Remember when Epstein’s used to be one of the quintessential skate bars in NYC? When on any given night you could find local skaters and traveling pros getting their sauce on; when skaters pretending they know how to DJ were put in charge of the tunes; and when video premieres used to happen there on the regs? Well, apparently it is still kinda a skate bar. While the walls are still adorned with Shut decks, it is hard to look past the after work frat type of crowd that has taken over in the last couple years. BUT all hope is not lost. This past Friday they played host to the NYC premiere of the new Transworld video, The Cinematographer Project. So I decided to swing by and have a watch.

By now most of you have seen the video, or at least heard about it. It follows the premise of the old Transworld Cinematographer video where various skate filmers are given their own section, instead of giving certain skaters parts. Well, Chris Ray’s section ended up being an Evan Smith part, and Alien Workshop got a section, though I am not sure if that was by one filmer or what. Anyway, the line up was: Torsten Frank, Dan Wolfe, Russell Houghten, RB Umali, Lee Dupont, Bill Strobeck, Christopher Middlebrook, Jon Holland, Beagle, Brennan Conroy, Mike Manzoori, Chris Ray, and “Alien Workshop.” In other words, way too many. But for us New Yorkers, we mostly wanted to see what our local RB Umali and Bill Strobeck brought to the table. RB was actually present, as were 3 of the featured skaters from his section: Zared Bassett, Dave Willis, and Kevin Tierney (all of whom held it down). Stobeck’s section wasn’t as NY heavy as I would have thought and didn’t really have any NYers, but still had a decent amount of black and white NYC footage. Jake Johnson’s switch back noseblunt on the Battery Park out ledge was in there too! Speaking of, Jake Johnson and Gilbert Crockett closed out the video to become pro for Alien. While Jake is not necessarily and NY skater, he lived here long enough and made a name for himself filming for the Chapman video and Mindfield while in NYC, so we will claim him as our own. Cool? I won’t comment on the rest of the video, since I am sure Kosta will give a thorough review on Quartersnacks soon.

The premiere started off as does EVERY premiere in NYC…with technical difficulties. The first two sections went in and out and the kinks finally got worked out for the rest of the video. But to be fair, they played the whole thing over again, so we got to see what we missed the first time around. The turnout was decent with the likes of: Danny Supa, Eugene Kang, RB Umali, Zared Bassett, Joseph Delgado, Daniel Kim, Kevin Tierney, Mike Powley, Dave Willis, Stephan Martinez, Pat Hoblin, Alex Corporan, Colin Read, Gizmo, Tim Bennett, etc.

There was a second premiere scheduled for Max Fish (another former NYC skate bar), but I went skating instead of heading over there. If you went, tell us how it was in the comments.

Photos by NYSB Contributor –  Erica Reade

Words by: Eby Ghafarian 
Photos by: Erica Reade 

Introducing NYSB’s latest photo contributor – Erica Reade: Born and raised in Montreal Canada, Erica Reade is now a NYC-based photographer and works in non-for-profit. Whether she shoots urban photography or countries abroad, her aim is to tell a city’s many stories. Skateboarding is unquestionably one of NYC’s many stories, its wheels on the pavement an intricately entwined in NYC’s soundtrack. Among other subjects, she has been shooting skating for the past two years. See more of Erica’s work at EricaReadeImages.com.