Rise To Prominence
Rogowski started his professional skateboarding career in 1980 at age 14. In 1982, he won his first major contest: the Canadian Amateur Skate-boarding Championships in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1984, he won a national championship. He had endorsement deals with Gullwing Trucks and Vision Street Wear, and his business card read: "Skateboard Extraordinairre" .
Early in his career, Rogowski was being paid "between $4,000 and $8,000 a month" for clothing and skateboarding equipment endorsements. In 1987, Rogowski was earning two dollars per skate deck that was sold by Vision. Vision was moving 7000 decks per month, giving Rogowski an income of $14,000 a month (US$ 30,000 in 2012) from the sales of his board. This did not include the numerous t-shirt, berets, hip packs, and stickers that Vision was selling bearing the "Gator" name.
Rogowski was one of a group of elite skaters who enjoyed "rock star" status in the 1980s, alongside Christian Hosoi, Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero and a few others. He was a charismatic, flamboyant personality who received fame and fortune during skateboarding's return to popularity with the advent of "vert" or ramp skating, which, in some ways, was the precursor for a growing interest in extreme sports during the 1990s that has lasted to the present day.
At a 1987 skate show in Scottsdale, Arizona, Rogowski was introduced to Brandi McClain and her good friend Jessica Bergsten, an aspiring model. He soon began a tumultuous long-term relationship with McClain. Together they shared a freewheeling lifestyle, appearing together in many skate-gear advertisements and promotional videos for Rogowski's sponsor Vision Street Wear, one of the top selling skateboarding brands of the 1980s.
Rogowski worked as a stunt double on the 1989 film Gleaming the Cube, which starred Christian Slater and appeared, along with McClain, in the music video Free Fallin' by Tom Petty.
Read more about this topic: Mark Rogowski
Famous quotes containing the words rise to, rise and/or prominence:
“From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin
And human title, putting pig within.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin
And human title, putting pig within.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)