Jason Jessee

Jason Lee Jessee^[1] (born December 27, 1969)^[2] is an American professional skateboarder and automotive designer best known for his stint with Santa Cruz Skateboards in the late 1980s. He was identified as the 24th-most influential skateboarder of all time by TransWorld SKATEboarding magazine in 2011,^[3] though was later removed from the list following the reveal of his past controversies in 2018. The feature documentary Pray for Me: The Jason Jessee Film was released in 2007.

Skateboarding

Jessee's first sponsor was Powell Peralta and later Vision Street Wear,^[2] but made the move to a professional sponsorship deal with Santa Cruz Skateboards in December 1987. He notably featured in the company's 1988 highlight video Streets on Fire, in which he played a fictional version of himself who is arrested and jailed for illegal skateboarding.^[4] After an extended period of absence from the skateboarding industry, Jessee was once again sponsored by Santa Cruz and he helped the company during its 40th-anniversary celebration in 2013.^[5]

Jessee appeared in the 2018 film Converse PURPLE,^[6] but was then "indefinitely suspended" by Converse in May 2018—during which he also made his first Thrasher magazine cover appearance—after details of his controversial past surfaced.^[7][6]

Alongside other professional skateboarders such as Tony Hawk and Kevin Staab, Jessee was interviewed for the 2002 feature documentary Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator, about the tragedy of former professional skateboarder Mark "Gator" Rogowski.^[8] Jessee later described Rogowski in a June 2014 interview as a "creep".^[9]

Other ventures

Jessee has additionally worked as a custom-car and motorcycle builder, and was briefly a member of Los Angeles–based lowrider car club Dukes.^[2]

Controversy and legal issues

Jessee came under controversy in May 2018 when a thread on an online forum hosted by Slap magazine alleged his past usage of racial slurs, hate speech, and Nazi imagery.^[10][7][6] The thread was later deleted but Vice published an article that month about the allegations, including details of a brawl at a skateboarding contest in 1986 between Jessee and African-American skateboarder Ned "Peanut" Brown, during which Jessee had reportedly called Brown "nigger".^[11] Jessee consequently lost all of his endorsements, including that with NHS, the parental company of Santa Cruz Skateboards.^[10]

On January 4, 2006, Jessee was removed from a flight and arrested at San Jose International Airport after passengers aboard the flight reported him writing in a journal that had the words "suicide bomber" written on the cover, in addition to his "acting bizarrely" and "clutching his backpack".^[2]

He was arrested in April 2019 in Watsonville, California, for possession of a stolen vehicle and an unregistered and illegally-configured assault rifle.^[12][13]