JASMINE MOORE
Interviewed by Hashika
August 10, 2021
This weekend, we would like to introduce you to Jasmine Moore (she/her)! Jasmine aka @justseconds is a roller skater and content creator. Back in August, Hashika got the chance to get a glimpse inside what it is like being in a roller skating community and how the recent rise of popularity from social media (due to the pandemic as well), has impacted those spaces. We love Jasmine, we hope you enjoy her words as much as we do!
GG: I’d love to hear a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are now.
JM: My name is Jasmine Moore and I am 22 years old. I live in the Greater Los Angeles Area and I’ve lived here my whole life. During the pandemic, I became a full-time content creator. It was an unexpected thing—when roller skating picked up in relevancy, I happened to be in the crosshairs. I just graduated from Cal State Long Beach where I got my undergraduate degree in Sociology with a minor in Human Development. But before doing that, I was a Business Administration major with a concentration in Marketing, so being a content creator wasn’t totally a culture shock. Becoming a full-time creative was probably a little more seamless for me than most people’s experiences. I am a very creative person in general and I think I was one of those people during the pandemic who knew their creative outlet. Roller skating was my creative outlet and helped me to pull through everything. There were moments when I was feeling a little overwhelmed and asking myself if I needed to be that productive during a pandemic. But I think that productivity also kept me sane and structured. It helped me stay grounded and centered. Now that I’ve been in this industry for a year, I’m trying to reinforce my creative vision.
GG: How old were you when you put on your first pair of skates?
JM: I have a picture of myself in inlines on my bulletin board and the date on it is July 23, 2003. So I was probably three or four. As I got older, I stopped skating. Just like shoes, you grow out of roller skates, and my parents saw that I wasn’t showing an interest anymore. But my freshman year of college, I was a full-time student and I was working full-time. I had this conversation with myself where I was like, “I don’t think I see the sun anymore, and I need to change that.” I went roller skating with a friend of mine and she asked me, “Why don’t you have roller skates?” I had never thought of it. I thought it just was something I did as a kid, and I didn’t care to invest more time and energy into it. But I picked up skating again and the rest is history.
GG: Why do you love roller skating now?
JM: It has done a lot for me in terms of professional growth and creative enrichment. There are so many opportunities I’ve gotten and so many relationships that I’ve made through roller skating that I never thought I would have. It’s an amazing experience not only to be around creatives regularly but also to have a platform to express myself creatively. That’s something that I’m very fortunate for.
GG: During the pandemic, I would scroll through TikTok or Instagram and see that a lot of people had picked up roller skating. It was a big trend. Something unique about you is that you have a background in roller skating. There are people for whom it is a craft, and a lot of people entering into this community online did not know the history of the craft they were getting into. Has that been an issue that you’ve been seeing in roller skating?
JM: I think that roller skating is a craft. It’s a sport too and I think people forget that. The way it was presented on social media just honed in on the image of it being a cool, casual thing that I do. But in reality, it takes a lot of work and practice to become good and to make it seamless. A way for me to quantify it is that I have 295 posts on Instagram. Even if I said I skated for one hour per post on my Instagram, that’s already almost 300 hours of skating. I’ve skated five hours a day each day this week. It’s a lot of hours, it’s a lot of time, and it’s a lot of dedication. It’s a very physical activity. My body hurts sometimes. So in terms of the craftsmanship of it, that does speak to the different ways that people build their skills. It’s artistry.
I see my Instagram page as a portfolio now. It’s not as casual as it was in the beginning. Before, I was just posting whatever I wanted to as long as I was skating. Now I realize that I’m getting job opportunities through it and I need to maintain it. When I make videos for my page, I am executing art pieces. It’s not only the creative direction of putting my skates on and having someone record me. I need to think of how I’m going to do my makeup. I need to think of how I’m going to do my hair, how I am going to wear my clothes, what skates I am going to put on, and where I am going to skate. Can I get my videographer with me? It’s a lot more than what people anticipate.
Looking at how social media affected the entire dynamic of it all makes me a little sad because when I came into roller skating again a few years ago, there wasn’t the expectation of getting Nike deals and things like that. Now, I feel that people see those opportunities and I think their intentions with skating may be off. You can tell when roller skating is something that someone is doing because it has relevance right now, as opposed to being something they genuinely aspire to be better at as a craft, or as a way to create art and express themself.
📸: @amorpatina
You can throw roller skates into any situation as long as the floor is smooth enough. I will skate anywhere as long as it’s not illegal, so that’s what makes roller skating special to me. The world is my rink. I like to know that I can just pick up my skates and take them with me anywhere. As a form of self-expression, it feels very uniquely me, and it feels authentic to my experiences as a Black woman and as a young creative. Once you get pretty good at roller skating, you can let your mind go blank and just skate. Because we’re about a year out now from when a lot of people picked up roller skating, they are all entering that phase of no longer having to fire all the synapses in their brains just to move a little bit forward. They can cruise forward and feel comfortable and start to enjoy the experience rather than feeling overwhelmed because they feel like they are going to fall every second of the day.
GG: I have noticed that roller skating has a huge community aspect. I’ve seen so many cool Instagram accounts of skating communities. A lot of them emphasize educating yourself on roller skating’s history and being aware of where you’re skating and what space you’re entering. Do you have any advice for new people entering the roller skating space? JM: I think that is beneficial to talk about. The community aspect of roller skating has grown exponentially and I don’t think anyone could have anticipated it getting to this level. My biggest advice for people entering the community is to be aware of the space you’re stepping into. I think it can be very easy to block out the origins and the sense of what made roller skating popular. Roller skating does have a really big tie to the Black community and people don’t always expect that because it does have a history in the white community as well. But the roller skating that you typically see people doing, which is roller dancing, or if you see people skating at Venice, it’s heavily inspired by the Black community. So many things in this world, and specifically how they are expressed on social media, go through the lens of the white supremacist patriarchy we live in. I think people forget that and see the internet as a neutral space. But we are still battling the same social ills there as if we were in person. I think when we were in the thick of the pandemic and no one was going anywhere, there was this moment in the community where something switched and it became more online than in person. The roller-skating community was vastly more of an in-person community than it was an online community. Although, I do think it’s been nice for people to be able to create these spaces because it helps people learn and it further pushes roller skating into our collective psyche.
This is a time when roller skating is going to have a hold because it’s becoming commercial again. Bruno Mars just dropped a skate song, and I think it has millions of views already. Roller skating is becoming re-embedded and re-solidified within the American psyche, or the global psyche. Thinking back to Oumi Janta and the video that went viral of her in the yellow shirt and yellow shorts, that was very pivotal in roller skating making that switch to the predominantly online space, and because COVID is still going on, it is still a predominantly online space. But I think once COVID dies down, it will go back to people wanting to have those in-person connections. I feel social media may become less of a worry for people.
What I worry about when people come into the skate community is that they have these aspirations towards people who have humongous social media accounts. They think that if they’re skating too, it can’t be that hard for them to get there. But if you’re already trying to learn how to skate, and now you’re trying to learn how to be a content creator at the same time, it’s just an added stressor that doesn’t need to be there. If people were more focused on just enjoying the journey of learning how to roller skate, I think it would feel a lot more worthwhile. There is this new expectation of booking music videos and commercials and getting paid partnerships, and that is what changes the mentality in the community.
Know when you come into the community that there is an existing space and an existing dynamic that needs to be respected to continue flourishing in the way that it has been. If you are going to share your progress online, know that it will change your entire experience online. Don’t go into it with the expectation of every post becoming a viral skate video.
GG: When the pandemic moved more communities to social media, some people perceived it as the barriers of entry to the community being lowered. They were going to enter the space without acknowledging that there has been this history and these creators and skaters that have been there before them and have been perfecting their craft for so long.
JM: Right. There wasn’t a super high barrier to entry. Nobody is trying to gatekeep skating. We want you to be here, we just want you to take a little bit of time to acknowledge how the space was existing and evolving before you came in. That way, you can continue to add something beneficial to it. That’s not to say everything that you provide to the community needs to be of value, but just make sure that you’re not stepping on the toes of the people who have been here.
GG: That makes total sense. You mentioned that in the beginning, you created content more for fun. What led to that shift where things started to get more serious for you? What was that pivotal moment?
JM: It was the beginning of the pandemic, March 2020, when I got my first paid roller skating job and got furloughed from my other job. I used to be a barista and a shift supervisor. I hated my job and I didn’t want to work during the pandemic. I didn’t want to interact with people then. In March 2020, I think I had around 35,000 followers. It was still a lot. The interest was growing, but I didn’t know if I would be able to sustain myself on it if I decided to do it full time. If I didn’t take that risk and trust in myself to continue to do this, I don’t think I would have moved as quickly or as far in this space as I have. It wasn’t too far off from the skill sets I already had, and also I’m Gen Z, so technology just makes sense to me.
GG: I think that it’s very interesting how everything came together, especially the timing of the other job falling through and then getting your first paid gig.
JM: I have numerous moments a day where I just sit and wonder how I did all of this in a year. People will just ask me how I’m not exhausted all the time. I am exhausted, but I’m still doing it anyway. 
📸: @d.vision_
GG: Something else I like about your page is your Skate Dials series where you interview people in your community. What inspired that series, and what have been some of the most memorable outcomes?
JM: The Skate Dials series was a dream that came to fruition. The earlier aspects of the skating community made people come off as one-dimensional. All you knew about people was their names and that they skated. I thought that was boring. If we’re friends and we’re a community, we should know more about each other, and we should care about what other people have going on because everyone’s unique experiences as a human being show in their skating. The mentality that people bring into how they learn and how they interact with other people translates onto roller skates.
When I started Skate Dial, it was a passion project to give back to the community, because I did not expect to make any money off of it. I just wanted to share that we’re cool and we roller skate, but we also do all this other cool shit. Like, you should want to learn about these people. I’m trying to figure out how I want to re-introduce Skate Dials because I did love doing it, and I know there are so many amazing stories to share. I know I have the platform to help people amplify those voices. I wanted to make sure I had people who were part of the LGBTQ community. I wanted to make sure that I had darker-skinned people. I wanted to make sure that I had people of different statuses. I wanted people to understand that this community is just as diverse as it looks on the outside. I want it to feel like there are so many diverse perspectives and personalities that exist within the roller-skating community.
I have met so many people who have profoundly changed the way that I view myself and the way that I approach life. Roller skating is so much deeper than what the surface level can seem like. Roller skating saved my life. I struggle with my mental health and I was struggling with an eating disorder when I started skating again. I had this conversation with my therapist: “You can’t skate for an hour if you’re not eating enough meals.” That’s something I want to speak to more openly in my community as someone who struggles with body dysmorphia and has struggled with eating disorders for a decade. If you are putting yourself in a position where you record yourself every day and post it online, the next thing you know, you’re body checking yourself, or you’re not eating enough before you skate, and that’s a problem. That’s something that needs to be fixed. Roller skating is a sport and you’re burning so many calories.
This air of self-growth and enrichment also runs through the community. Everyone is always working towards becoming the best version of themselves. You just happen to be on roller skates while you’re doing it. I want to become a better skater obviously, but I want this process to be something that also becomes vital to strengthening my mental health. Or for some people, they just want it to be an activity that is fun for them where they’re able to get their heart rate up. I think that’s another reason why roller skating picked up: people are leaning into methods of exercise that don’t revolve around buying a gym membership or being in a gym. Not everyone is comfortable in a gym environment.
GG: How do you stay fit, and how do you take care of yourself? How do you balance content creation, skating, and other aspects of your life?
JM: I do have a history of issues with my body and issues with my health in general, so when I came into roller skating again, I drilled into my head that it wasn’t exercising and I was just having fun. The only thing that I do to exercise is roller skate. I don’t try to center working out around that gym atmosphere. I’m less attached to the outcomes of what putting my skates on will be. It’s just an activity that makes me feel good, and if it keeps me healthy and keeps me in shape, then cool. I just want to have something that gets me outside and gets my heart rate up.
I try to eat on the healthier side, especially if I know I have a work-intensive week. I'm a trail mix connoisseur. I eat so much trail mix, it’s nuts. But I try to be aware of what I eat. Not to say I’m vegan, or eat super clean, or anything like that. I don’t withhold food from myself, but I take what I put into my body into consideration when I’m going to be skating. I know that I’m not going to want to eat a Big Mac and then skate for three hours. You still have to take care of yourself to perform at your best, and I think that’s something that runs through my mind more than thinking about what’s going to make my legs the most toned. I just want to feel comfortable in my body doing the things that I love.
📸: @eldente (in-photo 📸: @mf_romasanta)
GG: That’s great advice. Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on? Is there anything else you’re working on that you want to shout out?
JM: I have two big collaborations that will be going live within the next week or so, and I am doing two music videos this week. I shot a music video yesterday and I have another music video to shoot tomorrow.
I’m also a part of Disco Oasis, which is an immersive event that’s being put on in the South Coast Botanic Gardens. It’s this art and music installation that’s hosted by Nile Rodgers. He’s basically the originator of disco music, so the entire event is a themed journey through disco music. Once you make it to the end of the installation, you turn the corner and you see the Disco Oasis—it’s this giant, illuminated roller skating rink.
There’s this island in the middle and there are disco balls. I did the casting for the Disco Oasis roller skaters, and it’s one of my proudest accomplishments right now. It felt awesome to know that even in the short amount of time I’ve been gaining recognition for my roller skating, I’ve attained enough validity in the community and people trust in me enough to cast such a major production. That really hit home.
I’m also of the mentality that every opportunity leads to another. Once I do something cool and big and awesome, I’m like, “Oh my god, the next thing is gonna be even bigger and even cooler.” That’s something that I always look forward to. I also look forward to being able to put my friends on, because that’s something that people always say they want to do, but not everyone gets to a position where they can. Even for Disco Oasis, being able to cast my friends who would be skating anyways for free and are now getting paid to do it was something that made me happy. It also makes me super overjoyed to be there and see all these people put roller skates on because then that just further solidifies that people are interested in roller skating. I’m blessed to be a part of all of these experiences and opportunities that I’ve been able to have this past year.
GG: You have also been featured in so many crazy places, from NPR to New York Magazine to Vice to Teen Vogue. What has your experience been like putting your face on a movement?
JM: At the beginning, I was self-conscious. People are more aware now that roller skating was never something that went away, it was just not in the mainstream as much. I was nervous stepping into this space as someone who hasn’t been in the skate community that long and to be getting all of these opportunities. I kept invalidating myself and invalidating my skills. I was criticizing myself and feeling like I didn’t deserve to be in the space that I was in.
But now that I’m getting to this point where I can be more introspective and look back on what this past year has done for me and the opportunities it’s brought me. I saw a quote that resonates with me that says, “The opportunities that are meant for you won’t miss you.” That has made me feel more sound in the opportunities that I have received and the opportunities I will continue to receive—speaking that into existence. I know that the space that I have created and the connections that I made are genuine connections that will if not lead to more opportunities, lead me to these strong relationships with people who see the same importance in things as I do. I always struggled with trying to go in between friend groups and figure out what I was interested in. Once roller skating became so intrinsically tied to who I am, it became easier for me to express myself in the ways I always wanted to. Being able to say, “Oh yeah, I wore my hair in an afro every day this week.” Or, “I put on these green chaps, like why not? I think they look good on me.” Being able to just say that I can dig into the truest version of myself is a blessing.
How many people can say they get paid to do what they love? It is something to be thankful for, to know that you get to bust your creative chops all the time. A lot of people don't have that opportunity. And not to say that they never will, but they feel as if they aren’t capable of expressing themselves. Not only is it about my journey as a roller skater, but also my journey of figuring out who I am as a 22-year-old Black woman in the 21st century, as a college student, all of these different intersections. Those things just happen to be wrapped up and put on roller skates. I want people to understand that although there are a lot of personalities that have built and created their followings based on roller skating, we are these very multidimensional people. People deserve to hear your story outside of the fact that you roller skate.
GG: You’re getting paid to do what you love, but you’re also getting paid to be who you are.
JM: Period.
GG: That’s the coolest thing in the world. How would you describe your style in three words?
JM: My style is colorful, eccentric, and groovy. I’ll ride with those.
GG: What is your absolute dream project to work on or dream person to work with?
JM: I want to roller skate in Rihanna’s Fenty Season 3 show. Either that or a Beyoncé project.
GG: Manifesting works, so...
JM: I’m convinced. I’m legitimately getting paid to be myself. It always just baffles me because I can think of all these moments in my life where I was like, “Oh my god, I don’t wanna be myself.” But then I unintentionally created this space where being myself is the thing of utmost importance.
I haven’t posted on my Instagram in a bit and I was feeling self-conscious about it. But if people unfollow me, then they already did not fully support my vision or see where I was going. Another thing of importance is that I take care of myself and get rest when I need it. It’s not to say that I haven’t been skating, because I’ve skated every day for god knows how many weeks. Being able to say that I am flourishing simply by existing and being myself is so freaking cool.
GG: It is. And you didn’t just get lucky. You are meant to be where you are and doing what you’re doing. It is cool, so congrats on just being you.
JM: Thank you, thank you.
GG: Yeah, and fingers crossed, I am praying for this Beyoncé or Rihanna collaboration.
JM: I’m hoping for it too. But I’m also not too antsy for bigger projects because COVID is still going on. Now that I have been on the industry side of roller skating as opposed to the recreational side, I’ve seen how much work goes into creating these productions.
I’ve also been getting into the realm of creative consulting, so I’ve been able to talk to different brands and understand the direction they want to go in with their company. Being Gen Z, I can speak to brands about how to better represent themselves to different generations. Gen Z is a very dynamic age group—we are at an interesting point in society because we all grew up with technology and these tools that are instrumental in human connection and identity building. Realistically, if Instagram didn’t exist, where would I be? Roller skating is so much more to me than my follower account. I genuinely want to do it all the time. It is something that keeps me going and keeps me happy and helps me to inspire other people. So when I think of the grand scheme of what’s next for me, I want to see people step into the truest version of themselves. That’s the most rewarding and beneficial thing.
I’m looking on my whiteboard right now and I have this phrase that came to me one day: “Curate your online existence without sacrificing your personhood.” It’s important to practice gratitude, build confidence, and inspire yourself and other people. Reflect and understand that every moment that you’ve experienced in life has led up to this present moment and shapes how you interact with others and view the world. That should not be taken for granted. In the grand scheme of things, I want roller skating to be something that people want to do all of the time.