, too. Steve-O calls the games the biggest boon for skateboarding, tying in my whole Hero’s Journey thing from last time. But, the crux of the conversation was that while the skaters involved in the series made “life-changing money,” Steve-O and Wee Man didn’t exactly finance a boat with their earnings from THUG2. At least not a huge boat.