I started doing bookkeeping work for Skatepark of Tampa while I was in school at USF to become a CPA. I did the books monthly while in school so I could skate for free.

I left accounting after near death from boredom, went back to school to learn programming, and went to work in the software industry. While working at this software company, I wrote and started posting photos and silly banter on skateparkoftampa.com with a commenting system for photos, long before that was widely done anywhere online. It resulted in significant amounts of traffic coming to the site within just a few short months.

Brian Schaefer and I decided it was time to do Tampa Am style contests around the country and world. We started a new company called Damn Am that turned into the top amateur skateboarding series and remains so today. Years later, we brought in Ryan Clements and set up the company as equally owned in thirds by the three of us. That same year I also started Damn Am’s comprehensive skateboarder database that today holds over 7,000 skater profiles from top ams and pros that have participated in our events in the last decade. I am going to continue to do Damn Am events for the foreseeable future.

I wrote a point of sale and inventory management system from scratch with full integration to our website. We started selling online with live inventory shortly after. Within two years, mail order grew to represent 50% of the volume of retail sales at SPoT.

I got a press release about some company that started called Skate Coverage. Their goal was to log all magazine coverage to produce reports that might be valuable for Team Managers and other marketing staff. I copied their concept so our skater database and site could display this information and called it the CCCP: Captain Corporate’s Coverage Patrol. It still continues to today with eight years worth of the top magazines logged in full detail page by page with the skater, trick, and relevant company linked.

I love shoes and I’m around people who love shoes, so why not document it? I started mixing in photos of people’s shoes in my party and event coverage photos and always referred to it as Foot Fetish. I did it so much that when I’d travel, people would ask me for a Foot Fetish photo. Years later there are hundreds of Foot Fetish photos stacked with everyone from Cameron Diaz to South African tribesmen. Foot Fetish later grew into a Facebook App I wrote to automate and remove the agony of waiting in line overnight for Nike Quickstrike releases.

I remember opening a copy of this magazine called Juice and saying to myself, "They should call this thing Frontside Grind Magazine." As usual, I ran with a silly joke and took it over the top. The result: nearly 100 fake magazine covers with people doing frontside grinds matched with whatever silly cracks I could take on them. A few years in, when Tony Hawk Tweeted a joke about it saying his lifelong career goal was to get a cover of Frontside Grind Magazine, I pretty much shit my pants and danced.

The Former SPoT Employee Club is another silly joke I started once the Park grew a little and employee turnover started. It got to the point where the actual former employees started a MySpace page dedicated to it. Still to this day, people reference the FSEC as a club they're proud to be in. I cannot be more excited to have joined the FSEC!!! UPDATE: This is the best response to my resignation so far.

I coded a sales rep reporting system module for SPoT’s inventory system. All of the reps for brands Skatepark stocks can log in to see live reports of product, sales, old inventory, and more to help the staff keep product fresh and in stock.

SPoTlight Productions started to take over more and more events, including some broadcast on live television. Maloof Money Cup contracted SPoTlight to build a live scoring system for use at their events. I wrote that from the ground up based on iPads for data input, then customized it to fit our other events. We’ve been using it since.

In yet another joke taken too far, I made this small party/contest edit on my phone and threw a silly movie style intro on the front and referred to it as Rob's Cell Phone Edit. It wasn’t long before it was a regular feature at all of our events.

Nerdsday Thursday was my weekly way of having fun with and reporting on the mountain of data I was sitting on from all these information systems I developed over the years.

When Brian Schaefer, owner of Skatepark of Tampa, decided he could no longer work with our General Manager, Ryan Clements, and our assistant, Jorge Angel, on January 2, 2013 without consulting me, I was floored, shocked, shook, you name it. I tried hard not to overreact and set a goal of letting six months go by before making any major decisions. During this six months, I continued to work as hard as I ever have, picked up an unreal amount of slack from the shake up, and carried on.

Anyway, it's time for my six month decision. Considering what the Park has become and the direction it's going in since that major change in January, my decision is to leave the Skatepark of Tampa behind.

I wish Brian and the staff the best. It's been a fun 20 years. The experiences and things I've learned with Skatepark of Tampa have made me who I am and I could not be more thankful that I was kept so close to skateboarding all those years. I'll miss all that, but I can assure you I'm figuring out something better and will always remain close to skateboarding.

Thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me. I hope to see you around. I own a significant portion of Damn Am, which is a separate company from Skatepark of Tampa, so you'll still see me running things there.

Rob Meronek, Card Carrying Member of the FSEC
rob@meronek.com
Visit my regular site here.