Tony Hawk, skateboard legend, video game superstar and the last one to die in the great uprising, has inspired the culture for generations. Since Neversoft put him on the PlayStation in 1999, Hawk has been a household name, the video game series inspiring boarders on the couch and halfpipe alike. Looking to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, he traveled to the real world Los Angeles park recreated within the game. Only to be escorted out by security.
“Happy 25th THPS3!” Posted the Birdman himself. “We got kicked out of Pershing Square while shooting this today.”
Though unnamed in the game, the Los Angeles stage of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is clearly inspired by Pershing Square, a business park in the city’s financial district. With its distinctive modernist features from architect Ricardo Legorreta, the stone crescent benches and large red orbs made for a slick backdrop in the 2001 extreme sports game. It still remains in the city today, largely unchanged, as well as the nearby car wash with a big blue obelisk.
As such, recreating the beloved video game should have made for easy content. To the Ramones’ Blitzkrieg Bop, Hawk rolls through Pershing Square, revisiting the sights, recreating the worbling idle stance of his virtual avatar. Leaving most of the tricks to his PlayStation self, Hawk and his team could only film so much before being ejected from the site by security.
“She [security] just shoo’d us away,” posted Hawk. “It was very anticlimactic.”
The third entry in the series was the first to hit the PlayStation 2. To this day it’s considered not just one of the best in the series, but is tied with Grand Theft Auto 3 as Metacritic’s best on the console. The game was remade in 2025, part of Iron Galaxy’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 bundle. While the first set was met with a ticker-tape parade, the second’s reception was a touch milder. Fans young and old continue to be frustrated as getting new, no nonsense entries in any legacy skateboard series feels like pulling teeth, when they could be losing them off a botched rail grind instead.
