Santa Cruz Corey O'Brien Reaper
Width: 9.8"
Length: 30.0"
Graphic by Jim Phillips
Info: RE: REAPER Although a well-known skateboarder both in his San Jose locale and nationally and having ridden for NHS as one of its only street amateurs through the mid 80s, Corey was never supposed to get a pro model. “They NHS said they didn’t want to have any street models out and that’s why they wouldn’t give me one,” he says. Then after coming back from an Oregon contest and placing in the top eight, the company had a change of heart. But not without reservations: “They told me they were going to give me a board, but they really barely wanted to do it.” Corey notes that NHS’ probable motivation was the recent success of a competitor’s street model. “That was right after the Vision Gonz board came out,” he says. Armed with a vision plucked from scouring San Jose tattoo parlors, Corey approached Jim Phillips, NHS’ art director at the time, with the first version of “The Reaper.” “Originally the reaper guy was holding a crystal ball in his hand, looking at it, and I wanted to put the Santa Cruz dot inside the crystal ball,” Corey explains. Jim suggested replacing holding a crystal with throwing fire, but Corey still pushed for the SC dot idea until Jim came back after a weekend of sketching and changed his mind: “He came in on Monday, and the new sketches looked really good.” With the main part of the graphic set to go, Corey brought Jim the now-classic West Coast punk compilation Hell Comes To Your House along with a Virgil Finley book, which together inspired the font and subliminal images that make up the hazy landscape in which the Reaper exists. “I just wanted it to look different than the other boards Jim was doing, so that’s why I went out looking for ideas,” says Corey about assisting with the process. |
