Alex

Name + Pronouns: Alex, they/he

@sour_skates

Local Portland Shredr & artist/operator of GNDR SHREDR ✨🌈

Hey y'all!! I'm Alex, a trans non-binary queer artist & printmaker originally from Texas and now local to the PNW :) I started skating, like many of y'all, during the early days of the pandemic in 2020. It pretty quickly became more than a hobby as I made friends with other amazing skaters in Austin, TX (one of them being Lizzy who's also on the gndr shredr team!!!) and I realized how amazing this hobby was to bring so many queer skaters and just overall awesome people together. 

I started park skating about 6 months after first lacing up, and was immediately hooked. The rush from doing something so dangerous and freeing is WILD, and I gain such a strong sense of accomplishment when I finally nail a trick. I was skating during my last year in college for my graphic design degree, and pretty soon after said goodbye to my friends in Austin to move to Portland with a corporate design job lined up at a commercial real estate agency. Spoiler alert: it was the worst job I've ever had, and the months I worked there drained every drop of creativity, energy and honestly, sanity I had 🥴

So early 2022, I decided to focus my time and energy into doing something that actually made me excited to wake up every day and work! I've always been more of an experimenter, an artist at heart that just happens to use a graphic design education and tools, and those tools helped me build a brand out of a little nugget of an idea for queer skaters to congregate, show their pride out in the open and wear silly t-shirts. It's been an incredible ride so far, and I'm so glad I pushed myself to create for a community that has been so welcoming and supportive.

My goals for GNDR SHREDR this year include organizing more queer skate events and meetups, fundraising for mutual aid groups around Portland & beyond,  creating park & street edits with the amazing team skaters, doing collabs with other brands & artists, getting the shirts into some more skate shops around the country and continuing to follow the spark of passion to see where this little business goes in 2023! Thank y'all for being here and taking this journey with me 💕