Premiere of the Red Bull Snowscrapers event in NYC

Only the fine people at Red Bull would say, "Hey...You know what would be f'n rad? An urban snowboarding competition... in NYC and you know, we'll call it Snowscrapers, cuz like New York has a lot of skyscrapers and snow starts with S, just like sky, and it's a winter sport in the city... so like... yeah... right on!"

And God Bless each and every one of them. This event was totally rad.

What better marketing plan can you have than to building a frozen nine-story ramp at a 40 degree angle on the eastern bank of Manhattan and catapult the world's 16 best riders down it. I mean, really! What demographic doesn't want to see that? Those that wish to not stand on the bank of the East River when it's 10 degrees out? Haha, nice try, but false.

Usually I'm in aforementioned demographic, so I rationalize shooting this event by thinking that my fingers almost froze off for this shot. Good God was it cold, but worth every shake and shiver. This is New York! You get a sweet gig, you take it! You hear of a stellar event, you don't think about it, you just go!

Unfortunately, I had another gig to run off to, so I didn't actually shoot the competition, but the light was just where I wanted it to be for the practice runs, so I wasn't too bummed. Besides, if you didn't get a chance to go down and check it out*, Red Bull Snowscapers airs on both NBC and MSGTV on Sunday, February 15th at 5 p.m. EST.

*One of the funniest/coolest things about NYC is that I bet 7/8 of the population had no idea this event was occuring. On that same note, the West Side Highway could have been hosting a chorus line of tap-dancing elephants and none of us on the East Side at this event would have known about it either! Well, that's a lie... I obviously would have known about that, but you get my point. What a frickin' cool place.

Note: This shot also looks way cooler with the proper color read. Sorry about that guys!