For most of the 1990’s Jason Rothmeyer and a tight knit crew of friends ran Long Beach and it’s surrounding areas, leaving a mark on skateboarding that is still seen to this day. I recently got the chance to sit down with the Jedi Master of skate nerds and discuss this golden age of skateboarding and his part in it then and now.

Let’s start from how you first got into skating?

I started in ‘86 I want to say. Literally something as simple as my brother who’s about 2 1/2 years older than me was like, “Man you should start skating. Skating is something cool to do”. I think I was 13 or 14 at the time and didn’t really have anything. I played football with my friends you know, things like that. It was funny that he literally said that to me and at the time I didn’t think, ‘Why don’t you do it dude?’, I was like… ‘Yeah, that makes sense’. People just really started getting into it at that time because skateboarding was starting to become really popular again so I just jumped in man. I remember I borrowed standard pieces from friends to put together a board. This guy’s got a board, borrowed some trucks from somebody, borrowed some wheels from somebody and just went from there. And then once you start doing it that’s it, like 8 hours a day, 9 hours a day from then on out. It never stops you know.

Definitely. Do you remember your first legit board?

The first board I bought from a shop was a Rob Roskopp. It’s funny because I remember being in junior high and telling this older dude in some class that I was going to buy my first board and he was like “Sick!  Whatever you do, don’t buy a Lance Mountain”. He like, “Everyone has a Lance, don’t buy a Lance”. So I bought some Rob Roskopp and thinking back I’m like, what an idiot, why didn’t I buy a Lance. I should have done exactly the opposite of what that guy said. Supported Rob Roskopp instead of Lance, that was pretty whack. Oh well.

So who were you skating with back then?

Just a bunch of homies from around Long Beach, nobody that really ended up becoming pro or anything like that. I didn’t skate with the guys in Long Beach who were already sponsored at the time. Like Ron Chatman went to my high school and he was sponsored while we were in high school, so he was already a pretty big gun. Even though I was a year younger than him it felt like we were 4 years younger than him, because they’d already been skating a long time before us. They were like big guns and we were just scrubs. There was a bunch of dudes in Long Beach that were sponsored at the time like Steve Saiz, Ron, that kind of crew. But I didn’t skate with any of those dudes until way later on. I would buy boards of those dudes, especially Ron. We would just skate to his house and buy boards off of him all the time.

Is that around the time you started progressing?

You know it’s funny, I had the same crew and I was ok, but I didn’t really progress until my friend Ron Mendoza moved by my house. He was way better than me at the time, so all the sudden when you start skating with people who are better than you you just end up becoming better. It’s like osmosis, you just become a better skateboarder. So a year after he moved in we would both just learn tricks together all the time and push each other, so it kind of happened that way. It was probably ‘88. I’d been skating for 2-2 1/2 years and we would go to contests and I would be like, oh I can hang with some of these dudes now. I felt comfortable. Whereas before, if something was going on I would just kinda sit by the sidelines like, I don’t wanna get out there man, I don’t wanna look like an idiot. So you get a little bit of confidence after a couple years and you feel like you can do what your gonna do.

Was this when the Sellouts entered into the picture?

It was probably like ‘90 maybe right when I got sponsored. I skated with Ron and all those guys, but as you keep going in skating, guys fade out. You know friends quit skating, they get cars, they get girlfriends, and so you end up transitioning into a new crew, and then a new crew. And once about ‘90 hit I got sponsored by Santa Cruz and then all the guys that I really skated with all the way through the ‘90’s kinda started around 1990. Like that kind of crew. I met my homie Bryan (Paz), he lived right by me. And then (Dennis) Bellew and (Danny) Montoya and Rob G (Gonzalez) and all those guys were already kinda in the mix but we all started coming together and that’s when we started skating together all the time.

And that was the early Sellouts crew? I know you guys were in the 508 crew and never really understood the difference between the two.

There wasn’t. It was just literally a joke because Mark (Nisbet) made all the 508 videos, but we also filmed all the time too. So we’re like, we can’t make our own 508 videos so, oh we’ll be the Sellouts. Like we’re selling out. Or because more of us were sponsored than them, I don’t know how it came about or how we came up with the name. But literally we were just like, oh we’ll just be Sellouts. Or maybe someone clowned us one time and called us Sellouts so that’s why we made it like that. But really it was the same thing. Same people interchangeable but we couldn’t make a 508 video because that was Mark’s gig, so we made Sellouts videos.

And what was the process for making those videos?

As far as making the Sellouts videos, it was straight ghetto style. VCR to VCR style. The first few I made were just music with no skating sounds, but then I realized if you had a “stereo” VCR it had both left/right AV plugs, so I would to the left coming from the VCR and the right coming from a cassette deck and could mix music and skating together. Fun times, editing was so tedious and took forever. Trying to get rid of rainbow lines and all that, ugh. I wish we had digital and good fisheyes back then we would’ve been stoked. Nisbet was the only one really making quality homie videos with the 508 stuff he did, we were really just trying to put our stuff on tape as fast as we could a lot of times, not really trying to be creative but just get footage in so we could all watch it together.

And those were the AT&T and Ramona (Elementary School) days?

Yeah, same spots everyday almost. It was meet at AT&T, go eat Taco Bell, go to Ramona depending on if it was the summer time or not. AT&T was always there because regardless of what time of year it was, it was available to skate. It was an abandoned AT&T building. I think it was there in like ‘88 or ‘89, Nisbet was the first one that took me there cause him and his friend Albert (Montes) skated there all the time. And we saw it and were like, holy crap! Even though it’s just a manny pad, a speed bump and 4 curbs it was like the greatest spot ever. So because it was available and you wouldn’t get kicked out, that’s what made it perfect. You could go there year around. And then if it was summer and you could skate schools we would go wherever else. Or Jacob park which is a spot in Cerritos with all those little blocks everywhere that Brad Hayes and Chad Fernandez and all those dudes ended up skating in 411 a lot. We’d skate there daily and that was just a park. So we had a good rotation of spots.

Rez (Ron Resurreccion) told me you used to catch a lot of shit for doing so many smith grinds and nollie nose grinds, but later that stuff was in and you were laughing.

I would get a bunch of shit for doing smith grinds in general. Just because early ‘90’s it was like over attack, everything was crazy. But I always liked doing certain tricks you know like back smiths, front smiths and stuff. But people would always have that, “To what? What did you do out of it?” you know. So if you did something basic you’d always get clowned a little bit for it. And then the mid ‘90’s came out and it was low tech. Everyone just wanted to do 5-0 grinds and 50-50’s and shit. It just swung back the other direction.

What led up to you getting on Santa Cruz and what was it like getting that call from Gavin O’Brien?

I went to Skate Camp at Visalia the summer of 1990. I graduated high school and they’re like “What do you want for your graduation present?” and I’m like ‘I wanna go to skate camp’. I always wanted to go. I should’ve been a counsel instead of going because I just turned 18, but they still let me come to camp. Technically the cut off time was 18, like you weren’t supposed to be able to go as a camper but I went. And I ended up meeting Spencer Fujimoto and he was like, “You should give me a tape and I’ll give it to Santa Cruz”. They had put a ton of dudes on at the time. So I ended up sending him a tape and just got on after that. Was lucky you know, right timing and all that stuff. There were 26 ams on when I got on. And then they did team cuts and they cut it down to 4, and I was lucky enough to make the cut. That was gnarly. They sent me a letter, I have it at home still. It said you are one of the lucky few that made the cut and was pretty funny. That was a trip.

But yeah, he sent me a box. I have the first board I got from him still. I rode it and then kept it. It was a Jason Jessee, that one with the V-8 logo on the top and the flames. So that was pretty cool. My first package had 66mm Bullets in it. That was the first package, he’s like “What do you want?” and I’m like ‘Bullet 66’s and a Jason Jessee’. He’s like “Really, Bullet 66’s?”. [laughs] Then the next package I got 60’s and the next package 55’s and then the gnarliest I got was 38’s. So I went from 66’s to 38’s. [laughs]

So you filmed for Troops of Tomorrow, Big Pants Small Wheels & Hai Karate, at what point did things start not working out?

It was kind of weird at the time. Troops of Tomorrow was fine, it was all good and I got the last part in Hai Karate which was cool. But at the time I was the only dude in my territory that rode for Santa Cruz, and when your not around everyone all the time you feel like your this outcast. Your like, none of my homies skate for them. But I was pro at the time, I won the Encinitas contest randomly and they were like “Cool, you won the contest, we’re gonna give you a board”. And then the next month they’re like, “Oh, we’re gonna give Andy Roy a board first”. I was like oh ok, that’s cool, whatever. And then another few months passed and they kept promising it to me, so at the time I’m telling everybody and I’m excited you know because they keep telling me I’m getting a board. And then next month it was like, “We’re going to give Gershon a board” and I was like damn, I keep getting slighted. How many times is this gonna happen?

And so I was skating with Josh Beagle, Richard Mulder and (Ronnie) Creager all the time and they were like, “Dude, you want to get on Foundation?”, and I’m like ‘Fuck yeah dude’. So it just felt like those dudes at Santa Cruz were bugging out on me and I didn’t really feel like I had any homies on the team. Like none of dudes I skated with rode for them so I was just kinda over it. I quit. Looking back I don’t know, I guess I probably would’ve quit still. It’s like, you need to have a bunch of homies on the team or it’s just not gonna be fun.

I don’t know if I ever went on a road trip with any of those dudes, ever. But they would go on road trips and I’d see them in Southern California and be like ‘What the fuck? Dude you didn’t even call me’. You know they came down to film for Big Pants Small Wheels with a bunch of those dudes and I literally saw them at a school. We filmed a bunch of stuff but I was like, damn, I’m lucky I saw those dudes today because they wouldn’t have even called me to say they were coming into town. So all that kind of shit just boiled over and bummed me out. So yeah, I ended up quitting and got on Foundation. But I only rode for Foundation for like 8 months. I got kicked off 8 months into riding for them, it was weird.

So after leaving for Foundation only to get kicked off, how did you find your way back to Santa Cruz?

I got on Acme for 3 weeks and then quit. Because I rode for Formula One wheels for like a year and a half, and then I got on Acme but it just didn’t feel right. So I quit. I was in the process of getting on Underworld Element and was getting boards from them by going down to Giant. And then (Jeff) Kendall called me and said he was starting a wheel company called Direction and asked if I wanted to get on. I was like ‘totally’, so I got on Direction and then like 2 months after riding for them he’s like “Hey, you wanna just get back on Santa Cruz?”. So we buried the hatchet, and I was down for it and got on.

And I’d been waiting for the team to say yes for Underworld Element, and like some of the dudes weren’t into it but some of the dudes were. Like Bill Pepper was like “Yeah man, I want you to get on”. And then I got to this Sacto contest and Andy (Howell) was like “Hey, I’m ready to put you on” and I was like ‘Fuck man, I just got back on Santa Cruz. I can’t quit again.” So I didn’t do it, I stayed on Santa Cruz and rode it out.

That’s crazy. I’m trying to imagine how things would have been different?

I probably would have got kicked off Element. Cause you know once those other dudes would’ve got on man, I wouldn’t be able to hang with those guys. It was the right fit and I’m glad I didn’t bail off Santa Cruz cause I didn’t want to be that quitter guy. I remember thinking specifically, I can’t be that quitter guy that quits every company and just keeps floating around. You gotta find something and stick with it. So I ended up back on Santa Cruz at the end of ‘93 and rode for em until ‘96 or something like that. At the time it doesn’t seem like 3 years is a long time, but it was you know.

But being pro for Santa Cruz had to feel pretty good. And most of your crew was coming into their own around that time as well with Rob G on Entity, Rez on Channel One, Bellew & Lib (Layraman) on Planet Earth…

I ended up helping a lot of those dudes get on Earth. That was one of the reasons I got kicked off Foundation was we ended up being friends with the dudes down at Earth. We would go down there all the time and bring them sponsor me tapes of all these different dudes like, hey you guys should put this dude on. And that ended up being Montoya or Dennis Bellew or Lib. I was friends with Jason King at the time and he was living down there and working and riding for Earth, so that was how it worked. And I used to get boards and skate those boards all the time when I was on Foundation. Because I hated the Foundation boards ‘cause their shapes were so horrible. And it was those times where everyone rode other peoples boards because it was cool. So I always rode Earth boards and I had an ad on the back of a Transworld riding a Mark Wyndham, and I was still on Foundation and Tod (Swank) was super bummed. And I can totally see now what a dick move that was, but whatever. Different times.

Different times for sure. And then after Santa Cruz you got on Nation, that was Steve Saiz’s deal right?

It was Strength magazine, that was their board brand. There was a guy Christian (Strike) that owned Strength who wanted to start a board brand also. And I don’t know how he linked up with Steve, but he ended up having Steve be his brand manager out in San Diego. This was ‘96 and Santa Cruz was like, “Were going to ride the end of this year out, and then you’re going to be off”. They gave me like 4 months or something. Like, were going to pay you out, you have 1 more board coming out and then you’ll be done. So I rode that out and then Nation just popped up and 6 months later I ended up riding for them. And I rode for them for like a year and a half. I was the team manager/pro of the team and I ended up getting a couple dudes on. It was like me, Jason King, James Riff, and I ended up getting Jake Brown on the team. I got him his first work visa. I guarantee he doesn’t remember any of this to this day, but going through the process of getting his work visa was a total nightmare. They wanted lawyers and all this crazy stuff and back then we didn’t have any money you know. And they didn’t have any money, so after a while it was just like, “Hey, we don’t have any money to pay you” and I was like ‘Alright’.

And I tried to get on Powell after that with (Stacy) Lowery, Mike V and all those guys. I was already riding for the wheels so I started to get on the board company, and then they all quit and rode for Transit. After that I was like I’m done, I’m gonna bow out gracefully. I tried to continue the dream up to that point and then was like, alright I can’t be one of those dudes that keeps trying and trying. Screw that. So I tried to get out somewhat clean. That was about ‘98, the last pro contest I skated was in ‘98. That was the last time I considered myself pro.

But you still skate the Tampa Pro TM contest.

Yeah fat old guy contest, that one’s fun. The contest is this week. All the old dudes trying to keep the dream alive. It’s fun though. That was Lowery’s idea originally to (Ryan) Clements a long time ago. “All these guys are here man, you should make these dudes skate a contest”. So it ended up being that.

What role do you see contests playing today? Contests were a big part of skateboarding in your career but how have things changed for a kid coming up today?

When I was coming up you skated CASL contests and shit like that. The first CASL contest I skated when I was sponsored I was flipping out because even at the time these dudes were big time, like Mike Carroll, Koston, Rick Howard… that was the sponsored division and there was like 100 of us. So it was pretty heavy dude. Adam McNatt, Ronnie Bertino, these dudes are gnarly and they all skated them. Literally like, you skated CASL contests, then you skated the NSA am contests and then after you skate the NSA contests you kinda turn pro. And I followed that same structure. Won a couple CASL contests, skated the NSA’s and made it to the finals, got like 8th or 9th and then Santa Cruz was like “Cool, your ready to turn pro”.

It wasn’t like you had a banging video part and you turned pro. It was like, you did good at a few contest, you got an ad, if you got some coverage you’d turn pro. Then NSA went away and CASL kinda went away and then people just started to turn pro randomly. Because videos were out but they weren’t the banging thing. They were important but they weren’t like they are now. Where now that’s pretty much it, it’s like Tampa Am and video parts. And that’s it.

But they’ve gained more importance than there used to be. Plus there’s a lot more money available now so it’s worth it. It’s a lucrative thing. You could be a dude who skates contests and make a bunch of money even if you don’t have a shoe out. It’s cool. I missed the boat by about 15 years. Wish I would have won one of these instead of the $1500 I got for the Encinitas contest I won. I’ll take the 150 grand.[laughs]

You work for Black Box but I know SPoTlight Productions keeps you pretty busy as well. How did you get into the judging aspect of contests?

I got a job as the team manager for Airwalk in ‘99, a year after I was done being pro. And it was right at the time when they had already kinda fallen apart but hadn’t completely fallen apart. Rowley was still on when I was the TM, and Rune and all these different dudes. They had a good squad but they were teetering on the edge of completely collapsing. And my first duties as I got the job were to kick off Brian Howard, (Paul) Zitzer and Lowery… all the dudes that just got me the job. I was like thanks dicks. Hire me and make me kick all my friends off. The only guys they kept were like Bucky (Lasek) and Andy Macdonald and Geoff before he went to Vans. But anyways, I worked there for a year and a half and then I got let go while I was at a contest. I went to Cleveland for one of those Vans Triple Crown’s and got a phone call from my boss at the time saying “We just got out of a meeting and we aren’t going to have the TM position anymore.” I’m like, ‘I’m at a contest working for you. Are you kidding me?’.

So I just walked up to Shrewgy (Steve Ruge) and said ‘If you ever need judges, I don’t have a job anymore’. And Shrewgy hooked me up with a job right away. We went to a little contest on the beach in San Clemente and he thought I did a good job. So I started working with those guys after that. I was in the rotation. Started doing Tampa and then became friends with (Brian) Schaefer and Clements and all those dudes and then it just kinda rolled after that. I’ve been doing it since about 2000, so 11 years now.

So what was the World Cup beef all about?

I just worked with them through ‘06 doing X-Games and everything, but the 2 organizations are somewhat competing and somewhat aren’t you know. We have a different gig than they have, they do different contests than we do. But I was doing both at the same time and Clements and Schaefer and those guys were like “You want to be our head judge?” and I was like ‘Yeah, I’d like to do it’. Knowing it would be a conflict of interest if I was head judge for SPoTlight and I was still working World Cup events so I just had to pick one. So I ended up picking SPoTlight. I could get more work that way and it’s more street oriented and that’s what I knew. I know more street than I know vert, I was never a big vert dude.

Yeah. That’s about all I’ve got. Good luck to you in round 2 of Skate Nerd.

Yeah I gotta play Mikey Taylor. I wonder when they’e gonna schedule that? I bugged those guys about it recently and they said pretty soon.

Well, I don’t think he’ll give you much trouble.

Well see, depending on what questions they ask. If it’s all City Stars questions I might be screwed. We’ll see. I’ll get him if there are any Nanda Zipp questions.[laughs]

-Thanks again to Jason Rothmeyer for taking the time. Watch more Sellouts videos here. Watch more 508 videos(looking for Vibers if anyone has a copy) here.