the tour” TV show that would air in advance on ESPN, MTV, and various regional networks to promote ticket sales.
Freestyle Moto-X rider Dustin Miller wows the crowd on our first arena tour.
Three weeks before the first show, we set up the ramp in an enormous airplane hangar at the former Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, where the other athletes and I went to work choreographing the routines. That was a wild, exciting, stressful time. We were trying stuff no one had ever tried before, with up to five people on the ramp at the same time, sometimes riding over and under each other, their trick lists worked out in advance. We made time for a period of improvised riding in the middle of the show—a jam session—but most of it was precisely scripted.
For the finale, we decided to have the Moto guys fly over the outside edges of the ramp while the rest of us sessioned beneath them. That was the scariest part. We actually had to cordon off sections of the deck with caution tape to keep the skaters and BMXers from wandering into a motorcycle’s flight path. As soon as we heard engines, we knew to stay away from certain zones or somebody would get hurt.
The Moto guys were troopers. Clifford Adoptante was fresh off a broken femur and had to use a cane to walk to his bike. The jump was blind, with a 14-foot-high ramp between takeoff and landing blocking their view. On his first attempt, Drake McElroy overshot the landing and broke his jaw. That was just 10 days before opening night, and we ended up replacing him with our Moto coordinator, Micky Dymond, because by the time Drake got jacked, it was too late for anyone else to learn the routines.
As we rehearsed, Jim and Pat inked deals with the various performers’ agents, and Jim asked Social D and Offspring to play at the first event. We decided to have the premiere at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
We started selling tickets eight weeks before the first show. Sales were painfully slow. Two weeks out, we’d sold only 25 percent of the available tickets. We were all worried. Jim, who knew the business as well as anyone, was particularly worried. He told us we had to start making plans to “paper the house,” meaning we’d give away tickets to fill empty seats so the press wouldn’t declare it a flop. Fortunately, Jim and steadfast promoter Bill Silva did a bang-up job getting local radio stations to promote the show, and we had a surge of last-minute walk-up business. That gave us hope.
Anyway, the show went on, and we all had a blast, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. USA Today , MTV, Access Hollywood , and ESPN all covered the event, and gave favorable reviews. That night, we popped the champagne, exchanged high-fives, and everybody went home happy. Then Pat, Jim, and I looked at the accountant’s reckoning, and freaked. The venue and local labor costs were so enormous, we’d netted next to nothing. At that rate, there was no way we’d recoup all of our start-up costs. It was particularly bittersweet for me. I’d been excited to see so many screaming kids and stoked parents in the stands, but it looked like we were about to lose a whole lot of money.
Our goal had been to launch a summer tour just two months later, but now we were having serious second thoughts. Pat went on a mission to find sponsors. Fortunately, Activision planned to launch the fourth installment of my video game in November of that year. The game’s marketing team agreed to be the HuckJam’s title sponsor if we’d postpone the tour to coincide with the game’s release. Even though kids would be in school by then, we said okay, and began to organize a 24-city tour for the fall, to be sponsored by Activision, Sony PlayStation, and a new pudding-in-tube product called Squeeze-N-Go.
Five months after that first show in Vegas, we gathered up most of the same athletes and crew, studied the films, made some production changes, and went back to the hangar for
Freestyle Moto-X rider Dustin Miller wows the crowd on our first arena tour.
Three weeks before the first show, we set up the ramp in an enormous airplane hangar at the former Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, where the other athletes and I went to work choreographing the routines. That was a wild, exciting, stressful time. We were trying stuff no one had ever tried before, with up to five people on the ramp at the same time, sometimes riding over and under each other, their trick lists worked out in advance. We made time for a period of improvised riding in the middle of the show—a jam session—but most of it was precisely scripted.
For the finale, we decided to have the Moto guys fly over the outside edges of the ramp while the rest of us sessioned beneath them. That was the scariest part. We actually had to cordon off sections of the deck with caution tape to keep the skaters and BMXers from wandering into a motorcycle’s flight path. As soon as we heard engines, we knew to stay away from certain zones or somebody would get hurt.
The Moto guys were troopers. Clifford Adoptante was fresh off a broken femur and had to use a cane to walk to his bike. The jump was blind, with a 14-foot-high ramp between takeoff and landing blocking their view. On his first attempt, Drake McElroy overshot the landing and broke his jaw. That was just 10 days before opening night, and we ended up replacing him with our Moto coordinator, Micky Dymond, because by the time Drake got jacked, it was too late for anyone else to learn the routines.
As we rehearsed, Jim and Pat inked deals with the various performers’ agents, and Jim asked Social D and Offspring to play at the first event. We decided to have the premiere at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
We started selling tickets eight weeks before the first show. Sales were painfully slow. Two weeks out, we’d sold only 25 percent of the available tickets. We were all worried. Jim, who knew the business as well as anyone, was particularly worried. He told us we had to start making plans to “paper the house,” meaning we’d give away tickets to fill empty seats so the press wouldn’t declare it a flop. Fortunately, Jim and steadfast promoter Bill Silva did a bang-up job getting local radio stations to promote the show, and we had a surge of last-minute walk-up business. That gave us hope.
Anyway, the show went on, and we all had a blast, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. USA Today , MTV, Access Hollywood , and ESPN all covered the event, and gave favorable reviews. That night, we popped the champagne, exchanged high-fives, and everybody went home happy. Then Pat, Jim, and I looked at the accountant’s reckoning, and freaked. The venue and local labor costs were so enormous, we’d netted next to nothing. At that rate, there was no way we’d recoup all of our start-up costs. It was particularly bittersweet for me. I’d been excited to see so many screaming kids and stoked parents in the stands, but it looked like we were about to lose a whole lot of money.
Our goal had been to launch a summer tour just two months later, but now we were having serious second thoughts. Pat went on a mission to find sponsors. Fortunately, Activision planned to launch the fourth installment of my video game in November of that year. The game’s marketing team agreed to be the HuckJam’s title sponsor if we’d postpone the tour to coincide with the game’s release. Even though kids would be in school by then, we said okay, and began to organize a 24-city tour for the fall, to be sponsored by Activision, Sony PlayStation, and a new pudding-in-tube product called Squeeze-N-Go.
Five months after that first show in Vegas, we gathered up most of the same athletes and crew, studied the films, made some production changes, and went back to the hangar for
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