“I could have bought a mansion, but I bought this,” Tyshawn Jones says with a laugh. The 27-year-old professional skateboarder is showing me around a 12,000-square-foot warehouse tucked away in a tiny town on the Jersey side of the Hudson. Hardies Land, he calls it, the latest and most expansive investment for the budding mogul — a headquarters for the wider world he’s building around skateboarding. Most of the place is still stripped to the studs. The skatepark, though, is ready to rip. “This is what pays me,” Tyshawn says, gesturing to the gold-painted rails and concrete banks, still powdery fresh. “I thought that it would be good to have a place where I could focus on my craft, progress, and just lock in.”

He made sure to have the park done before anything else, even the plumbing. (If you need to use the bathroom, there’s a Dunkin’ a short drive away.) But Tyshawn’s got grand plans for the rest of the buildout. Above us, there’ll be a loft overlooking the ramps. That room, where TJ’s assistant is currently sorting boxes of new bedazzled Hardies Gazelles, will be a gym and cryotherapy chamber. Other rooms will become showers, a kitchen, a bedroom for visitors, and a conference room and office. There’ll be a photo studio and cyc wall, “so if someone wants to book me for a shoot,” he says, “they can give the budget to Hardies Production.” There are plans for a music studio, too. He wants to executive produce a mixtape with friends and skaters like Na-Kel Smith and 454 Willie, and, if things line up right, maybe get Cash Cobain, Veeze, or Lil Tecca to come through.

If he can get all the permits approved, he’ll have the place fully finished and furnished by the end of the year, at which point, he tells me, he wants the cover of Architectural Digest. That’s not a lot of time for a hell of a lot of renovation, but Tyshawn’s not stressing — getting things off the ground quickly is kind of his thing.

Tyshawn’s got pop, everybody knows that. It’s the superpower that’s propelled him to improbable prominence. He’s won Thrasher’s Skater of the Year award twice (and is the only Black skater to repeat). He’s got two signature shoes with adidas. He’s in video games and centerfolds, dabbles in real estate and restaurants, models for major brands, runs a handful of companies, and is now a “Friend of the House” of Louis Vuitton, joining the likes of English footballer Jude Bellingham and the rapper Future. Few skaters have ever been able to fly so high off their skateboarding skills, and he’s done it all before turning 30.

Given his ambition and cashflow, you might think he’d show up in a suit, but that’s not his style. “I should rock them more,” he tells me, “but I’d have to iron it every day and all that, seems like a lot.” He’s not a businessman anyway — as Hov would say, “he’s a business, man.” His dress code is his own. On this foggy Monday morning in March, he’s wearing a “running out the crib” fit: bright red reptile-embossed Timberlands, his soon-to-be-released signature adidas sweatpants, a shearling-lined hooded leather jacket over a Polo tee, beanie by Louis Vuitton, and, underneath it all, socks and boxers from Hardies and Brick, repping two of his own three brands.

“I feel like we’re in a time where expensive has become the new lit,” he tells me, surveying the fashion landscape. “When I see what people are wearing, it’s not cool to wear skate clothes no more. Everybody wants to wear vintage shirts or Chrome Hearts or something.” He says he doesn’t try to follow trends, but he can’t claim he hasn’t fallen victim to some, even if he helped create them: “Sometimes I look back at clips and I be like, ‘What the fuck was I wearing?’ I don’t know, that was my younger style when I was 16: swishy pants, t-shirts, and fucking 5-panel hats.”

That would’ve been 2014, the year Supreme’s “cherry” came out and he was first dubbed the Courthouse Kid. Director Bill Strobeck gave him the nickname for the half dozen tricks he rifled off at the iconic skate spot outside the New York Supreme Court. He was making around $500 a month at the time, but he used to get nothing, the same as all the other riders. Supreme only started compensating its team after Tyshawn received an offer from Volcom and asked the guys at the shop if they paid. It wasn’t much, but it was a solid start for a kid growing up between Harlem and the Bronx, where hustling hard is the rule. “My mom’s a gangsta,” he recalls, “she always told me from the jump, ‘You’ve got to do what’s right for you, don’t let these companies stunt your growth.’” If he could keep up the public’s interest, he knew his worth would only compound, he just had to be persistent. The bet paid off. Big.

Barely 12 years later, Supreme had a billion-dollar valuation and Tyshawn was getting $83,000 a month from them — a cool million a year. The stipulations had grown stifling, though, and the two parted ways in 2025, rather publicly. The juicy details of his deal spilled out after Tyshawn sued Supreme for wrongful termination, giving new meaning to his old nickname. The internet — and especially the skate industry, notoriously hush-hush about money — erupted in discourse.

To those who think he was crazy to walk away from that bag, Tyshawn offers a reality-check — his version, at least. “People might take this the wrong way, but a million dollars is not that much money when you live in New York and you’re paying 50% in taxes and you have all these bills. It’s good money, but it’s not as much as people think. Then we see a basketball player getting $5 million to sit on the bench, and no one’s talking about that, but they’ll talk about me quote-unquote fumbling,” TJ says, shaking his head.

All the backlash, according to him, is irrational: “In my mind, I’d be like, ‘Damn, that’s dope, he’s pushing it farther than anyone has probably ever done, we should champion that.’ But there’s the 48-year-old at the skatepark like, ‘Blah, blah, blah, fuck him.’ I just laugh at the end of the day. I’m happy with my life. I’ve taken it farther than I ever thought I would take it. I have my own skatepark. I own eight houses. I’m healthy. My family is taken care of. I could care less. I’m just trying to keep doing what I’m doing and having fun doing it.”

As for the lawsuit, he couldn’t speak much on it “because it’s still a pending legal thing.” He then reiterated: “I’m happier than ever, I’m sponsored by Louis Vuitton now, like, end of discussion.”

Tyshawn first entered LV’s orbit during the brand’s 2017 collaboration with Supreme, and later got to know Virgil Abloh when he took over LV’s menswear program. After Abloh’s untimely death, Pharrell took the reins and he continued tapping skateboarders for influence, officially inviting Jones to join the brand in 2025. “Just to say, ‘I’m part of the biggest [fashion] company in the world,’ or for them to even acknowledge where I come from is an honor in itself,” he says with a sincere smile (flanked by two large diamonds blinging in his left ear).

The sponsorship marks a turning point in how Tyshawn is valued: less as a skater who can move product, more as a talent who can move between worlds. “They’re not like, ‘Go get a clip in this shirt we’re about to drop.’ Those days are over.” He’s not a Tony Hawk, always prepared to play the dutiful boarder. “I showed up today with no skateboard,” he shoots back, later clarifying that he keeps a complete in his trunk just in case.

Sometimes, though, the mood will strike. Then, there’s no stopping him. Like when he nollie heelflipped over that handrail into a cobblestone bank in Paris, kitted out head to toe in LV, including the Timberlands. “That was all me,” he recalls. “It almost didn’t happen, because I was filming a Get Ready With Me for LV, and the company they hired to do it was tripping, like, ‘We can’t make it, there’s traffic, blah blah blah.’” He didn’t have his board with him (it was winter and he hates the cold), so he grabbed an LV board — more fashion accessory than functional equipment — and started going for it. “Even in the midst of trying it, they were like, ‘We gotta leave.’” That’s one thing Tyshawn wishes the public understood better about skating: how long it takes to get things right. “Then, I finally landed it and, you know, it is the viral clip it is, so thank God I followed my gut.”

Tyshawn intuitively recognizes how hard it is for skateboarding to compete in the modern attention economy. “I feel like everybody is looking for the next dopamine hit, and things move a lot faster than skateboarding — streams and social media, there’s a basketball game every night. It’s hard to drop a video part every three years if you’re trying to create a quality batch of work.”

To keep up, he’ll perform and post the sort of stunts that are sure to wow anyone — he’ll hurdle over a sports car, fling tricks over the subway tracks, 180 over Samuel L. Jackson. But even those clips, engineered for maximum virality, run into a deeper visibility problem. Pop can only get you so much popular appeal. TikTok metrics evidence the issue: the clip of Tyshawn jumping a Ferrari Monza SP2 has drawn only half the views of a vid where he dances with the actress Tracee Ellis Ross.

“We’re going to have to get a fucking skateboard streamer or something,” Jones says with a laugh when I ask him how a skater can break containment. I bring up IShowSpeed, and TJ lights up: “He’s probably one of the most famous people in the world right now, just doing flips and traveling with a camera crew. So it’s like, what’s the incentive for a six-year-old to pick up a skateboard and fall and bust his ass and get hurt to be scraping by? To maybe get a sponsor and get a good deal? There’s maybe 20 skateboarders who make real money.”

He continues: “It’s difficult when you think about it. If I was a kid now, and I saw the Kai Cenats of the world sitting at a computer desk and making millions of dollars, why would I want to go get hurt? It just doesn’t make sense. And they’re more famous, they’re more lit, they probably get more girls, they’re getting swarmed outside… for a young kid who’s enticed by that, I would think they see those perks more. And that’s one of the problems with skateboarding, no one is showing the lifestyle anymore. I’ve always been super private, but sometimes I think, ‘Should I show more of the things I’ve been able to get from skateboarding?’ Maybe that would show people this is an avenue, if you do it right.”

There’s no blueprint to follow when it comes to making a life out of skateboarding. It’s a DIY culture; your own devices determine your success. Tyshawn’s taken the lesson literally, and is drawing up designs to take skateboarding into uncharted territories. “What’s the next evolution of skate shoes?” he asks. “We’ve seen the basics, every brand has those, but I want to redraw some lines.” The way he’s approaching his third signature shoe for adidas offers some insight: “I want to start playing with more technology,” he tells me, “stuff that’s a little bit more crazy and experimental.”

Then there’s his three brands, all with their own place in his plan: “King is the skateboards, that’s the foundation, something for the gang to help build and advocate for,” he says about the board company he started in late 2022. Margins are known to be awfully slim in that industry, but profit’s not the point: “Even if King makes zero dollars and we just have the boards to skate, that’s more important to me than sponsoring a bunch of people I don’t want to be around just to promote my company.” Brick Underneath is underwear for everybody. “Middle America, LA, New York, Massachusetts, I want you to be able to go to Target and get some Bricks.” Lastly there’s what he calls his “slow burner,” Hardies NYC, ostensibly a nuts-and-bolts company he started in 2015, but one “with the potential to live in other spaces, like a Palace or Stüssy.”

Taken together, the goal is to create the infrastructure for a livelihood that can thrive independent of his athleticism. “I want skating to be an option. I ain’t trying to be the old n*gga hanging on just to pay his bills. That’s why I’m so big on doing the right things with my money now, so if I want to skate, I could; if I don’t want to, it’s OK.” A quick call Tyshawn takes during our talk emphasizes his point: “Yo, I’m doing an interview,” he tells the caller, “I just wanted to tell you to put that money somewhere, figure out a plan for it. I’m going to call you back.”

He picks up the thought: “I don’t want to be in an instance like, if I want to drive this certain car, I have to tre flip over the next train station to be able to afford that, you know? That’s working backwards at that point. People be like, ‘Oh, you’ve got all these other things going on,’ and it’s like, yeah, I got all of these other things going on on purpose. I’ve acquired a skill set and other stuff while I am still active, I’m not waiting until I can’t do tricks anymore to start.”

That doesn’t mean he’s hanging up the skateboard anytime soon, though. “I think I’ll be able to skate for a lot longer,” he tells me. Jones has always taken care of his body, has never smoked, and doesn’t drink. He figures he has at least another decade before he has to worry about falling off. “But I also got other things that I like doing, too,” he says, “like building brands and orchestrating campaigns.”

Brand leaders are like band leaders, they’ve got to work well with other artists, and Tyshawn makes a point of only partnering with entities that he feels are “authentic.” He’s teamed up with Denim Tears’ Tremaine Emory on a Hardies collection, a natural fit because Emory’s “a great storyteller who stands for Black empowerment.” And Hardies’ latest drop has collabs with Avirex and G-Shock, too, staples of uptown style that TJ dreamt of affording as a kid. But senseless collabs are a staple in skateboarding, and some brands even seem to use them to hold their whole operation together. How far could Tyshawn push his logic before it started to feel absurd? Could something as out there as CitiBank make sense?

“Shit, why not?” he answered without missing a beat. “We do a financial literacy course for skaters. You know what I’m saying? We do a no-limit startup account with the Hardies logo on the card.” I should’ve known a financial institution would be too easy. He adds, “You can almost always make something cool if you put your spin on it,” he says. “You just have to advocate for exactly what you want, and be kind of stern with that. Sometimes people see money and say, ‘Okay, I’ll do whatever,’ but then the outcome isn’t that great. But if you stick to your guns, you’ll get something you’re proud of.”

Pride is something people accuse Tyshawn of showing in excess, but I sensed something different — an unsettled urge to always go bigger. When I ask him if he has a trick he’s most proud of, he answers only, “No.” Hardest? He has to think; he’s not the type to wallow in the past. Scouring his memory, he mentions the huge bump-to-bar on a hill that he backside flips toward the end of his part in Supreme’s Blessed, but then playfully dismisses his catalog altogether: “Fuck them tricks though, I’m trying to get some new ones.”

Multiple projects are in the pipeline: adidas is working on a full-length skate video. King has one coming, too. And there’s a part in the works with Ryan Garshell, the GX1000 ringleader whose name, saved in one of Tyshawn’s two phones simply as GX, kept flashing across the screen while we talked. “I’m trying to film as much as I can,” Jones tells me. “It gets hard sometimes because there’s so much going on, but I try to be positive about it. Now that my plate is full, I can’t be like, ‘This is too much for me,’ even though it sometimes feels like that — we’re all human. But you can’t cry when you ask for it, and I asked for all these things. I came into the game with a lot of aspirations. I was young saying, ‘I’m going to do this, and I’m going to do that, I want this and I want that.’ So now that it’s in front of me, I can’t fold. I feel like I’m the man for the job.”

How much more appetite does he have? Is he saving room for a third Skater of the Year run? “I won’t lie and say that’s not something I’m trying to obtain. We’re going to make it happen — it’s just when, it ain’t if to me. And that’s not on some cocky shit. I’m going to put in the work, and I’m going to do what I need to do to win, hopefully.”

By this point, Tyshawn has been talking into the recorder for more than an hour and a half. He’s getting restless. There’s business to attend to. “This is probably my last interview for a while,” he jokes. “I will go on the record saying that.” He leans away from the mic. It’s time for him to make moves. “I just want to focus on skating. We’re going to let the skating talk. Then when the skating is done, they’ll ask for more interviews.”