Aaron “Jaws” Homoki loves being high. And not the way you may think.
While his name reminds you of a giant great white shark terrorizing your local beach party, Jaws’ skating style is most reminiscent to that of a bird with the way he seamlessly gets air. This year alone, he became the first skateboarder-along with his good friend Tony Hawk-to skate in zero gravity. He also broke the world record for most stairs ollied at 25 at the famous Lyon staircase in France. His very presence on a skateboard is a challenge to Newton’s Laws of Gravity.
But Jaws also loves to get really, really high. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon at his home in Arizona, I gave him a call to talk about the year he has had and his future on Thrasher’s King of the Road after winning for the fourth year in a row. He was outside, smoking a blunt with a friend from town and getting some much needed relaxation.
Recently, you and Tony [Hawk] became the first to ever skate in zero gravity. What was that like for you?
That felt crazy. It’s a lot like, when you’re going up to go into zero gravity it has, like, all the g-forces on you so you have to lay down in the plane before you go into zero gravity and that’s a lot kinda for the body to handle. You’re going from straight g-force on your chest that you have to lay down to zero gravity. They didn’t show it in the video but I ended up like throwing up. It’s actually funny because I threw up in a barf bag in zero gravity but I didn’t realize that you literally have to throw upwards. Because I threw up in the bag going downwards, and all the puke ended up going back in my mouth.
As of a couple of weeks ago, it’s been announced that skateboarding is going to be part of the 2020 Olympics. Do you think you’ll be skating in Tokyo?
I cannot call that. –laughs- I have no idea. I mean, I of course would like to. I think it would be awesome to do. But I don’t know how they’re going to select who gets chosen into that. Plus by that time in 2020 I’m gonna be like 30 years old. So I might be getting there. We’ll see how much longer I got.
Earlier this year, the video of you breaking the record for biggest ollie at the Lyon went viral. Would you say that’s the scariest trick you’ve done
It was more like, scary the whole like plane ride out there and the whole anticipation about just hoping that I land it. That I think that was actually more scary than the trick itself. But it’s definitely the most accomplished I’ve felt honestly as a skateboarder.
The first time you tried you got pretty messed up.
Yeah so it was a very magical moment. I was very, very happy. –laughs-
Think you’ll be upping the ante with a 30 stair trick anytime soon?
Only time will tell.
Is there a moment from your life that you can pinpoint and say that that was the moment you decided to be professional carcass tossser?
Not really, it kinda just manifested into itself. I was never good at tech stuff, like doing ledge tricks and manuals and stuff. So I just became the person that just jumped off stuff. And it just manifested into just keep jumping off stuff. And that’s the man I manifested into.
And definitely the influence of skateboarders in the 90s like Tony Hawk I’m sure. Isn’t it crazy to be skating on Birdhouse [Tony Hawk’s team]?
Oh yeah. For sure! It’s actually really awesome cuz I did right around that time remember my mom getting us the first Tony Hawk Pro Skater game for me and my brother. And that’s how we learned the names for all the tricks, on that video game. It’s definitely like surreal, but at the same time I feel that I have developed a relationship with Tony to where like he’s actually one of my good friends and I can just hit him up whenever like ‘hey what’s up?’ It was weird at first. Like woah! But then now it’s like ‘oh wait, Tony’s a just a totally normal skate rat’.
If you were to follow in his footsteps and come out with a game, what soundtrack would it have?
Oh dude, all techno! –laughs- I’m a techno fan at heart. I actually got into techno before I got into skateboarding. Not like into it into it, but I was listening as a little kid like ‘Oh! This music is hyper and happy sounding!’ I was like really excited for it. But yeah, I would change up the whole shit. It would be like all electronic and techno stuff. Techno, house, acid, maybe trance.
This year, Birdhouse became the second team to win King of the Road three years in a row. When Zero did it, they weren’t allowed to come back. Is that the rules or will we be seeing more Birdhouse shenanigans next season?
Ohhhh man. I don’t know if I’m allowed to be leaking this information…Actually fuck it whatever it doesn’t matter. No, we will not be competing in the next King of the Road. Birdhouse is not in it.
You just crushed my dreams of seeing Birdhouse go up against Zero to see who would get the fourth.
Zero doesn’t have the same team that they had when they were killing it. Chris Cole was definitely their secret weapon. He is so good. So I think that if we ever did it again, and they put Plan B up against us, I think that would be good. If they had like, Chris Joslin, Torey Pudwill, freaking Chris Cole, Felipe Gustavo. They can probably do it, but the thing with Birdhouse is that we are so down with any of the shenanigans challenges. So we just go really hard on the non-skate challenges. I think that’s why we’re really good cuz we’re down to go hard all the time not just on skating. We won by like, a thousand points over [Chocolate]. Our thing is we don’t just rely on one person to do everything. We all try a trick at the same time and whoever gets it, gets it. We just skate together and encourage each other.
What is your favorite thing to do to pass the time on all these road trips?
You mean, aside from jacking off? –laughs- Play the mouth harp. It’s like a harmonica. It’s called a jaw harp.
How did you get into that?
Like two years ago, I rolled the SHIT out of my ankle and I was out for like four or five months and I just like smoked weed for that whole four or five months. And I just ended up getting the mouth harp. And I’ve been playing it for like two or three years. I’ve got a few tracks but they’re not ready for the public yet. Me and my friends fucked around and took a bunch of molly and made music. The world is not ready for it yet. I’m gonna go by Acid Mouth.