Never-before-seen photos capture SF’s ’90s skate and hip-hop scene – The San Francisco Standard

Jacob Rosenberg, like many people, misses the ’90s.  More than most who feel nostalgia, Rosenberg actually spent those years documenting just what was so magical about the period. The 51-year-old filmmaker, born and raised in Palo Alto, is known as one of the preeminent documentarians of San Francisco’s 1990s skateboard scene — a movement whose mecca was the Embarcadero Plaza.  Rosenberg has photographed portraits of skateboarding’s biggest icons; he was also essential in chronicling East Bay hip-hop groups such as Hieroglyphics and De La Soul. Now he’s publishing “Right Before My Eyes,” a monograph that details Bay Area skate and hip-hop culture from 1988 to 1998. “This book is insanely personal,” Rosenberg, who lives in Hollywood, told The Standard. “I am very nostalgic, and I feel like the 1990s is an era that keeps getting discussed socially, with respect to attitude and fashion trends.”