Here's What Happened To Jason Jessee From 'Monster Garage'
If you ever watched "Monster Garage," you know Jesse James and his pals had a lot of fun undertaking those crazed vehicular transformations during the series' six-season run. You might also recall they were regularly joined by celebrity guests including NASCAR legend Richard Petty, pro-skating icon Tony Hawk, and surf rock superstar Dick Dale. As for Hawk's Season 1 episode, he wasn't the only renowned skateboard star to appear — Jason Jessee turned up to ride the Winnebago van that James and company turned into a road-ready vert ramp.
By that first 2003 "Monster Garage" appearance, Jessee's interest in restoring and modifying cars and motorcycles had been well-documented. So it was hardly a surprise he'd turn up on such a show. It was even less surprising that he returned during Season 2 to help James and his team turn a pair of Scion automobiles into massive battle bots. But for whatever reason, Jessee never appeared on the show again. Here's what happened to him after "Monster Garage."
The 2000s were an unusual time for Jason Jessee
During his '80s and '90s heyday, Jason Jessee was regarded as one of the most talented skateboarders in the game. In 2012, he was even voted one of the 30 most influential skaters of all time by TransWorld SKATEboarding. Still, Jessee had essentially quit skating as a professional by the late '90s and early 2000s, focusing instead on other creative endeavors.
In 2007, however, he was the subject of a feature-length documentary titled "Pray For Me: The Jason Jessee Film," which explored his rise to stardom on the skateboarding circuit and his continued interest in rebuilding old cars and motorcycles. One subject not covered in the documentary was Jessee's 2006 legal entanglement, which stemmed from an incident aboard an airplane awaiting departure from San Jose International Airport.
As reported in OC Weekly, Jessee was removed from the aircraft and arrested by federal agents after spooking passengers. Many of them were unsettled by his nervous demeanor and his scribbling in a notebook with the words "suicide bomber" written on the front. Though Jessee was detained and questioned, it seems nothing much ultimately came of the incident, with the skater later admitting during a local news segment that he'd scribbled the words on the cover purely for shock value. Unfortunately, this would not be the last time Jessee made such a claim in the wake of controversy.
Jessee's career resurgence was derailed by a troubling conroversy in 2018
Legal troubles aside, after landing on that TransWorld SKATEboarding list, Jason Jessee was again the talk of the skateboarding world, appearing in lauded skate videos and landing sponsorship deals with Converse and NHS. He even earned his very first appearance on the cover of the famed skateboarding magazine Thrasher.
But Jessee's career resurgence was short-lived, as deeply troubling comments and behaviors from his past came to light in 2018, bringing a swift end to his renewed celebrity and sponsorship deals and forever tarnishing his skateboarding legacy. As detailed by Vice, those comments include Jessee's inflammatory use of racial slurs and homophobic epithets. Perhaps even more troubling were his seeming ties to Neo-Nazis and white supremacy, with Jessee having regularly utilized Nazi iconography in his art and clothing lines over the years.
After the news broke, Jessee reportedly took to Instagram to apologize for his past mistakes. He's also granted several interviews taking full ownership of his actions (including an infamous incident in which he hurled the n-word at a Black skater in the mid-80s). He claimed he'd only used the hateful language and imagery for shock value before further chalking some of the behavior up to a mix of youthful naivete and drug and alcohol abuse. Though some colleagues accepted Jessee's apologies, he remains shunned by many in the skateboarding community. Despite his current standing in the community, Jessee continues to design and sell limited-edition skateboards bearing his name and artwork.