Rodney Smith (skateboarder)

Rodney Smith is an American professional skateboarder, entrepreneur and skate company founder from New York City. He founded Shut Skates in 1986 with Bruno Musso, New York City's first skate company and the world's first entirely street skate-based company, and shortly after its founding moved its operations from Southern California to New York City because of the urban, street-savvy attitude of the East Coast streets compared with the West Coast emphasis on surf culture. The brand went dark in the 1990s when Smith co-founded Zoo York with Eli Morgan Gessner and Adam Schatz, and Shut relaunched in 2006 and reopened its flagship skate shop on the Lower East Side in 2007.