About Me
Alejandro Finy
Hometown: Cartago, Costa Rica.
Resides: Seattle, WA. United States.
Age: 47
Started Skating: 1986
Stance: Regular
Discipline: Freestyle/Street Skateboarding
Status: Master AM
I started skateboarding in 1986 in Costa Rica by joining a couple of "skater families" from my hometown with a lot of my best friends. What great times! I remember doing Judo Airs, 360 Grabs and Methods on the launch with them. Later on in 1997 I became a "professional street skater" after winning second place at the "Circuito Annual 97" competition in Alajuela, my first contest. For 5 years after that through consecutive winnings in contests, exhibitions, demos, trips and sponsorships I kept myself in to the top spots of Costa Rican street skateboarding.
By 2002, I "retired" from contests, even sponsorships and almost skateboarding as a whole. It was a hard thing to face but I knew that I was getting closer to that moment everyday; some of my goals in skate in those times were already achieved and most of my old friends stopped skateboarding.
From 2002 to 2006 I continued getting into demos and competition warm ups, just chilling with all the people that I knew from the past years' competitions in Costa Rica and watching a new wave of young skaters pushing skateboarding to higher levels.
In 2007, a was relocated to Panama, where I got in contact with a couple of old friends to skate the Panamanian streets but realizing they did not go out very often and being that there were no skateparks, most of the time I spent alone on the city streets and riding in the Amador Islands during the weekends. I found interesting things about the board and myself by skating alone for so many years.
In November of 2010, after struggling with my health for a few months, I was changing one of my boards for a new one and I started thinking about what I should do with all the old boards and wheels. At the same time I was watching old school videos and I saw Harris, Mutt, and Welinder and I was wondering that something was left in the past, a collection of tricks that I had lost and never practiced, but they seemed so technical, faster and hard to do, so I decided to give it a try. I ran to get my tools and sand paper and started cutting and shaping my old board. The feeling of shaping and the smell of sanding your own board its priceless. I searched for trucks and I found a couple of 7" ones but my healing process was not over so I couldn't go out and skate at that time. I was desperate.
In March 2011 I finally reached "La Cinta Costera", a 9.3-mile perfect paved flat ground bike path by the sea with basketball courts in Panama, my new-old board in tow, and began skating freestyle. It was like a clinic, me figuring out some new tricks, while local skaters focused only on practicing flat/street.
Only a couple of months later in May 2011, my dear wife and I moved to the United States, and started out our new adventure in California visiting family before moving to the Pacific Northwest, so I had time to reach Venice Beach and skate freestyle, though I couldn't find any freestylers.
A month after we finally reached our destination: Seattle. Living very close to the Space Needle, I have a skatepark in the Needle's shadows, where you can find me figuring out and inventing some new tricks.