Alexa Berriochoa

In 2022 Nike SB worked with Skate Like a Girl and award-winning director and photographer Diane Russo Cheng on “Transenders,” a short documentary film exploring Alexa Berriochoa’s journey in skateboarding as a Trans woman who often felt on the outside of a skateboarding’s subculture. As documented in “Transenders,” Alexa’s dealt with trauma, adversity, and injury, finding fear as a motivating factor to not only overcome adversity but to inform her work as an activist and mentor. Coming back from injury and finding new ways to build community and make a positive imprint on skateboarding, we caught up with Alexa to hear about her strides, progress, and growth since putting herself out there in “Transenders” in 2022.

How did skateboarding start for you?

I started skateboarding when I was about 12. I'm 27 now so I guess it's been 15 years. I was really into punk and hardcore music in middle school, high school, and thereafter and the kids that brought me into skateboarding were also like kids I knew through going to punk shows and hardcore shows. That was my first experience, but then later being around an entirely different aesthetic—the more mainstream look that I feel skateboarding has. I came into skateboarding in Cedar City, Utah, which isn't even the "fun part" of Utah.

The town I grew up in had a population of about 30,000 people. We had one really tiny awful skatepark that never got any maintenance—it was a prefab skate park and it would break all the time. No one would come to fix it, but it was really cool because that was what worked for me as a kid. I played traditional sports and stuff like that but I latched on to skateboarding because it was something that I could do by myself and just throw at over and over and over again until something worked. The skate scene in Utah is very different from the skate scene in Seattle. I got to share that skateboarding experience with others and it was cool but as I got into high school and later, right out of high school, I started to associate skateboarding with my peak experiences of toxicity.

What you said reminded me of my experience as a teen--being full-on into punk, hardcore, and skateboarding at the same time. People often talk about the synergy between punk and skating but it wasn't that way to me. I was seeing feminist bands or bands talking about really progressive issues at these DIY shows, and coming home with zines and literature discussing gender or politics or animal rights, and then I'd be out skating and it felt a lot less diverse or progressive and definitely toxic.

I love that you brought up that kind of introduction to feminism and like going home with literature because that was one thing. I remember the first time I went to a show in Salt Lake City. I remember seeing the tables where people like we're like, 'OK, this we have pamphlets and zines and we're going to talk about animal rights. We're going to talk about leftism, and like we're going to introduce you to some topics that you've probably never considered before. I started going to shows around 12 and I remember reading these pamphlets I was given at a hardcore show and really had my eyes opened to a lot of things I wasn't exposed to before. I was rooted in punk and punk bridged into skateboarding for me. For the first several years that I skated, it was only with the punk kids that I knew. I feel like the thing that skateboarding and punk share in common is that a lot of times the counterculture communities are almost worse (than the mainstream), because they have all the language, right.? They still kind of act the same. They just know the right things to say. I feel like that's when I stopped being like, 'I'm only going to skate with the punk skaters,' because I was like, 'You're still really bad. You just know how to manipulate me better.'

That's something I wanted to bring up. When you go towards a subculture, you will usually go towards it for identity, and then to not feel accepted within the thing that you went to for acceptance, has to be really difficult.

Absolutely. Whenever I didn't feel at home in skateboarding, I knew that Salt Lake was a better place to be in Utah for me. There were shows that were happening there and I had friends in Cedar City who wanted to drive up there. So I got to experience a more accepting community through that. But at 12, or 13 I hadn't rooted myself in my identity or my politics. In a lot of ways, I was just feeding off of what was being given to me in rural Utah—I didn't have any other kind of point of reference. It was weird, because I felt like I established these really good relationships with people inside skateboarding, who I enjoyed spending time with and skating with, and then within a couple of years, I realized that, like, I felt so different from them. And the only thing that we had in common was skateboarding. For a long time, I just tried to force it because in Cedar City, especially at the time, I was growing up, I didn't know a single Trans person in my town. The only Queer person I ever knew growing up was a girl who came out as lesbian in high school. By the time I graduated high school, I like knew of about three or four kids that were Black. It was a very homogeneous, white HET, experience.

So for a long time, I felt like I was somewhat forced to go along with things because this is what I have access to and it's either have these friends or don't have friends. I feel like I pushed myself out of skateboarding kind of trying to do that, because the more I hung out with the friends that I was, like, once upon a time friends with it just made it feel worse and worse to be a part of skateboarding. Luckily, I ended up finding a little crew in Cedar City that originated from hardcore as well, and they had reasonable politics. They weren't being super horrible at skate parks or anything. They weren't the best, but it was the place where I could have three people I felt safe skating with. Skateboarding got to be reinvigorated for me there. When I started skating I was having a ton of fun, then there was this middle place where I was like, 'Damn, all the skaters I know really suck, but also, I live in Utah,' [laughs] and then I found my very small pocket community at that skatepark, and I felt like I got to kind of fly under the radar again.

What starts to give you the confidence to overcome your fear of really being yourself?

It's interesting to think back on a lot of that because I think my subconscious self knew a lot more than I did. When I was 17 or 18, I knew I wanted to get out of my hometown. I feel like back then it was rooted in this idea that I was the only person that I knew that had progressive politics. No matter if I was in a coffee shop, at work, or I was at the skatepark, the standard was that everyone here is conservative, everyone's reactionary, and everyone has problematic views. I knew I had to get out of there so that I could be around like-minded people. My girlfriend at the time and I had visited Seattle. Then I proposed to her and we got married, and we moved to Seattle.

When I got to Seattle what was a really defining moment was that I experienced culture shock. I didn't anticipate that. I found safety. I didn't have to just hold my tongue in every crowd. Also, came some realizations of what my identity was rooted in, because up until that point, all of the examples of Trans women that I had seen, had been really terrible media portrayals--jokes in movies or TV about Trans people. The people that I was surrounded by in Utah only ever had really horrible things to say. Even though I didn't believe that or think that way, I didn't have a reference point until I got to Seattle. I got to see Queer people and Trans women, specifically, existing and being authentic. It felt like the piece of my brain that always had TV static all of a sudden cleared out. I was like, "Oh, that's me. That's what I've been looking for.' I had just never had an example to see or express it. When I first had that opportunity, I knew that was what had to happen, which was unfortunate because I had just moved here after getting married. I think my relationship with skateboarding changed because the only example I had before was the most homophobic and Transphobic community that I've ever been a part of. Subsequently, I felt that even though I had this big revelation, I couldn't be part of skateboarding anymore.

Was finding Skate Like a Girl a window to getting back into skateboarding?

That was huge for me in so many ways, even outside of getting back into skateboarding. If we fast forward a bit, once I came out as Trans, my ex and I realized that we needed to go down different paths. I needed to figure out more about myself and my ex wanted to have children, so we decided we were going to get divorced before we just fought about everything—we're still really close friends. But afterward, my life got really difficult. I didn't have anybody here because the only person I was close to, I had just initiated a divorce with. I was desperately trying to figure out what my identity looks like, so I started going to support groups for Trans people and meeting other Trans people online. That was really difficult, too because every time I would meet a new Trans person, I could see where we overlapped, but there was still this huge part of me that was like, 'I'm so much different than any other Trans woman I've even met.'

Then I met my best friend here at a support group, and she's also Trans. She was like, 'I want to learn how to skateboard!' That was really crazy because I just decided I had to quit skateboarding. We have this shared identity, I had just quit and they wanted to get into it. We had both heard about Skate Like a Girl Women and/Or Trans Session before and we were like, 'OK, we can go but we'll keep our expectations low.' I thought we were just gonna go once and it was going to help me introduce my friend to skateboarding. Then I showed up, and I got to have that moment where I saw other Trans people and other Trans women. "Wait a minute, I feel like her—you and I are seeing on the same page.'

I was still tied to skateboarding as fashion and skateboarding as an interest. I wanted to be Trans and still wear baggy jeans and have that skater look and engage with the community that I already knew. Up until that point, it hadn't existed for me. So walking into that room and seeing Women and/Or Trans Session happen, was really wild because it rewired everything I knew to be true about skateboarding culture. The good skaters in the room weren't acting cliquey or cool guying anybody else. I was, like, immediately celebrated despite not being a part of the existing group. I got to see a thriving community of people like me in this small little indoor skate park in Seattle that I just happened to stumble upon. That really put into perspective that there has to be so many more people like me and that not only do I deserve to be a part of skateboarding, but I have a lot that I could contribute to this community.

Skateboarding has so many unspoken rules. It feels as if in non-traditional communities, unconditional acceptance is an unspoken--and positive--rule. In your opinion, why is that one of the unspoken rules?

I think that what I experienced and the reason why it immediately became something that I wanted to make sure that I replicated as well, is because you experience the reciprocal of it if you're part of a community that hasn't traditionally been prioritized at a skate park. I've seen so many girls—middle school-aged girls—show up to a skate park and immediately not be given the same access to failure that their middle school boy counterparts will have. If a little school boy walks into a skate park and like messes up an ollie 30 times in a row, a lot of the times what that looks like for people is that he's practicing and he's gonna get good at it, you know? But when a middle school girl walks in, and she's not good at it, she's a poser, or she's there for the wrong reasons—she's trying to impress the middle school boy. Whatever it is. We've all experienced what it feels like to not be included in the mainstream acceptance of skateboarding, so it becomes like a radical act to make sure that everyone who hasn't had that opportunity gets to be a part of our community and that we're not replicating the same things that initially pushed us away.

Skateboarding has had competitions since it started and that's a big part of its reach. It’s had the Olympics, and it has a circuit of contests, but what seems to have transformed it over the last 10 or so years is representation. Do you feel like the key to advancing and progressing skateboarding is representation? Is that fair to say?

Absolutely. I think that's the key to progressing skateboarding in so many ways and not even just the ones that feel obvious. I think that representation in skateboarding is the biggest deal because the first time I saw Cher Strauberry, I was like, "Wow, she's got legit sponsors! That's so wild.' Just riding for a team of any sort—actual tangible opportunities being given to Trans people and Trans women specifically. It was amazing to think that's an option now—we can do that. I feel like that really resonated with so many people really quickly too, because now, there are so many Trans women and Trans people in general that are getting opportunities. I feel like I've every day, every few weeks, I get to open Instagram and see another one of my friends getting exposure. It feels like a way different landscape now. Homogeneous skateboarding is really boring skateboarding. By allowing more people to be represented in skateboarding, we're going to be more creative and make a more diverse skateboarding that appeals to more people—not just Queer people, but people that want to see a different kind of skateboarding. Before there was a lot more prominent Queer representation in skateboarding, skateboarding has been feeling stale—a lot of the same style, same music, same tricks. As Queer skateboarding has gotten more into that limelight, it's really shaken that up. It's even impacted more of mainstream skateboarding. I'm starting to see trends in skate videos that started, to me, with some of the first Queer skate videos. I think that the mainstream audience of traditional skateboarding still stands to gain so much from diversifying what skateboarding is.

Something that’s become a big issue in all of sports is this debate about the perceived “advantages” Trans athletes have in competition. Most of this “debate” isn’t based on science or real data and the reality is that it comes across more as a way to continue to oppress the Trans community. Can you speak on that, specifically to folks who accuse Trans skaters of seeking an “advantage”?

Let's think about skateboarding as an industry for a second. Who's actually like making big money off this or getting that big success off of it? Sure, there's a small percentage of pros who are doing well financially, but the best, most recognized Trans skateboarders I know still have jobs on the side. It's not like we're monetarily rewarded for being the best Trans skateboarder. We're still very distant from that. The other side of it is if I'm not in it for money, then I must be in it to like, win competitions. Right? There's been this larger conversation over the past few years regarding Trans women in swimming—why it's "unfair" or what the perceived advantages are. All of the Trans women that I know, personally have no interest in going near a competition, because nobody wants to be the center of all that negative attention. It's so rare even to meet Trans women who have a desire to be in competition in the first place, because of that negative reaction. So I do think it's hilarious when people think that's actually our angle, so to speak. In addition to that, being Trans, and doing hormone replacement therapy, and like, having to deal with all the things that come with being Trans... I would never do all of that for skateboarding. I'm not gonna get called a slur at the grocery store, so that I can make a little bit more money in skateboarding, you know, what I mean, like?

The final thing I'll say is that I think we should just really reframe our rules and our boundaries around competition. There are a lot of people who are progressive enough to say, 'Hey, this isn't really a great conversation to be having and this isn't the main Trans issue,' but haven't really realized that a lot of the boundaries that exist in competition are rooted in a lot of racist beliefs as well and that there are already ways that we measure how to put competitors against each other. If we're going to create categories—beginner, intermediate advanced—they really don't need to be separated the way that we think they are. There's too much of a focus on excluding Trans people and people that haven't traditionally fallen in like a Eurocentric body type. That's never going to be worth making sure that people don't get to participate in a sport that they enjoy, especially if we could create better systems.

One thing that I've noticed is how well you handle criticism, especially on social media. We’re still learning about the impact of social media on our mental health and that seems to be something you have vast experience with. You have a knack for being able to twist a comment or deflect the vitriol. How'd you get to a place where you were able to do that?

It's definitely something that I struggled with when I first started getting a lot of internet attention. When you first start having a DM box full of like messages, when you first start having a comment section that's just overflowing, it's so easy to read every single thing that everyone sends or to read every single comment and take it to heart. I did that for a while but then I realized that it doesn't have the same effect as that first time. It hurt really bad to read some of the negative things that people consistently would say, but then by the time you're like the 10th person saying it, I've moved on—that conversation happened a long time ago for me. Now... it's not to say that, like, no comment or no DM ever gets to me, but what I try to consider when I'm like responding to or acknowledging a negative comment is whether or not my response could potentially help someone who might receive that comment for themself and not be in a place where they not care, because I wasn't ready to not care for a long time. The only time I try to respond is to give somebody else to that's reading it the opportunity to recognize that just because people are saying that consistently doesn't mean that they're right or that what they are saying has a foundation in reality. I just want to encourage people to be able to express themselves and be themselves. Sometimes I think that deflecting a comment and making my own comments associated with it can help others more than it helps me. Mostly I ignore things. I've really been working on my relationship specifically with social media to remember that at the end of the day, they're words on a screen.

Speaking to social media, you've been injured and recovering from surgery and something that can be really difficult is seeing that deluge of content on social media. That's not only hard on your body but can have a huge impact on your mental health. Has anything filled the void of skateboarding for you as you've worked your way back?

I've been on a roller coaster with this one, for sure. At first, the world came crashing down. As soon as I knew I tore my ACL I knew how bad it could be and it just felt really terrible. Then also knowing exactly how long the timeline could be for me to return to skateboarding, was really scary, because skateboarding has always been the thing that can hold my attention. I think that it has been a process to find out how I can work towards getting back to skateboarding and finding ways to fill my time otherwise. That was really difficult, but I do think that some of the positives that have come out of that are that I've been able to reconnect with a lot of the things I neglected but wanted to do when I was skating all the time. I've been sewing more, been doing a lot more art.... I bought a camera and I'm like filming some skateboarding and doing editing and stuff. I get to spend a lot more time with people that I know that don't skate. It's provided me some perspective, that's really helpful to reground myself in those things, and then also, I think that when I get back to skateboarding, I'm gonna appreciate it a lot more. At the time I got injured, I feel like I was just like, taking skateboarding a little for granted. Skateboarding was always there was something I could do every day after work. Now I'm developing a patience and an appreciation for skateboarding that I didn't have before. I think that my relationship with skateboarding as a whole is going to change based on the time I've had to reflect on my injury. It'll be nice to return to skateboarding through filming. That's one thing that I've been really loving because I get to stay in the skateboarding community without having to actively skate—I still feel like I get to be a part of the process.

Having been through so much in life and skateboarding and having a background in mentorship, what advice would you give your younger self if you could?

There's so much I would say, to my younger self. To start, 'Hey, this is crazy. You're Trans!,' Secondly, I would really try to give myself some patience, because I think that that was something that I was really afraid of as a kid. I thought the whole world was like Utah, and the only place that didn't feel like Utah was like, certain pockets of the internet, you know? Just some assurance that like, I wasn't alone—grounding myself, and knowing that, like, this isn't forever, and like, you're gonna have to get through it, but it will end.

There's a deep connection between skateboarding and fear. As much as there's the fear of injury, the fear of not being able to do something really hard, there are different fears we feel as individuals when we're skateboarding. What I mean is that one person might go to a skatepark and be afraid to skate a certain obstacle, while another person might just be afraid to go to the park because of who they are. Can you talk a bit about that and your experiences with fear?

I think that fear in a positive way has really taught me that I'm capable of a lot more than I thought I was. A lot of times when fear shows up, it's because you have an opportunity to see something you didn't have before. That shows up with skateboarding a lot and that's what latched me on to skateboarding initially. Fear can often be associated with growth in a lot of ways—finding comfort in the right kinds of fear, because like, some fear is just fear. I don't really get an opportunity to grow if I'm being chased by Jason Voorhees. [laughs] But fear can drive you to step outside your comfort zone, learn something new about yourself, hone in ability, or build more community—any of those things.

One of the things that fear has taught me in a negative context, too, is when I came out as Trans, I thought everything was kind of going to be just fine. I was pretty naive about what that was going to look like going into it. I developed this new sense of fear in the simplest things that I never felt like I had to fear before—walking into the corner convenience store by my house if my friends or a partner's parents are going to be weird about it. One really tangible example I have is I used to skate at this DIY spot in Seattle all the time called The Courts. I like the atmosphere there. It's really grimy. People bring random things there to skate... just things they found. I stopped going there because that was the place where I felt like I got harassed the most. There are a lot of altercations there, and specifically, that park has been a place where Trans people have not been treated great. I think fear taught me in a negative capacity, that I don't always have the same access to space in a way that a lot of my counterparts do or don't even have to think about.

In the "Transenders" documentary you talk about incremental change. What can we all do to get to a place where everyone has the same access to space and isn't being harassed, not only in skateboarding but in life?

One of the realities that I have to bring myself into is that it's never going to be perfect. There's always going to be a person bringing an element of fear into these spaces. I think the most powerful thing that people can do—especially people who aren't the afflicted group—is to question your homies when it happens. When you see things that come up, when someone says something ignorant, be ready to not only step in as a friend and have a tough conversation but we're also past a point where just starting a conversation is a solution, right? That's always necessary. It's up to allies that are close to people who aren't allies to be that voice of reason because if I talk to your homie, they won't listen because of my identity. It's up to you to mediate. People that are not the afflicted group really need to be deliberate about showing up for the afflicted group when things go wrong. To use that same park as an example, I was almost put into a physical altercation with a guy who was being Transphobic and violent. I managed to deal with it but when it was over, I looked around and realized that six of my CIS friends were around me and no one stepped up. What would have made me feel safer and OK to go back to that park is if my six friends simultaneously took one step forward. Now—even showing up there with a group of friends—it still feels like if something goes wrong, I might be on my own.

Coming off that—coming off the fear and the experiences you've had, what's something positive that really stands out and keeps you motivated?

I've been thinking about this a lot. I went to WT (Women and/Or Trans Session), I had my big moment, then I went to WOF, and I got to work for Skate Like a Girl... I got to contribute, you know? So a couple of years later, there is a Trans girl at the Women and/Or Trans Session who I've never seen before. I got to skate with her. And it turned out she was from Eugene, Oregon, and it was her birthday, so I invited her to stay for the rest of the session. She was like, 'Oh, this was so incredible. I've never experienced a community like this. I think I'm going to move here.'

I've heard people say they're going to move here before, and if it does end up happening, I'll see you again in like eight months... 12 months— it takes a long time to get that together. This girl was back and like had moved all of her shit to Seattle within a couple of weeks. She just upped her whole life and came to Seattle just to be a part of our community. Just getting to see the parallel of what I experienced and now I get to be a part of bringing her into that... and now she's my roommate. She's worked with Skate Like a Girl a couple of times and she gets to experience what I found and experienced. Skateboarding is kind of funny in the sense that you go to a skate park when you're 14, you have friends at the skate park, who are 11, and you've got that one dude that you hang out with who's 32. The age gaps are really wild, but I think that skateboarding provides a place for the potential for positive mentorship. As someone who had so many negative experiences when I was younger and had older friends, those older people were the ones I wanted to listen to more than anyone else, and if those people would have said something, that maybe even my parents had said to me a million times coming from the person who's just slightly older than me, I would have been way more willing to listen to them. Now I have the opportunity to be a mentor to the Trans teenagers that are part of our organization and I get to see them flourish in ways that weren't possible for me.

A win for me is if I get to see the next generation of people like me not have to deal with the shit that I did. Maybe they won't have to be so intimately aware of all these things at some point—being able to help them get to a point that's better than where I was at and also being directly there as a mentor when shit's rough for them as a Trans adult, is something I reflect on a lot. If I would have had a Trans adult to look up to as a kid, I could have gained so much from that. That's the number one thing that I'm really, really proud of being in this community: I get to be the Trans mentor for kids that I never had. That's much bigger than any individual accomplishment that I could do in skateboarding for me.

It's been a while since the documentary. How's your rehab going?

I have to go through physical therapy and I'm thinking that realistically, sometime around September but by fall or winter of 2023.

Hopefully, it's on the shorter side of the timeline, and lastly, what's your favorite part of skateboarding?

Skateboarding really attracts a certain mindset. I feel like the people that I meet—regardless of the communities that they belong to whether they're people who are marginalized or not—are all creative people who think similarly. I really enjoy the community aspect of skateboarding. It's always been something that I feel super excited to go out and do over and over and over again, and fail over and over and over again until I win. The best part is getting to share that win with the people around you—the people that you choose to skate with. Sometimes even celebrating your trick is better than celebrating my trick. It's a shared experience and a community. That makes it really special. I could talk about this forever. I love that skateboarding is a form of physical activity that is so artistically expressive. Skateboarding is art, skateboarding is physical activity, skateboarding is a community, and there are very few other activities that can bridge all of those things at once. I just think that's really special.