Ramping up his exposure

It’s been his blessing.

The film follows a pattern played out several times before. Family troubles, school troubles, girlfriend troubles, and best friend troubles swarm the outcast skater hero as he tries to fulfill the gift he’s given. It could have been to skating what Eminem’s “8 Mile’’ was to rap or what “Hoosiers’’ was to basketball. It could be corny or it could be one of the few skateboarding movies to genuinely capture the culture and retell a story any skater could identify with.

The tightrope being so thin, it could have been a risk. But for Rodriguez, it’s almost like such things don’t exist. He treads between heartthrob 24-year-old Nike pitchman, who attracts swarms of fans, and street skater who gets respect wherever he goes.

Where some skaters have to make a choice - core (street) or comp (competition) - he’s able to walk freely in both.

“I’m kind of in the crossroads,’’ he said. “When the contest rolls around I’m going to enter it and do my thing, but at the end of the day if I had to choose one or the other, I’ve got to keep it street. It can cause some conflict.

“There’s a lot of division in skateboarding. What’s cool. What isn’t cool. I just go with my gut, and that’s that.’’

Rodriguez has been one of the faces of the Dew Tour since it started it 2005. At the same time, to a sport that’s as overprotective of its image like none other, he’s been its sacred cow. Middle America eats up his Nike SBs, West Coast rapper Ice Cube cameos in the commercial, and all the while the skate video he’s working on for sponsor company Plan B is one of the most highly anticipated.

“I’m blessed I guess,’’ he said. “I just stay true to what I originally started doing. For me, my main priority is street skating and getting the videos and the magazines taken care of and keeping it real with the original roots of skating.’’

Rodriguez bridges a great divide in skating, but the divide still exists. It’s sort of an irresolvable conflict between wanting to blow up mainstream and somehow maintain underground status.

This weekend’s event is the first time New Bedford native Nick Dompierre has skated on the Dew Tour, and to a large degree, that separation is what earns him respect.

“It’s weird,’’ said Jake Dooley, who skates on the Gatorade Free Flow Tour, but grew up skating with Dompierre. “You think that someone who made it that big would move out to California and forget his hometown but he’s nothing like that. I respect that. Some skaters, they just move out to California when they get big.’’

Said Rodriguez, “A guy like Nick Dompierre, he doesn’t need to come to these contests because he’s got such a solid base in the streets, but he does have the ability to where if he does come to these contests he can do well.’’

Skaters such as Chris Cole, known widely for street skating more than competition, acknowledge that conflict.

“Skateboarding, it comes from an aggressive teenager point-of-view where skateboarding’s mine, nobody can have it,’’ said Cole, who placed first in yesterday’s prelims at TD Bank Garden. “They don’t even like some of the people in skateboarding.’’

The most important thing for a skateboarder, Cole said, is to shoot photos for magazines and film for videos. His job as a skater, he said, has nothing to do with competitions, but doing videos and magazines keeps you sharp for competitions, and there’s a benefit in that balance. At some point, that’s something more skaters will realize.

“I think it’s already starting,’’ said Cole as he watched a practice dotted with several typical “street skaters.’’

When the autographs and interviews ended and Rodriguez was able to take the ramps for practice, it was almost like he was a monument. The way skaters pointed and whispered in awe at Tony Hawk on the vert ramp, they did the same for Rodriguez on the park course. For Rodriguez, being there was like being on a proving ground.

“That’s the type of individual I am,’’ he said. “I believe I can do well at these types of contests so I’ve got to know if I can actually do what I think I can do.’’

The stories of Rodriguez’s beginnings go on forever. There’s the one about how he once broke a table skating in the house. His father, comedian Paul Rodriguez, asked, “Why are you skating in the house.’’ The son responded, “Because it’s raining outside.’’

His crossover appeal was instant. But he wanted to do it on his own, even when his father told him skateboarding had no future for him.

“What did your parents say when you were going to be a comedian?’’ Rodriguez Jr. would ask. “They came straight from Mexico, didn’t know anything, and they were poor. He comes up one day and says he’s going to be a comedian, my grandparents probably didn’t even know what a comedian was.’’

Seeing his father succeed pushed Rodriguez.

“I saw my father as a figure in my life who was doing something he wanted to do,’’ he said. “It was just a normal thing for me. My dad being an example of living his dream, being on TV making money, doing his thing, it was like a normal. So it was like, ‘OK, I can do that, too.’ ’’

It’s been six years since he broke through in a video for “Yeah Right!’’ The magazines came after that. Then the endorsements. Then fame.

“As far as I was concerned, that was as big as it gets,’’ he said. “That was my dream. I didn’t know that skating was going to become like this.’’

Now it’s the future, and if anything works in his favor it’s that he seems to be in the middle of it all.

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.