Walls across Las Vegas were going untagged Thursday evening as every skater kid in town—and even a few parents—turned out to the Hard Rock for the chance to see a world record broken.
The record is for the bomb drop, a skateboarding stunt in which the rider jumps off a structure and free-falls onto a landing, and according to the folks at Guinness, is 19.7 feet and has been held by Adil Dyani since 2004.
Well, that is until Danny Way shows up. Dangling from a small platform affixed to the top of the Hard Rock's giant Fender Stratocaster, the 32-year-old daredevil who fancies himself an Evil Knievel of the board looks down 28 feet to where the 56-foot-high ramp begins. He's 78 feet above the pavement, staring down, trying not to see the padded palm trees that dot the ramp, trying to use his previous 59-foot leap across the Great Wall of China to bolster his courage for what he'll later say is "the scariest thing I've ever done in my life."
The parking lot, which a second ago had been filled with the high-pitched shout-outs of 10-year-olds, is now as quiet as any professional tennis match or golf game. With his wife Kari and sons Ryden and Tavin watching, he takes a breath and pushes off.
He hits the ramp on his board and immediately drops to his heavily padded knees, skidding and sliding to the half-pipe's base. The crowd's reaction is mixed: groans of disappointment, cheers for this first attempt. Tavin's reaction is anything but mixed and Danny has to stop on the edge of the ramp to take his youngest boy into his arms and let him know Daddy's all right.
In the meantime, because this is an extreme sport that calls for nonstop action, other skateboarders put their wheels to the test from the half-pipe's uppermost ledge, just below the guitar's headstock. Assembled are Bob Burnquist, Pierre-Luc "PLG" Gagnon, Rune Glifberg, Tony Magnusson and more. Their often-failed attempts to simply ride the half-pipe from lip to lip serve to underline what a challenge this is. Even without the momentum Way gains from his free-fall, these other boarders are hitting speeds approaching 40 miles an hour—which may not seem fast to me and you in our cars and trucks but might as well be a rocket when experienced while balanced on a piece of wood less than three feet long and somewhere around eight inches across.
While the other vertical experts take to the ramp, celebrities mingle in the crowd, including Chef Kerry Simon and Bam Margera and his dad, the much beaten-upon Phil. The senior Margera is by far the hit among amateur paparazzi, barely given a moment to breathe by fans of MTV's Viva la Bam and yet never failing to gladly smile and shake the hands of everyone who comes by to digitally capture his wide mug.
It's time for Danny's second shot, having ridden to the platform on a cherry picker that must be close to its full extension. Again, the masses are silent. Again, the 32-year-old collects his thoughts, much of the initial fear gone after having survived the first drop and yet he has to keep some piece of it to stay alert. The board is held by one hand to his feet, his other hand gripping a rail.
Again a push and he's falling.
Again he hits the ramp on his board. Canadian hard rock maple groans. Trucks flex.
The crowd screams as Danny rides the half-pipe down to its base, grinning to the sky as he lets himself slide off his board and back, knees tucked under and a record broken.
He barely has time to get to his feet before the ramp is flooded with fans and media, cameras and boom mics, video and digital. His expression is one of disbelief and when asked that most obvious of all questions, he can only answer "I'm stoked, man."
He will go on to it a second time, with the Stratocaster's neon flickering to life, and again the crowd will roar. But for now, while congratulators throng about Danny, Tony Magnusson waits at the half-pipe's lip, forgotten against the early evening sky.