I used to host Halloween parties 26 years ago in a small country town, where we would roam the streets as twelve year olds trick or treating. Every now and then we would bag some sweet loot, but it was predominantly us catching households unaware, and them reluctantly giving us a muesli bar or something equally crappy and sending us on our way. Bored, we would have no other alternative other than to head to the local park and try our clumsy manoeuvres on the local girls in an attempt to get to second base.
Skaters have long held the torch of adopting the most awesome of the misappropriated religious festivals for Australia. Dress up in satanic garb, get a bit intoxicated and play skateboards? Fuck yeah! But Australia as a whole has been slow to adopt Halloween, despite its European/ Pagan/ Celtic origins, and in a lot of places it is still shunned as an American holiday corrupted by commercialization. Slowly this perception is changing, but it’s taking it sweet ass time!
The Grim Creepers are the 8th most famous satanic skateboarding cult in Australia, known for attracting mild amounts of terror and slight disapproval as they descend on Australia’s skateparks, getting radical in various ways. Known to cause the parents of youngsters to eye roll, as it signals it’s time to put the scooters back in the SUV and return to their beige suburban nightmares. Barbarians of sort, the Creepers are likely to burp mid-grind and fall over shortly there after.
With Halloween approaching, the Grim Creepers compound resurfaced it’s mini, built a concrete tombstone and lit what would surely be the last fire of the season with Summer fast approaching. It was time for an evening of intoxicated slams punctuated by brief moments of triumph. The crew got pretty loose, and it was improbable that any good skateboarding would go down after the amount of beers consumed, but they do say the dead walk on Halloween so anything was possible and we were up for it.
The tombstone was skinny and harsh, and it took one hell of a pummeling. Sure, it won in the end, but it copped quite a beating. These photos are moments in time of that same said beating. Where in the face of giving up on the trick, after many brutal slams, you get back on your board because your mates are yelling and often brutally heckling you. It’s the Australian way. But these are the moments before the heckles turn into celebratory howls and wolf noises, as you give improbability the middle finger, somehow land your shit and make it to the other wall.
Long live The Grim Creepers.
Words + photos: Josh Feggans / @insomniajosh
photos: Josh Feggans / @insomniajosh
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