JACOB ROSENBERG

“Embarcadero was not my spot. I was a visitor, a commuter from some 35 miles south, pulled by overwhelming gravity into its orbit.

Sixteen years old on my first visit, my cameras were my passport. I wasn’t the first filmer, nor the first documentarian, not even the first peer. But I was there: charging batteries, buying tapes, cutting class. Driving my parents’ station wagon, giving rides, honing my craft.

Maybe this was the first place I understood I had a craft, where I saw that my effort, intent, and slowly refining lens offered my voice a chance to grow.

I felt purpose for the very first time, and luckily, I had the best subjects, on the best obstacles, around the best strangers and bystanders. Embarcadero was an ecosystem, a kingdom unto itself. So I was a messenger with a responsibility of great importance: to capture and broadcast the scene by recording what was happening right before my eyes. No other place mattered. In this short window, it seemed like absolutely everything in skateboarding that mattered happened at the Embarcadero. Partly the obstacles and setting, but mostly it was the skaters and the community just watching their world change, eager for a glimpse of what my lens captured, affirming what they witnessed firsthand, or did. The locals saw it all, what I documented was for everyone else. Embarcadero wasn’t just the spots or the people, not the weather and tourists passing through, nor the fights, jeers, or cheers. It wasn’t simply the bells or the rattle of the bricks, the insecurities and joy of any place populated by teenagers. It was an amalgam of everything; all of that. But mostly it was a place where people came to feel included. When your world feels empty, skateboarding offers an opportunity to make you feel whole. It did for me.

This exhibition captures my journey, from my first skate photography in the South Bay, up to and through San Diego, Embarcadero, and concluding with the Hieroglyphics crew in Oakland. It’s an honor to showcase this body of work in a place that was central to my growth as a storyteller. As a skate filmer and photographer, it is never about you, it’s always about your subject. This show celebrates them.”

TED BARROW
co-curator

“EPICENTER came from a chance meeting between myself and Jacob Rosenberg, and my off-hand suggestion that something should be done with his substantial archive of photos, memorabilia, and unseen video footage. I didn’t realize that I was making that suggestion to someone who approaches everything with 100% of his heart and sincere effort. The book and this eponymous exhibition are the result. 

Having grown up worshipping at the radiant altar of San Francisco’s skate scene, Embarcadero was already familiar to me long before my first visit to the plaza in 1990. Within two years, thanks to the videos Rosenberg filmed, both the plaza and the EMB crew were world famous:  the local scene seen here rose from a tattered group of talented skateboarders to a supremely influential scene that emboldened a global movement: plaza skateboarding. Within another couple of years, the skaters and the scene had moved onto other plazas and cities, naturally. 

This exhibition celebrates a bygone era, a changing place, and a vibrant community that redefined modern skateboarding. However, this is a bittersweet celebration: Epicenter comes at an auspicious time. Having survived over five decades, with various configurations of skateable obstacles, the original 1971 red brick plaza and Armand Vaillancourt’s fountain will be gone within the year. Like those axle divots still seen on the bricks of the plaza during the run of this show, the people seen here left an indelible mark on all of skateboarding, in tricks, style, music, and slang. Just like how EMB is a metonym for a crew and a plaza, so too has the spirit embodied by this place radiated outside of San Francisco.

It started here.”