Mark Gonzales

Not to be confused with Mark González.

Mark Gonzales (born June 1, 1969), also known as "Gonz" and "The Gonz," is an American professional skateboarder and artist. He is known in the skateboarding world as a pioneer of modern street skateboarding, currently skateboarding's most popular form.

Biography

Skateboarding career

Gonz came on the skateboarding scene at age 15 with a modern approach to street skating and made the cover of Thrasher (magazine) November 1984 issue, riding a board from Alva, his sponsor at the time. He soon changed sponsorship by riding for Vision Skateboards and shortly thereafter turned professional.^[1]

Gonzales won the 1985 Oceanside street contest and placed high in others that year. By then, Gonz was shifting street skating away from the vertical skateboarding based style that had been the standard, to a more technical one based on the freestyle skateboarding of Rodney Mullen. The most notable trick Gonz transferred at this time from freestyle to street was the kick flip ollie, and by 1986, Gonzales could even be seen doing double kick flips at demos. In the summer of 1986, Gonzales performed a groundbreaking ollie at the Embarcadero in San Francisco.^[2] So historic was this incident for skateboarding, it became forever known as the "Gonz Gap" and helped make the Embarcadero a popular location for skateboarders.^[1] Later that year, Gonzales became the first person to skate handrails, thus cementing his contribution to street skating's early to intermediate stages.

Gonz went on to further influence street skateboarding as it modernized with the 1991 video Video Days by Blind Skateboards (a company he formed with Steve Rocco in 1989). And in 1993, Gonzales was the first to ever kick flip his namesake, the Gonz Gap at Embarcadero, as well as the first skater to do the Wallenberg Set 4 block. After leaving Blind Skateboards, Mark went on to start two new companies: ATM Click and 60/40 Skateboards (which 60/40 is now defunct). Mark skated for Real Skateboards before launching Krooked Skateboards, a brand under Deluxe Distribution.

Awards

In 2006 he was awarded the Legend Award by Transworld Skateboarding.^[3]

Various media

Gonz has appeared in a few movies, including Harmony Korine's cult film Gummo, where he wrestles a chair. He was also the male lead in a 1997 Spike Jonze short film, How They Get There. A film called Beautiful Losers (film), about Contemporary Art and Street Culture, also features Gonzales and was released on August 2, 2008.

In 2007 he published a skateboarding video called "Gnar Gnar" that was shot with an old VHS camcorder and was limited to only 1000 VHS copies.^[4]

Most recently, Mark Gonzales was also featured in the music video "West Coast" by Jason Schwartzman's band, Coconut Records. This was a skate video sequence originally filmed in 1998 at a German museum, but edited and synced for this music video with his permission. He also recently directed and is featured in Coconut Records' new video "Any Fun" alongside actress Chloë Sevigny as well as skateboarder Alex Olson.

He is also a poet and author and has published several books including Social Problems, High Tech Poetry, Broken Dreams, and Broken Poems. In 2008, Drag City released a book called The Collected Fanzines that consists of reproductions of old zines that he collaborated on with Harmony Korine.^[5]

Gonz also appears in the skate video game EA Skate and filmed a commercial to promote the game's release.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Craft, Kevin 16 Things You Didn’t Know About Mark Gonzales, Skateboarder Magazine
2. ^ Thrasher, September 1986.
3. ^ 8th Annual TransWorld SKATEboarding Awards
4. ^ Kingpin, Gnar Gnar from the Gonz, 30. January 2007
5. ^ Powell's Books

External links

• Mark Gonzales at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Mark Gonzales in the frequency: The Snowboarder's Journal
• Mark Gonzales at Rolf Contemporary
• Krooked Skateboarding (Gonzales' skateboard company)
• Mark Gonzales fiction and illustration in Frequency The Snowboard Journal (Gonzales' Interview)

Persondata
Name	Gonzales, Mark
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1969
Place of birth	santa monica
Date of death
Place of death