Reel Rock Film Tour – 2011

The front door of Next Door in Chinatown. The event was held here.

I ended up on stage at one point to introduce a slideshow I put together. Justin had some space to fill before the films started and asked me I wanted to throw something together. It sounded like a great idea at the time, but I didn’t realize it would take me 8 hours to make an 11 minute slideshow.

Of all the films that showed, one of the most inspiring was the one about a nine year old climber named Ashima, called “Origins: Obe and Ashima.”

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The Reel Rock Tour showed in Hawaii last month on November 20th. It was presented by Volcanic Rock Gym and the event was held at Next Door (in Chinatown).

Every year a company called Reel Rock accepts entries into a competition for climbing and adventure short films. Judges select 6 to be part of the Reel Rock Film Tour and they are screened at events all over the world.

This was the second year that VRG brought the film tour to Hawaii. Last year it was much smaller (as the climbing community was much smaller) and held at the rock gym. But this year, Justin (the owner of VRG) decided to see if it was possible to make an event out of it. As it turns out, there’s a pretty good demand in Hawaii for adventure films and we had a full house.

I arrived early so we could test out my slideshow DVD and run a sound check.

The screen, the chairs and DJ booth were all set up already.

This would be the first time I’ve ever seen a lot of my climbing gym buddies with shirts on.

A little over a hundred presale tickets were sold.

Justin prepares the agenda for the night.

Next Door has this awesome old school mic.

The bar would be put to good use this night.

Clubs still have disco balls I guess.

Hiro, who works at Volcanic Rock Gym, shows up after closing the gym.

The set up crew grinds on a pre-event meal from Little Village.

As 7 o’clock approached, folks started cruising in.

Eventually, most of the seats were taken.

Justin hosted the event.

It started off with my slideshow and then went into the first raffle.

Some of the prizes were chalk bags, brushes and tank tops.

The first film was called Ice Revolution and was about ice climbing in Canada.

With the audience being made up of climbers, during the intermission there was a pull up contest on the hang board. Ladies first.

It was impressive.

The dudes went next.

We were able to get Trenton to come up to compete.

There was a bracket for one-arm pull ups as well.

The last film to air was “Sketchy Andy.” It had some make-your-palms-sweat footage of sketchy high-lining (which is like tight-rope walking).

When the last film end the music came on.

The chairs were cleared out and some people stuck around to shake their booties.

The booty shaking eventually wound down and it was time to close up.

See also:

• The Insiders – A short video about indoor climbing featuring that 9 year old girl Ashima.
• List of the Reel Rock Tour 2011 films.
• Volcanic Rock Gym website and Facebook.