SUPERFLY

Poaching an empty airport is every skater's fantasy. Red Bull Terminal Takeover turns that dream into an epic reality. As the 2023 edition looms, here’s what makes the event picture perfect.

- PETERFLAX 

Jake Wooten is deconstructing the origins of the fantasy. Skating an airport without getting yelled at is every skater’s dream,” says the 22-year-old pro skater. He is not stating an opinion here; it’s just a fact. Way back in 2001, Tony Hawk’s landmark game Pro Skater 3 introduced an airport level, allowing the glorious vision of that forbidden fruit to bloom in skate culture’s communal cerebral cortex—spawning dreams of gliding across flawless concourse floors, launching off baggage-claim carousels and otherwise taking flight in a feature-rich playground.

And then, in 2021, that pixelated daydream was transformed into reality. That’s when Red Bull Terminal Takeover was born, and Wooten and five regional crews of skaters, each bringing a filmer and representing a shop from the South, descended upon a recently vacated terminal at Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans for a free-form skate jam and content creation competition on three custom-designed build-outs. Wooten can’t help but grin when he recalls the vibe at that inaugural edition. It was more than anyone thought possible,” he says. Everyone spent the whole time with a look of shock and awe on their faces. It was the most perfect ground in the world. It really was like being in a video game.”

Terminal Takeover wasn’t just a hit with participants—the resulting videos of Wooten and the regional competitors flying, flipping, grabbing and grinding in an empty airport were addictively entertaining. And the program’s design to uplift and showcase shops in the South was a big success, too.