Trainwreck

To be fair, if we are indeed going to account for All the Gall, we should consider the bright but brief blowtorch of a career from Alex ‘Trainwreck’ Gall (no relation to Fred). It won’t take long, for his legacy was built on the weight of just 2 full parts. With such a strong impact made so quickly, only to disappear so completely, Trainwreck’s career path has become the archetype of the explode then vanish what-ever-happened-to skater.

As awesome of a nickname as he posses, Alex Gall didn’t earn it from his aggressive skateboarding or monumental slams. He got literally hit by a train as a child.
His skating wasn’t on any radars at all as he grew up and he emerged fully formed as a ball of destruction in his Jamie Thomas produced Wheels of Fortune part in 411 #39 from 2000. He went pro for Zero not too long after, but quit the team while on a trip to New York, thusly never having that Zero part you swore he did.

By 2002, Trainwreck was pro for Bootleg skateboards (back when it was still connected to Baker), covered in tattoos, and skating to Slayer for his definitive part in Transworld’s In Bloom video. The part is a barrage of burley that was the style of the time: Handrails and hubbas with an occasional carcass toss thrown in there. The only line to be found is just a sequence of two large parking lot gaps. Looking back from a few decades in the future, the switch kickflips stand out, and that backside lipslide to fakie at the Banks is golden.

By the time Bootleg released it’s Bootleg 3000 full length video in 2003, Trainwreck was gone. With his body broken (and a drinking problem that wasn’t helping), Alex walked away from the skateboarding-for-money game completely, which is a rare thing in skateboarding. So there you have it: his career lasted all of about 4 years.

So where is he now?
Eventually Alex sobered up, got his shit together, and is now making high end aquatic themed fine art metal sculptures. For real, he does public art commissions and stuff. Thrasher did an Out There about it.

Bonus Trainwreck:
In 2015, the Thrasher series called Ricki the Dude’s Total Recall posted a whole mess of footage of Alex from 1999 that was filmed for Duffs, thus nearly doubling the amount of total Trainwreck skating available to watch.

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