Years ago,“It’s Showtime!” became a senior skater’s regular expression whenever seeing Rob “Showtime” Hunter (RH) doing his footwork or toe jamming in the middle of the skate floor. He loves skating and has been a deejay for half of his 36 years. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, he started the Nati Skate Train (NST), a skate club which, starting in 1997 through 2007, hosted annual August skate events and eventually Cincinnati’s became the 5th largest on the skate calendar before the number of events dramatically increased to several per month. When NST began to grow, the group members took on skate club names and Rob decided to adopt “Showtime” as his title as a skater and deejay. Currently, he deejays the adult session every Sunday night at The Fun Factory. (Check him out on Facebook.)

Rob started off as a local deejay and went on to becoming featured deejay at national skate events in places like Chicago, Atlanta, Virginia, Michigan and North Carolina. In June 2010, he spoke with RST about his experiences as a deejay and as a pioneer of national skating events and the changes and evolution in the skate community that he has witnessed over more than a decade being active and dedicated to roller skating.

….Cincinnati, Ohio has to be the hardest city to deejay in – unlike any other city in the United States of America. Back when Cincinnati was at its hey day, you had Cincinnati, you had Dayton, people from Columbus, a few people from Indianapolis, all skating at the same session every week religiously and out of those four cities, you had four distinct, different skate styles….
- Rob “Showtime” Hunter -

RST – How long have you been deejaying and where did your deejay name “Showtime” come from?
RH – I think I was 18 when I threw my first party and officially started deejaying and I don’t remember how old when I first started deejaying skate parties, but I started deejaying skate sessions at, it was Golden Skates back then. I started at the family sessions and moved up to the adult sessions.

RST – Were you ever a club deejay or only at the rink?
RH – Always at the rink or parties, weddings, things like that. What’s crazy, my mom and dad were really big into music. I grew up with music being played in the house all the time, the weekends when they were off, doing some cleaning or whatever. The TV was usually always off and music was playing. What was cool about my parents, my mom – she was young at heart so she was listening to all the new stuff, then my dad, he was old school so he had all the old school. I had access to everything from Luther Vandross and Whitney Houston, Temptations, Smokey Robinson to Grand Master Flash and Whodini.

Then when I got old enough to start buying my own records, they would take me to the record store every weekend and I’d use my allowance to buy some vinyl. My first turntable was a Winnie-the-Pooh turntable and my first record was the Mickey Mouse Mouseketeer album and I still play that. I use the Mickey Mouse Alma Mater as the last song when I do sessions.

RST – How long have you been a skater?
RH – I’ve been a skater since I was born. Actually I started skating when I was like five and been going skating religiously since then.

RST – Did your parents skate?
RH – Yeah. My dad, when we started, it was the in-thing to do and my dad, he always jumps on trends so we started going skating, then I found out this year, that my dad used to skate at the skating rink called Johnson’s in Lincoln Heights, which is like a suburb of Cincinnati and it was a Black owned rink. He used to skate there back in the day but as far as me starting, we would go to the family sessions and skate. My dad, he stopped skating as much ’cause he was working two jobs but it was a tradition with me and my mom that every Sunday we would go to the family session and then when I turned 21, we started going to the adult sessions together.

RST – When you deejayed your first session, how did it go. Were there bloopers or did it go smoothly?
RH – The first time I deejayed, it was during a teen night and it wasn’t that crowded. DJ Gup was the deejay and I used to be in the deejay booth all the time with [him], trying to learn stuff ’cause I was just fascinated by it. I didn’t have the proper deejay equipment. My first set of turntables I bought, they were belt driven without pitch control so if I needed to speed something up or slow it down to match the tempo, I had to manipulate it with my hands. Belt drive turntables, they’re not good because they’re driven by a motor with a belt around it and then the belt gets stretched out and you got two turntables that aren’t going the same pace. The industry standard was the Technics 1200 and they’re direct drive so the rink had 1200s, Gup was in there mixing and scratching and I developed my ear for mixing from listening to [him]. He was the man for 10-15 years in Cincinnati.

This one session was a teen session, it wasn’t that crowded and he had to go to the restroom or do something and he was like, “If this song goes off, throw the next one on,” and so the first time I went to throw the song on, it was dead air. He yelled at me so I learned bout that real quick. After that, I started throwing some mixes on that I heard him do and was queuing up the records and doing the mixes and he was like, “Okay. You got a little bit of skill.” The rest is history.

Nati Skate Train

RST – Getting to the Nati Skate Train and the annual skate event you had every August, how did that get started?
RH – That got started ’cause in, I hope I have my years right, in ’96, this is something out of a movie too. I was going skating every Wednesday and Sunday, even going to the children’s sessions and at that time I was “the man” as far as skating in Cincinnati. Somebody gave me a flyer for the first Skate-a-thon and it was…. a basic flyer, folded up. This was before internet. It was word of mouth so, for some reason, I kept it and me and my friend drove down to Atlanta – my mom was worried like I was going off to war – that was the first time I had left the city. He had a cousin down there, we stayed at her house and the skate party was on Saturday night. I think it was just one night and we went. It blew me away ’cause I went down there so cocky and arrogant thinking I was just gonna show everybody how to skate and when I walked into that rink and seen the floor packed with experienced skaters – it had to be 1000 people there the first year and they was getting it in. They was doing stuff that I didn’t even dream about on skates and I felt intimidated when I got there. What was crazy, skating wasn’t that popular in Cincinnati, at that time. I just felt like, in Cincinnati, we were the only ones who skated and the way we did things is the way we did it and there was more people who kind of laughed at you for going skating than it was true skaters. So when I went down to Skate-a-thon, and just seen hundreds of people with the same passion for skating that I had, it was weird. It was almost spiritual or something and just meeting so many nice people, so many people [saying], “Where are you from?” “That’s a nice style.” “Let me show you this,” or “Let’s do this,” everybody was so nice, showing you stuff.

When I came home, I wanted to throw a skate party because I wanted to show the people that there were skaters outside of Cincinnati that get down differently than what we do … I wanted to share that experience that I had down in Atlanta with my home city. So I came back and I think I tried to throw it in November when I first got back, that first time in ’96. I called and reserved the rink but things fell through and that party didn’t happen. I had to wait another year and, in between that time, I was able to go to St. Louis. I didn’t go to Detroit because their party was 25 and older and I wasn’t old enough but I went to St. Louis and Chicago. In ’97, I did my first party and the rest is history.

The evolution of skate events

RST – You’ve been on the scene, it’s been over 10 years. How would you describe how events were back then compared to how they are today?
RH – It’s different. Back then you had, my party was the 5th party. Before I came along there were 4 parties that you went to every year: Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis and Atlanta and I was number 5. It was like that for awhile. So it was different ’cause you planned your vacations and stuff around it and it was spread out enough where you can go and meet everybody. The crowd was a lot older. At that time I was 23-24 and I was the youngest person there. Everybody else was more like my mom’s age, my aunt’s age than my age, so the crowd was a lot older and I think the skating was a little bit better. I’m not knocking the skaters, but the skaters now do a little bit more dancing and I don’t think they’re as skilled of a skater as back in the day when we first started. When we first started, all the skaters were technically sound and now, I think the skaters are more athletic than technically sound. What they lack in actual technical moves, balance and knowing different ways how to skate (before they get to the tricks and steps), they make up for that in athleticism.

I think the music was a lot different. Back then, when you went to Detroit, you [were] going to hear Motown and that’s it. When you went to Atlanta, I got to give Big Bob a lot of credit. When I was learning and trying to create myself as a deejay, when I started doing this national skate party thing, I listened to Big Bob a lot. DJ Gup was a big influence and I got to give Bob credit. He played the East Coast stuff, the Michigan stuff, he would play new stuff and he would mix it up and he was in Atlanta. The music he was playing really represented Atlanta because everybody knows that nobody that lives in Atlanta is from Atlanta. So him coming from New York, even back then when I first heard him, it was like that. The first few years when we started going to Skate-a-thon, I loved going down there ’cause it just seemed like I always would hear some rap song by somebody that I hadn’t heard before and it’d be 2 or 3 months before I would hear it in Cincinnati on the radio. You’d go down there just to hear new stuff ’cause Bob had it.

Now it’s different because every deejay really plays the same music. If you ask me, it’s all the same. If you didn’t really know, if the deejay booth was glassed in with tinted glass, you couldn’t see the actual person, you wouldn’t be able to tell one deejay from the next. I think that’s unfortunate because the reason they had roll call is because people from other cities can come in and skate to at least one song they was used to hearing at home, then they could showcase their styles. I think now roll call is more like a competition without a prize at some parties and it’s more of a show off thing where everybody puts costumes on, this that and the other. Really, I don’t think it’s necessary because you’ve got 3-4 cities skating to the same dang songs. Instead of breaking up that time for roll call, why don’t we have couples only, ladies only, men’s only and break up the flow like that? If everybody’s skating to the same thing, there’s really no need for roll call. That’s my opinion. It takes up so much time.

That was the basic difference. It was an older crowd, there was only 5 parties and the music was regional. In St. Louis you would only hear St. Louis music. Detroit, the same thing. Chicago – this is before the JB movement took place. The music in Chicago had a unique style of its own and it was kind of hard to adjust to ’cause when they did ladies and men only, they got like 7 songs (each). When they called ladies only, the guys got off the floor and pulled out chess boards, started playing chess or checkers ’cause they knew it was gonna be about a half an hour, 45 minutes but that’s how it was and you had the full Chicago experience. When you came home, you got to say, “I’ve been to Chicago” or “I’ve been to St. Louis.” Now it’s just like parties IN Chicago or parties IN St. Louis. That’s not taking away from anybody, that’s just how skating has evolved.

When I was deejaying in Cincinnati, some of those songs – like Keezo Kane – I would bring to Cincinnati and play and at first, all the hard, true Cincinnati skaters and Dayton skaters would give me grief for it but now they can’t live without it.

One deejay’s formula for success

RST – Over the years, how have you dealt with people being dissatisfied with the music? How hard have you found it to be to please a skate crowd and, what sets you apart – having had longevity and being a crowd pleaser – from others who have done it for a long period of time but just don’t please a crowd at all.
RH – I think the deejays that have success, they know their crowd and they know what they have to do to please their crowd and they care about the crowd. Myself, hands down, when you think of skating in Cincinnati, I’m gonna say Gup was the best that ever did it (that I’ve heard). Gup used to get me so excited and he used to get the crowd going to such a fever pitch and it was beautiful ’cause he would bring you up, and get you to that point where you just thought the rink was gonna explode ’cause everybody was going so hard and then he’d bring you down. Build you back up, bring you down, bring you back up, etc. and that’s the format I use when I deejay.

Gup had a lot of pride in his mixes. He wanted to make sure they were crisp, good, they made sense and kept people going. It was times when this man was in the deejay booth and it wasn’t even like he was deejaying, it was like he was making a song. He would take two songs and marry them together and you’ve got a whole new song. That’s how I developed my ear, listening to him so now I come along, I’m spinning and I think the difference between me and Gup is I developed my ear listening to him. I use the same format he [did] but the difference is, I travel, so some of the things I hear traveling, I bring it and try to make that work in my home city. I think the reason I’ve had some success, depending on who you talk to, I feel like my sessions were successful because I cared about everybody that was there.

Cincinnati, Ohio has to be the hardest city to deejay in – unlike any other city in the United States of America. Back when Cincinnati was at its hey day, you had Cincinnati, you had Dayton, people from Columbus, a few people from Indianapolis, all skating at the same session every week religiously and out of those four cities, you had four distinct, different skate styles. The Dayton cats, they do what’s called striding: uptempo, forward skating, cutting the middle on a dime. They wear speed skate wheels, they can cut that middle and be leaning, elbows almost touching the floor like the ice speed skaters and they were good at it. Then you got the Cincinnati skaters, they ride that outside lane, usually in a train like four to five people following – that’s how we got the “Nati Skate Train”. You got Columbus, they’re bouncing toward the middle like a bumble bee in flight and then Indianapolis was like a slower shuffle on the outside. You got all those different tempos and it was like, you had to recognize who was there. Then you had a younger crowd mixed with an older crowd. You had everyone from (age) 21 to 76 so you had to touch on everybody and I really tried to. I knew I couldn’t please the whole crowd the whole night, but if I was able to touch everybody in the crowd some time that night, then I think people would go home happy and satisfied and that’s what I tried to do.

There’s been times in my career, I’ll admit that I wasn’t getting the job done and I think the reason is ’cause I wasn’t doing my homework. It became mundane and I went in there and went through the motions but when I was on my shit and I was doing the thing, practicing every week, doing my homework, I was trying to bring at least one or two new songs every week, test them out to get the skaters to learn them and love them and things like that. That’s what set me out and gave me some of the success I had.

RST – You brought up Dayton. There’s the Black owned Hoover skating rink there. What are some little known things about that rink and why do you go out of your way to support it?
RH - Back in the day when Golden Skates was in its hey day, there might be [skaters aged] 21 to 76. Now it’s kind of split up. The younger people skate at Fun Factory in Cincinnati and, up in Dayton, I think the younger ones may skate at Orbit. Hoover’s nice because you have older skaters there, I guess now when I say older I’m speaking of myself. [People] mid to late 30s and on up. There are some younger ones there but it’s a nice session because people just go to skate. There’s nobody wearing their club shirts or representing their skate clubs and doing the moves that you seen from ATL and Roll Bounce. People skate the traditional Dayton and Cincinnati style and the music’s good. The guy that deejays, he runs the door too. He’s not putting on any DJ Gup mixes but his music selection is nice and it’s just a nice environment. It’s like the one place in Dayton that you can go and not expect to hear gunshots or get stabbed or robbed. It’s crazy because when I skate at Hoover, it’s like you can feel the history in that building. A lot of people try to diss it because the floor is small. Yeah, it’s small and it’s hot, the floor is slick but it’s a good time. It’s like pure skating. That’s why I go. The owner, he’s real nice. Back when the lady, when she was there, you had to respect her ’cause she didn’t take no stuff. She’d throw you out in a minute. That’s why I love Hoover.

The future of skating

RST – Looking forward, what do you see for the future of R&B skating?
RH – I think as far as the future of R&B, rap and adult soul sessions, it’s really gonna be up to the older skaters, skaters my age and older. A lot of people that I skate with and maybe a couple of years older than me, they’re not coming like they used to. I think they need to come back. This is as far as Cincinnati goes, I think in Columbus too. They need to come back and support and teach the next generation of skaters that’s coming up because this new generation of skaters, the ones that’s just turning 21, 22 – in Cincinnati, they didn’t have a teen session to go to from the family session when you [went] with your mom. Then mom drops you off at the teen session and then when you turn 21, you just can’t wait to get in the adult session. That’s how I went and that’s how a lot of us went but that teen session, turned into a dance session and then it turned into the teens not really having any place to go at all. Now they’re kind of getting back into skating and really, even though the Fun Factory is not my choice rink in Cincinnati, they’re good people, but if it wasn’t for them, I think skating would really fizzle out because all the new skaters that’s coming up – as far as adults – they skate at the Fun Factory.

Skatetowne didn’t have that option, 3, 4 years ago so I think in order to keep this thing going in Cincinnati, we need to make sure the older skaters come and skate and try to teach and show the younger skaters what it’s all about. That it’s not about, “We’re all gonna get air brushed tee shirts together and we’re gonna skate in a line, clap-clap-stomp like they did in ATL.” No, it’s like this. This is what we do. It’s not about the girls shaking their ass like a stripper, it’s about a young man and lady skating together on a slow song and really doing stuff. The problem is they’re better skaters, they’re more physical, more athletic, they can pick up quick. There’s this one guy in Cincinnati, his name is Travis, he’s only been skating for a year and he motivates me to keep my shit going ’cause I feel like Magic Johnson looking at Kobe, “Oh, I can still get him.” He’s spinning around, doing all kind of stuff and he’s only been skating a year but at the same time, it’s the social aspect of it that I think keeps it going and they don’t really have the social aspect down, so I think it’s up to us to teach them.

As far as deejays go, I really feel the deejays need to be … our main sessions are at the Fun Factory, the adult sessions. I swear they feel like they have to play certain new songs which aren’t really skatable and they feel they have to load their session up with rap and not really bring any old school, or different old school because they’re afraid they’re gonna lose the younger crowd and if they lose the younger crowd, they’re gonna lose the crowd altogether and they’re gonna lose their job.

I think it’s a combination between the deejays being willing to play a variety of music. I shouldn’t be able to tell what your next song is gonna be before you play it because you play in the same order and play the same music every week. And like I said, we need the older skaters to come out and teach the younger skaters. I had an attitude with the younger skaters at first until I had to check myself and say, this isn’t gonna make skating better in Cincinnati. I’ma need to try to show the ones that want to learn what I know.

RST – Getting back to the skate events. What have you seen over the years, as far as most events are hosted by a skate group but have you seen, or do you think there’s gonna be an increasing trend of skating rink owners trying to throw their own events?
RH – That’s already out there. They’re among us. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong … but there’s other people that I know, they don’t really have the money to put down to rent the rink or they’re so anxious to throw a party that they go to a rink – because they go to an Atlanta or a North Carolina and see thousands of people and then they go home – and start calculating, “It’s $15 a head and this, that and the other,” and they think they’re gonna get to pay all their bills for the year but then when they get to that rink owner, sometimes the rink owner doesn’t want to fool with you, so they’ll give you an outlandish price.

So there’s a lot of parties and the rink is getting, I’ve heard, 80% of the door, 60% – and the rink’s not doing anything. The rink is doing a 60/40 split but you still gotta pay your deejay, pay for security, print up fliers, travel all over, put your party on different websites and then you gotta hope somebody comes. And if you don’t have a certain number of people, you have to pay 100% of that penalty but you still got to split that money 60/40 with the rink, so there’s a lot of rinks out there doing that. I’ve heard of rink owners up north that will use younger skate clubs that really want to have a name and have themselves out there, [the rink owners will say], “Well, I’ma throw a party. I’ma put your name on it.” [The skate club says,] “Okay.” They go out and pass out fliers and they have to pay to get in “their own” party. The rink brings in the money but I feel like as a skate community, we’re smarter, more sophisticated than to fall for the okey doke. We know what’s going on. Usually, 9 times out of 10, the ones that’s an undercover rink party, they usually don’t do too well anyway.

R&B skaters are keeping rinks afloat

I will say this, what I have noticed in the past year, the skating rinks all want our money. Certain cities, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, they’ve always had a lot of options when it came to adult, soul sessions but Cincinnati, we had one night, “nigger night.” Now, you’ve got 3-4 different rinks that’s trying to get our dollar and they’re trying to set up a session that we enjoy and they want our input and actually, when you go to the family sessions, the “top 40” sessions, it’s more geared toward us and that’s because we still spend that dollar on skating, whereas, other folks that used to do it in the 80s, they’re not spending that money. They’re doing other things with their money so, right now, we’re the lifeline to the skating rinks ’cause if we stop skating and stop spending that money, a lot of these rinks are gonna be closing. A lot of them are in trouble right now but a lot more of them will be closing and going under.

RST – Does it sadden you, I don’t travel like I used to and just knowing that when I was active, knowing it’s been more than a decade now that these events have been going on and thousands of skaters travel to these events faithfully. We’re keeping hotels, airlines, skating rinks in business but there’ve been relatively very few Black owned rinks that have come up in the past 10 years. If we sat down and added up all the money that we, collectively, in the skate community have spent making other entities rich, yet we still don’t have a lot of it ourselves. Does that sadden you or concern you?
RH - I’ve been educating myself on that topic a lot lately and I’ma go out and say it. One of my goals is to own my own family fun center but with the economy the way it is right now and with, Wii and Xbox and all these other things – my daughter plays basketball and when she’s not playing for the school, she has AAU basketball and you would not believe the thousands of children, little girls playing basketball weekends at a time.

There’s so many different things that keep children and families busy now between sports, video games and the mall and it’s hard for rink owners. To open a new rink and be successful, has to be 1000% more challenging than it was back in the 80s.

There’s a lot of White owned rinks that’s having problems, that’s going under, selling [or are] for sale. Skatetowne, the newest rink in the city, I don’t think they’re five years old and they’re having problems but the reason the other rinks are lasting the way they are and how they are, is because their mortgages are paid up. Mostly every other rink in Cincinnati is at least 30 years old, so their building’s paid for. The Fun Factory, the guy that runs that, we’re gonna call him Borderline Genius because he has two or three sessions out the week that’s free. You come and skate for free. You got to pay for rentals, that’s $2.50 and of course you hit the snack bar. So, he’s not charging but he’s gonna get $4-5 per person between rental skates and the snack bar. He doesn’t have a mortgage so he can do that. Everybody in the city knows the rink’s phone number because his commercial is constantly on the radio and, from what I understand, Cincinnati has the most expensive radio market in the country but the money that, let’s say Skatetowne is paying for mortgage, he’s using that on radio spots to get people in. He’s just trying to get as many people as he can.

I think a lot of the rinks are revamping their business plans, the way they do business and I’m trying to learn everything I can, but as far as opening up a rink and saying, “I got a skating rink, I’m open, I’m Black-owned, come support me,” it’s gonna be tough. That first year Skatetown was open they did pretty good but they’ve been dropping ever since and Skatetowne has two floors, they have a roller skating side and a roller hockey side.

Skaters versus haters

RST – A lot of times we talk about “skaters” versus “haters” or “true skaters.” What are your definitions of those terms?
RH - It’s funny you ask me that. I’m writing this skate dictionary of terms. To me, a true skater is somebody who goes skating every week, whatever session that you have. They’re there if it’s packed, they’re there if it’s only them and 3 or 4 other people and they’re skating just as hard either session. A true skater is somebody who goes out, meets other people, respects different styles and learns different stuff and is just doing it for the love of skating. Just like me and you are like brothers and sisters because you love skating just like I love skating, so that’s it.

The non-true skaters, those would be cats that say, “I got this club, I’ma get as many people as I can. We’re gonna buy tee shirts and then we’re gonna go to this party in city X … and we’re gonna go out there and rep so everybody can see us.” The non-true skater is all about “I want people to see me. Instead of letting my skate skills get me attention, I’m gonna get 1000 people, we’re gonna wear the same shirts and have them air brushed and have different designs on it. Or the girls are gonna wear little cheap shorts and show as much skin as possible and if that doesn’t work ,we’re gonna have a chant that we say and clap and holler, just so we can get some attention.” That’s the non-true skater.

A hater would be somebody who’s just not really giving anybody any credit that ain’t doing what they’re doing. You got a lot of that but really, I think a lot of that comes from the skate parties not being 25 and up anymore, 23 and up. You’ve got a lot of younger skaters that’s going to these skate parties that’s not even 21. It’s funny ’cause one little girl, I’m not gonna mention her name, she was going to all these parties every week. I was following her on Facebook and then her birthday came up, so I wished her happy birthday and her Facebook message status for that day was, “I’m finally 21.” What!? You just attended 10 national skate parties that was all 21 and up and you’re just now 21?

It’s like the younger set and some of that stuff they do that would have been deemed inappropriate back in the day, they just get away with it. I don’t really know whose place it is for somebody to correct ‘em but I think if we get more of the older skaters out there and show them, “this is how we roll,” they would fall in line with that.

RST – Any final words?
RH - Keep skating.

RST – Thank you.

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