Archives: Jaws vs Lyon
a decade ago, Jaws hit the most famous stairs in skating and told me about it
Things have been either giving up the ghost or trending that direction, rolodexes returning blanks and net-45 payments of a few hundred dollars now looking like gold. VICE Sports is among the deceased, buried in a shallow grave where the stories shuffle along, existing but stripped of the vibe.
So this trip to the archive feels more like a seance.
A decade ago, Aaron ‘Jaws’ Homoki — deliverer of Death from Above; the Human Asteroid — returned to southeast France to take on the most famous stair set in all of skating. The twenty-five stairs, free of rails and unfurling with Gallic unfeeling, rent his board and medial collateral ligament both, sending him away one more victim, the latest in a line stretching back to Boulala and one of skating’s most famous doomed attempts a lucky 13 years before.
But Jaws’ rep is hard earned, and he’s been dipped in the Styx, and he came back and tamed Lyon, throwing down our most famed melon, a holy heel side hold into history. Thrasher had the footage, but I wanted the words. Thanks to some VICE connections — namely New Jersey’s own Chris Nieratko — I got to hear what went down straight from Jaws and his dad.
The following tale of Jaws fighting physics, architecture, and anatomy originally ran in VICE Sports. Below is a never-before-seen edit of the piece, just for you my bbs. It’s close to raw, with a few tweaks made to structure and word choice but the bones basically unmoved — an undisturbed rest. Candles lit and spirits summoned from the depths of my rose gold Air, enjoy Jaws vs Lyon.
Jaws vs. Lyon
There is a staircase in Lyon.
Massive in scope, its 25 steps rise from a slippery tessellation of little square bricks in a frightening edifice; no handrails scar its face, and the vast expanses of little square bricks—slipperiness aside—which lead to and away from it unfurl almost perfectly, long and unbroken enough for the speed required to hurl one's self down the frozen waterfall of a staircase and generous enough to embrace that speed after it comes crashing down.
In 2002, Ali Boulala ended his section in Flip's seminal skate video Sorry by crashing down the Lyon 25. It was thrilling, quixotic, impossible; perfectly Ali, the beautiful failing, an ollie down an obstacle so large that the attempt—not the make—was legendary in and of itself. Since then, the staircase had sat there, one of skateboarding's holy grails, silent, imposing, and unmolested, like Quixote's windmill.
Sorry was the first video Aaron “Jaws” Homoki ever owned, the first one he'd ever watched, and he could not have imagined ever throwing himself into the abyss like Ali did. Jaws did become a master of the drop; seemingly having shock absorbers for legs, he would send the whole lean length of himself down these precipitous falls, gaps invisible to most skaters because they would be assumed impossible, like, say, from the second floor of what appears to be a Pepto pink motel, out and over the staircase and railing and onto the parking lot—13 feet, easy, a move from a video game or action film—these literally spleen-rending drops, and in message boards and skate shops and street spots and on the decks of mini ramps whispers and rumblings and wishes that he would go for the 25 began. Even then Jaws wasn't sure.
On a trip to South Africa in 2011 he met professional skater and Lyonnais Charles Collet, who told him he was sure he could pull it off.
In the summer of 2014 he tried; he flew down Boulala's unconquered case, had his board crack in two beneath him, and tore his MCL.
In the fall of 2015, Micheal Burnett and Thrasher magazine arranged to go with him, Boulala, famed photographer/filmer French Fred Mortagne, and Jaws' father Jason, to try again.
And this time Jaws rolled away.
~ ~ ~
Skateboard history is written in tricks and spots and videos. Yes, there's contests to win and roll calls of X Games medalists, but the 900 will always matter more than the Best Trick gold Tony Hawk won for it. The cyclopean four stairs of Wallenberg; the Gonz Gap; the LOVE fountain; the Leap of Faith; Carlsbad; tEl Toro; Hollywood High; Clipper — any trick done on these Holy Spots becomes part of skating history, moments that define careers and entire eras and serve as lodestars for skaters coming later. Skating evolves at a furious pace that could drive viruses mad with envy, and a decent chunk of the record is written in the photos, videos, and memories of these benchmark spots.
Boulala's staircase was unique not because it was famous, but because it was famously undone. It loomed out there on the horizon, the spot that might one day see a trick down it. After Jaws rolled away, he got a text message from Tony Hawk, whose Birdhouse team Homoki skates for.
‘Congrats,’ read the text. ‘That is one of the greatest feats in skateboarding history.’
~ ~ ~
October 9 is marked by beautiful fall weather in Lyon, the earliest turning off the leaves framing the bone colored stairs and the temperature perfect and moderate compared to Jaws' native Arizona. The group stays in a hotel adjacent to the stairs. The next day, Jaws' assault on the Lyon 25 begins.
The 25 is surrounded on all sides so as to appear sunken, a building on one side of it, a path on the other. There is a staircase down to the run up to the 25 with a perfect ramped side from which to mount each charge. Numerous pedestrian bridges and walkways cover the areas where he will land.
From above, the 25 does not appear so bad.
‘From the bottom [of the stairs] up, I was like holy shit, this is big,’ laughed proud pop Jason Homoki said from his home in Arizona. ‘From the top down, it gives you … the illusion was, eh, you can do this. I kind of tried to push him and kept saying let's look at it from up, from up here.'
Jaws worked his way along a ledge — all dirt and the scraggles of urban plants — jutting out alongside the 25, perched above his future landing, and dropped hard to the ground. It was a purposeful approximation of one of the worst case scenarios, the fall to flat without any of the wheel to transfer force into forward motion. He landed, crouched deep to absorb the shock, his gloved hands hitting the slippery tessellation of tiled bricks, and bounced back up.
‘Dude, I do that all the time,’ Jaws laughed, reached via phone from Phoenix. ‘All of the time. Just to feel the impact. I guess you could say it’s my madness. I’ll jump from the frickin' side of it, just to feel the impact … It's a great warm up. A really quick, jolting warm up.’
He is armored for his attempts, flimsy foam volleyball pads taped on to the knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow of his left — leading — side to absorb the impact of repeated pitches forward.
‘That little stuff like that [repeated falls forward] just hurts,’ he explained. ‘So it's just always better to protect those areas that are always getting hurt.’ While he has worn protection before, it was never to this extent.
‘I was definitely the most prepared on this one. I was like fuck this, I'm not getting some dumb little hurt. If I'm going to do this, I'm either gonna get fucking seriously hurt or not get hurt.’
Learning from his first attempt at the 25, he also adjusted his skateboard. Softer, larger wheels helped him to maintain better grip on the unforgivingly slick run up and landing. The difference was huge; the softer wheels ended up being key to the final make.
thrasher’s mini-doc; the title was convergent evolution
Jaws climbed the slanted side of the stair case above the 25. Holding on to the handrail and a tree branch for balance, he bombs down the side, hits the slick little squares, and takes three solid pushes, a peregrine at the precipice; he is running now, at high speed, towards what looks for all the world like a backcountry cliff drop. He was not thinking of much as he approached the edge — ‘kind of just blank the mind and go.’ Pre-trick, he visualizes the run up and the roll away, but, befitting the blank mind, rarely, if ever, the middle.
This blank space is maybe the cushion Jaws lands on which others never seem to hit.
He launches into space, launches and floats for what seems like forever, his gloved front hand reaching behind him to grab the board melon, cameras unfurl in a staccato cloud of clicks … and he lands, hard, crumples like the front end of a car, rolls, bounces back up.
It’s the most hang time he’s ever felt. That was one reason he decided to go for the melon, to mitigate the chances of losing contact with his board suspended in the void. (And because he loves grabs.)
‘One of the thing we used to do when they were kids is we'd go up to Lake Powell,’ Jason Homoki said. ‘There's some cliffs … Aaron and his friends and his brother jumped off of about a 90 footer one time, and … I remember counting … and I would go one, two, three, smack. And that's about what this one took.’
The falls are all similar, his body weight pitched too far forward, sending him crashing against his padded left side. Despite the heigh and violence of the drop he hops up again and again, climbing the 25 and preparing to charge down the set another time.
Security arrived, threatening to call the police, even at one point standing between the stairs and a full-tilt Jaws. Metal barriers were placed at the bottom of the stairs, the fight ended for the day. The tight security presence has the potential to jeopardize the entire mission; when the guards are out ever early on a Sunday morning, arrangements have to be made.
Strings were pulled, and permission was obtained for Jaws to try again on Monday, October 12. Hugging Boulala and his father at the top of the 25, he begins attacking the set again. He slams forward a few more times, these looking much more vicious on video than the previous attempts. The set is fighting back. On one occasion he slaps the landing in frustration briefly before getting up and going again; on another, he actually loses the board out from under his feet, that first day ledge jump coming in handy. Loosening up his back, he tries again; this time his entire wheel sheers off the axle, the bearings on either side of it miraculously still in place, a peculiar display of the awesome power of the drop.
He changes out his wheel, adds some ¼ risers from French Fred — these are plastic pads which help keep the wheels from biting into the board; Jaws had been rocking 1/8 — and applies deodorant to the grooves eaten into the bottom of the board by the urethane in an attempt to keep the wheels from biting and pitching him. The next attempt, made to screams of encouragement, is the closest yet. He actually lands and rolls momentarily, before stumbling off and walking away. Despite the frustration, he quickly breaks into a smile.
‘Oh my god,’ he says, ‘I can do it though!’
And he does.
He snaps, grabs, floats the roughly three seconds down to the landing, and rolls away, his dad coming down the stairs behind him; it looks like, if he could, Jason Homoki would have flown down as fast his son to congratulate him. Both, according to Boulala, were in tears.
~ ~ ~
It took days for Jaws to fully realize what he had done.
‘It felt like a dream. Right after I landed … I don't know. When you think about something for that long, for over a year, and I was thinking about it every day, I would have dreams about it, and then once it comes true, in that split second, I don't know, this crazy feeling just went over me and I honestly felt like I was dreaming.
‘I'd thought about that moment for so long that it actually happened, and I was like … I didn't even know!’ he laughed.
For his father, who was not only watching skate history being made by his son but also out of the country for the very first time, the moment was similarly overwhelming.
‘I wasn't all there, I think, at the moment,’ Jason said. ‘It took me a couple hours where I realized how fantastic that was. I was pent up inside a little bit by wow, is he going to get hurt because this thing is big? and obviously hoping that he would land it … the feeling was ecstasy, and it just kept building after the moment. Hours later, it was even better.’
‘It was awesome, it was so good he was there,’ Jaws said of his dad. ‘Just him being excited the whole time got me happy. Plus that plane ride was way less sucky,’ he laughed.
For his part, Boulala seems to not be too upset about his spot being landed by another skater. In an interview with After Skate, he mentions that, while he does feel a bit erased from history, he still feels like Jaws did his own thing, with his own trick. For the technically minded out there, an ollie down the 25 — what Boulala attempted — still has yet to be done.
As for any future tricks, Jaws is not so sure what else set and skater could take; the bizarre wheel incident seems to support the theory that there could be a technological and biological limit to what can go down the Lyon 25. Still, he does not doubt that with the way skating evolves, in another 13 years someone may be coming along hucking kickflips down the set — it just most likely will not be him.
‘Oh hell no!’ he laughed when asked if he wanted to go back. He has other voids to cross and seemingly impossible drops to survive.
~ ~ ~
‘You know what my philosophy is on kids?’ Jason Homoki asked me. ‘You tell them once the stove is hot. They venture over to the stove and you told them it's hot, they sometimes need to touch it themselves before they figure it out what it is that's hot. And that's the way I let my boys see … They very soon got to be able to test the boundaries, both my boys are that way, and Aaron was very good at testing the boundaries, and realizing what he can and can't do.
‘And to this day, he's still out there testing his boundaries, and I don't think he's reached it yet.’
