This Is Totally Normal: Buy a Tony Hawk Skateboard Painted With His Own Blood
Yet another celebrity is using blood – his own even – to sell stuff.
Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk announced this week that he was the latest celeb to hawk a product featuring blood, joining Lil Nas X, who added human blood (not his own) in his branded shoe publicity stunt, and dating back to a 1977 Marvel comic starring glam-rockers KISS, which was printed with ink containing the band’s blood.
Hawk donated 100 vials of blood to be used for limited-edition skateboard decks in a partnership with Liquid Death Mountain Water. Each vial will be infused with paint and used on the $500 boards, which are already sold out.
You can watch the video posted by both Liquid Death and Hawk on Instagram, provided you aren’t too squeamish about blood or needles. The clip shows Hawk sitting down to have his blood drawn, and then shows the fluid being mixed into red paint and painted onto a skateboard deck.
The finished decks feature a graphic of a shirtless executioner with a can of Liquid Death where his head should be, eyeballs instead of nipples, holding a bloody axe in one hand and what appears to be a raven’s skull in the other.
Hawk then guided prospective buyers to the company’s website, where a lucky few could plunk down $500 for said skateboard, with the option to secure the purchase with four interest-free payments of $125. If you weren’t one of the lucky few to snap up those first 100 to order, you’ll have to try your luck on eBay. They sold out almost instantly.
A percentage of the proceeds of the sales goes directly to an anti-plastic nonprofit and The Skateboard Project.
Each board comes with a certificate of authenticity. “So if you have my blood, that means you have my DNA,” Hawk said in the video.