The noise boys

SAN JOSE -- The Boom Boom HuckJam is all crazy vert thrills and monstrous airs. There are triple barspins, kick flips and -- bonus! -- Dexter and Noodles in the back just raging away.

Now, if you can decipher any of that, you probably already know that skateboarder Tony Hawk is coming to town with the most novel arena tour of the season, the curiously named Boom Boom HuckJam. It’s a glitzy rock ‘n’ roll circus on wheels, with action sports and music stars such as the Offspring and Devo under one tent. It’s sort of like Ice Capades with a halfpipe and a house band instead of the ice.

For those of you still scratching your heads, a quick primer: The most recognizable athlete among middle-school boys today is not Kobe Bryant or Brett Favre. It’s Hawk, the serene, stork-like skateboarder who has become a one-man business empire. His video games, DVDs and endorsements have made him the Wayne Gretzky of skateboarding--a prolific star who comfortably wears the role of genial ambassador guiding his sport to bigger audiences.

This tour is a testament to Hawk as a brand name and a new achievement in a career that began 20 years ago when, at age 14, the San Diego County native became a professional skateboarder. For years, that pro status meant touring in a creaky van and earning more applause than money for his specialized prowess. Nowadays, he gets mobbed by kids who may know him best as the digital star of a line of best-selling video games.

Those video games make it a natural for Hawk to share a stage with rock stars (his latest, Pro Skater 3, features a soundtrack with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ramones, Adolescents and more). And its nothing new to see action sports on the periphery of concerts, such as the annual Vans Warped Tour. The innovation of HuckJam, though, is its scale and its promise to keep the athletes in the main spotlight.

“The action was always a sideshow to the music at concerts. With this we take the focus to the action, but we have the music there in a strong way,” Hawk said as he prepared for the San Jose show. “And the ramps we use are state of the art; there’s never been anything like this before on tour. And that band playing, the live music, the intensity for us out there is completely different than if we were just on by ourselves.”

When the tour arrives at the Arrowhead Pond on Oct. 26, it will be Devo providing the soundtrack, but for the third show of the tour, at the Compaq Center here on Saturday, it was the Offspring, a group that has sold 12 million albums in the U.S. and has a pop-punk ethos that seems a perfect mate in a marriage of rock concert and skateboarding.

But the result is, well ... weird. Not bad, just weird. And sometimes a little scary.

After Hawk, the real star of the show is the set, a $1.5 million latticework of ramps and platforms that Hawk says he dreamed up “and drew on some napkin a few years ago.” At the center is a huge halfpipe (its big enough to park an RV on) that creates a curved canyon for Hawk and his fellow dream team of skateboard stars, which includes Andy Macdonald and Bucky Lasek.

Joining them is a squad of BMX stars, such as Dave Mirra. At points in the show, these off-road bicyclists weave around and above their skateboarding peers in a dance that seems, to the uninitiated, patently unwise. Then, to grill the nerves further, Cary Hart and a team of motocross bikers race around the halfpipe and routinely let go of their handlebars, even while leaping just over the heads of their non-motorized buddies.

And, oh yeah, there’s a band playing. It was easy to forget at times. The members of the Offspring, led by singer Bryan “Dexter” Holland and loopy guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, were perched on a tall stage at a far end of the arena floor. They played at thunderous volume, but with guys riding their bikes like surfboards, who watches the band?

“Yeah, we’re not used to being background music, like a DJ or something,” a good-natured Holland offered backstage. The band’s manager, Jim Guerinot, is also co-managing the HuckJam tour (along with Pat Hawk, the skateboarder’s sister), and his urging to participate in HuckJam was good enough for the band. Holland also signed on knowing that many youngsters would be in the audience with their parents.

“This is going to be the first concert a lot of these kids have ever seen, so that’s cool to think about,” Holland said.

There’s no doubt it was the first show for many in the audience at the Compaq Center in San Jose -- the crowd here was dominated by boys ages 4 to 10 and their parents. The organizers of the tour knew the crowds would skew young, but even they were surprised by how young. Before the 22-city tour began this month, the HuckJam model was tried out with a Las Vegas show in April. The tour organizers, watching adolescents and toddlers file into the venue, decided at the last minute to yank many of the stage explosions they had planned for fear of too badly rattling their wide-eyed crowd.

And while the Offspring’s pop-leaning take on punk has made them a favorite of many youngsters, the band has had to tailor its set for the romper room. It performed “Bad Habit,” a jagged ode to road rage with a few profanities, at the HuckJam stop in Portland, and parents complained. At the second stop, in Tacoma, they changed some of the lyrics, but that felt awkward for them. In San Jose, they just skipped the song altogether.

Hawk says there have been some complaints about the sound level, but in the crowd’s applause and in his informal surveys he hears far more good reviews. He also chafes at the suggestion that it’s a kids-only endeavor. “This is not Disney on Ice, this is something that transcends generations,” the father of three says.

Some parents in San Jose clearly enjoyed the Offspring’s set, others winced at the volume and suspiciously eyed the skulls and decapitated doll’s heads decorating the band’s gear. Other parents, with their kids plugging their ears or looking a bit spent, headed for the exits early as the three-hour exhibition of music and stunts continued.

“Too long and too loud for the little ones,” was the appraisal of Brad Jenkel, a father who brought his 4-year-old boy, Tyler, to see his hero Hawk. “But it was great, really.” Behind the father and son, a long line of fans were missing the tail-end of the Offspring set as they waited to scoop up T-shirts and glossy $20 programs. A mother walked by with a sobbing toddler. “He’s tied,” she said without breaking stride. “And it was a little too scary for him.”

Indeed, for the second time in three shows, a BMX rider and a motocross rider came perilously close in the show’s grand finale. Several performers entered the backstage corridors and threw their helmets in anger. Hawk huddled with them briefly to defuse the situation. There was already tension, too, about last-minute tinkering with the show’s program and with changes in ramp distances, the latter issue an unavoidable one with the vagaries of different arenas. “We have some things to figure out,” Hawk said.

The tour itself was a major question mark (the nation’s top concert promotion outfit, Clear Channel, passed on it) and it’s been hard at times for organizers of the show to explain exactly what it is to some fans, much less their parents. But Hawk’s name and word of mouth have made the difference so far. The first shows have turned a profit -- the kick-off crowd in Portland topped 10,300, the Tacoma crowd swelled to 11,500 -- and it appears to be building momentum. That comes in the face of huge costs associated with show’s setup and transportation.

“We were prepared to lose money, but so far,”Hawk says, “it’s going well.” He hopes the tour fares well enough to add international dates, which would only enhance his role as ambassador on wheels. “They haven’t seen anything like this overseas, and I’d love to have more people understand what we’re doing”

The curiosity of the Boom Boom Huckjam continues, but Paul Tollett, the promoter handling the San Jose, San Diego and Anaheim dates of the tour, says there are plenty of young Hawk fans ready to translate. “We didn’t know what would happen with this,” said Tollett, who is far more accustomed to sizing up the crowd calculus of rock shows. “How could we? But you know why I got in? My daughter is 7 and she knows who Tony Hawk is and asked me if I could introduce her to him. She’s never done that for any other show.”

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Boom Boom HuckJam, with Devo, Oct. 26 at the Arrowhead Pond, 7 p.m. $25 to $75.