Droppin' bombs East Coast style, Freddy hit
Cali hard and mean: 5-0 tailslide at Miley and
switch 180 down California Street in SF.
Centerspread: At Santa Rosa or in The Avenues,
however you slice it, Fred Gall does fat ollies.
What's your full name?
Frederick John Gall.
How old are you?
Sixteen years of age.
Where are you from?
Sewaren, New Jersey. It's close to
New York City, about an hour from
Philadelphia.
What's it like in Jersey?
I live near a lot of factories. It's
very polluted. There's big ass oil
refineries with smokestacks putting
crazy shit in the air. There's a water-
front down the street where you
could go crabbing, but you're not
supposed to eat the crabs because
the water has toxic waste in it, but
people eat them anyway.
Who do you live with?
My mother, my step-dad and my
dog. Tanner. But I'm usually in Phil-
adelphia at Matt and Jerry's.
Tell me about Philadelphia.
It's sick. When you cruise from
spot to spot there's so many obsta-
cles to hit: Manhole covers, trolley
tracks, blocks and stairs. It's fun to
play in traffic, you can easily beat
the cars. Philly is kind of small, so
you can skate between spots. My
favorite right now is the High Mar-
bealeans, six high marble, slippery
lodges with a real smooth sidewalk.
like Love Park when school's in. It
gets too crowded these days.
What else do you do?
I like to cause trouble.
What places has skateboarding
taken you to?
All over the USA, Canada and
Europe, but the best place I've ever
been to is Amsterdam. There's not
that many laws. People live the way
they want. I like the coffee shops.
Who do you like to see skate?
Mark Gonzales. It seems he could
do any trick he wants.
How was San Francisco?
It was fun. The hills were sick to
bomb. It was a big rush. And we
could just cruise around from spot
to spot. Everything's pretty close.
Finding new shit. The only thing
that sucked was that downtown
was a bust, so you couldn't skate
there that much.
I heard you got wrecked going)
down a hill. What happened?
I pushed ten times down this
steep hill, and didn't see that there
were speed bumps, and I hit them
and flew in the air like thirty feet
and tumbled across the ground.
Who stoked you the most in SF?
Keith Hufnagel, Dan Drehobl,
Matt Pailes, and Sean Young is the
sickest at the hills.
How do you deal with the
weather on the East Coast?
in the winter it's pretty rough.
You don't get to really skate for like
three months unless you can go to
some indoor shit. You can't really
hit a parking garage just because
it's cold. You've just got to hang in
there and go to California,
What was up with board jacking
at Love Park back in the day?
It wasn't as bad as people made
it out to be. They made it out to be
kind of crazy, that people were
scared to come there. It was totally
not like that."
What's up with the girls at Love?
Sometimes good girls will go
there, but it gets kind of weird,
sometimes they're just nasty skate What's up with Jerry and
girls that go there.
What are your favorite spots in
New York?
White Hall, Time-Life Building,
Brooklyn Banks, there's so much
shit. Newark, New Jersey, has a lot
of shit that no one's ever been to,
it's crazy, there are tons of buildings
and new ledges, and no one even
skates there. But it's happening, so
Newark's the shit.
Any influences?
Mark Gonzales, Matt Hensley
and Jerry Fisher,
handrails?
Jerry's fucking 'em up, dude.
How was Münster?
Münster was fun as hell, seeing
all the pros. It was weird, though,
because it was the first time I've
ever been out of the country.
You used to go to Bricktown
Skatepark a lot.
Yeah, I used to skate Bricktown
Skatepark. It's weird that it closed
up, pretty much out of business.
Who's the king of Love Park?
Rick Oyola.
Who's your favorite vagrant-type
character at Love Park?
Tom.
What's he like?
Our man, Tom, he smokes weed
all day. He doesn't have a job or
anything. He's retired.
Are rollerbladers banned there?
They usually don't even come
through. They know better.
Who are the up-and-coming kids
from the East Coast?
Jerry Fisher, Reese Forbes from
DC, Maurice from New York, there's
so many kids people don't know
about that aren't even sponsored.
What's the difference between
the East and West Coast?
East Coast kids are more hard-
core. But it's hard to get boards
and stuff. They don't get free stuff
like a lot of West Coast kids. And
the style, it's hard to explain. You've
just got to see it.
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