The weekend is fast upon us. Skating and summer fun. Maybe even some rain. If it does rain, and you find yourself basking in the phosphorescent glow of a tv set, I recommend feeling around the confines of your living room for a DVD. If there’s enough light in that room to read, you’re going to want to find the one labelled “Born Dead” and somewhere else on there it says, “Creature Skateboards.” If you can connect with this disc, you’re one lucky man. There’s a guy sitting in an Ohio prison right now who can’t. He used to ride shotgun with one of the rippers in this video (Al Partenen), but he won’t be able to skate or watch his bro destroy in Born Dead for the next 2.5 years. After that, it’s game over.

And that’s how Creature’s first skate video comes across– like a guy who just got out of prison and is thirsty for life.


Like Austin Skate Notes, Born Dead contains a stronger-than-average dosage of transition skating. They hit a lot of the regular Pacific Northwest spots like Orcas and Burnside, but then this video also boasts the first footage to come out of the Black Pearl skatepark in the Cayman Islands, Kokomo, Indiana’s fullpipe elbow, as well as the first video from the unfinished DIY concrete project in Oakland, CA. They travel extensively through Australia, hitting a lot of the spots covered in Tent City, but different, because it’s different guys.

Creature’s younger pros strongly represent the modern street skating arts of jumping down stairs and over gaps. Some of them even scrape a handrail. But there’s not much tech in here. If you like to see close-up shots of flips to bench tricks, there’s really none of that in Born Dead. These guys are mostly skating too fast for that.

John Ponts debuts his first video part in Born Dead and they were able to use some of the Austin footage shot when he was on Black Label. If you look close, you’ll see that Pflugerville grind off of rebar and also that ski-jump over the grass gap thing. From his part, you get a good sense of what an all-around-ripper he is.

The other guys with strong parts are Partenen, Sam Hitz, and Darren Navarette. Navs skates to “In My Blood” by Blast! and does inverts to fakie while wearing Chuck Taylor look-alike shoes. A fitting tribute to Jason Jessee. Watching Hitz makes me want to learn how to do proper rockslides.

The other feature that makes this a mandatory watch is the modern Neil Blender footage. He does the half-cab-to-handout that was in a Black Label ad a couple of Thrashers ago and some unbelievably long rockslides in a California concrete bowl.

Below is a preview of Born Dead courtesy of YouTube. If you’re looking to purchase this flick, it’s pretty much one of those things you’re going to hassle your local skate shop to order. I bought it at Tekgnar on Go Skateboarding Day for $1.99, but it’s hard to find available via mailorder on the internet.

If you’re in the mood to look at more trailers on YouTube, lil’ moot, who’s fresh back from Central America, recommends the following:

Beer League starring Artie Lange
Talladega Nights starring Will Ferrell
Borat starring Ali G (Sasha Cohen)

If you liked “Kids”, here’s the trailer for Larry Clark’s new film, ““Wassup Rockers.”