Thirty six pros showed up at the fouth annual Oktoberfest at Balboa pier.  The conditions were windy, but contestable.  The pros took to the water and impressed the judges and spectators.  The forecast tomorrow is expected to be better.  By the end of the day, the swell had picked up significantly.  The wind is predicted to be offshore in the morning for round 2 of the pro heats.  There is a lot at stake for the pros.  This is the final stop of the UST and will determine who will be finishing where on tour.  Beaker has locked up first place, but the other top spots are up for grabs.  Stay tuned, this event should produce some very exciting skimboarding.

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All photos courtesy of S. Czerepka

Stay tuned for a full write up and photos in the next issue.

So state the obvious:
I’m Brandon Rothe, I’m 22 years old, born and raised in Laguna Beach, CA.

You like sklmboarding huh?
Yeah, skimboarding is a lot of fun. I also skate, surf, and snowboard a bit. My attention span was too short to take surfing seriously, I couldn’t handle the injuries that go along with skateboarding, and well, I live at the beach, so snowboarding was kind of out the picture. So pretty much I just found my place in skimboarding.
When did your life as a skimboarder start?

My first skimming experiences were with Mike Stanaland, I must have been about 10 years old. I lived up above Victoria beach, so I’d head down there borrow a board, and hang out with him at Vic. Another buddy of mine, Reed Anderson was hanging out down there all the time too. He was probably 12 or something, a really an amazing skimboarder at that age. I spent a lot of time watching those guys skim.

Back then, if I wasn’t borrowing a board, I was riding my own woody and I was sinking all over the place on it. Eventually I convinced my dad to cough up for a foamie of my own and that was the beginning of that.
As I got a little older I started hanging out with Koty [Lopez] all day long down at Thalia St. I think that’s pretty much the reason why I love tech tricks so much now… I had a lot of low tide flat water sessions at Thalia growing up. (laughs)

Half the time we see you down at West St., you’re just pokin’ around in the peace pond doing tech tricks, ignoring the pack that’s fighting for crappy siders.
(laughs) yeah, I’m probably trying to stay warm.

Who were your biggest influences when you were first getting into the sport?
Chris Rudolf for sure. That guy had amazing style. Koty and I would sit there and watch his video parts over and over again in slow motion, just watching how much tail he throws. Andy Chiavetta actually really inspired me to start doing airs. He’s changed his style a bit now, but back in the day that guy would just huck huge airs back on to the wave down at Thalia. And of course, Hendy is on everyone’s biggest influence list.

Now a days you’re one of the few wave riding skimboarders that seems to be dabbling a bit with rails.
Yeah rails are also a lot of fun. It’s just something different you know?

Yeah, speaking of different, you’re kind of a vegan right?
(laughs) Well, kind of, not really. I don’t eat meat, I eat fish, I don’t eat eggs or dairy or anything like that. My old best friend was born and raised vegetarian. Hanging out with her every day, I’d be there chomping away on my carne asada burrito, drooling over it, rubbing it in her face like “mmm it’s so good” She’d laugh as spit out some facts about being vegetarian, they eventually got in my head.And I dunno, I’ve always been kinda grossed out about milk… the idea that people drink the milk of another species. Milk that is intended for that other specie’s offspring (laughs). So yeah, I was never into milk, never into cheese. At one point in college I had to write a persuasive essay, I decided I’d write it on being vegetarian. At the time I was still eating meat, but by the end of it I had learned some pretty disgusting facts about meat and food processing and what not. I pretty much persuaded myself to become a vegetarian. Being a vegetarian is sick for skimming though, ‘cause it makes you light and you can side slip really far out to waves. (laughs)

So what’s up with Brandon Rothe as a skimboarder today? A lot of people think that with your tech abilities you would do well on the UST. Do you have any plans for doing the whole circuit any time soon?
Ahh, yeah, um, as soon as I can uh… get my shit together? (Laughs) Yeah, I would love to do all the contests, I don’t think a year has gone by that I’ve gotten even close to making it to all of them. This summer I thought it was gonna happen, but it kinda fell apart again. One of these days I’m sure it will happen, its just a matter of having the money to travel all over the place.

Aside from competing you’ve still been fairly busy with skimboard stuff in the last couple years.
Yeah, I made a video, Sicky Rolla.

What was the inspiration for that move?
Well, I’ve been into video since I was about 15 or so. Back in the day I’d make little movies on my computer. Me Koty and Brandon [Sears] would film funny shit and make little movies. More recently though, I kind of had the feeling that there was room for more in the skim video world, and that’s when I buckled down and decided to do something serious. I met a guy named Blair in an English class. He’d just moved down here from up north and he used to do snowboard video stuff. We got to talking and he decided he wanted to help me film a skimboarding video.

Initially we were just going to use whatever equipment we had, but we ended up deciding that we might as well go all the way. We bought a bunch of new equipment and buckled down to do something fresh and different.
So are you stoked on it?
Yeah I think over all it was pretty cool, we did a lot of different stuff, the rails and the steady cam filming stuff. There are a lot of things that we didn’t get to do, which kind of bums me out, we basically ran out of time. It was the first time I’ve ever put together a video on that scale. There are so many unexpected things that come up and just kill your production. Computer stuff, camera stuff, waves, weather, everything. It was a huge learning experience. But, we’re working on another one, so this time around we’ll be able to get more stuff in there we missed the first time.

Sounds sick! Any final thank you’s or shout outs before we wrap this thing up?
Yeah for sure, My sponsors, Victoria skimboards and Tavik, J-dub over at Ally-oop cuz basically he’s the man, SKIMBOARDER for giving me a voice, and anyone else that’s out there working it for the good of the sport! Thanks