Mark Gonzales

Mark Andrew Gonzales ( born June 1, 1969 in Huntington Park, California ), also known as The Gonz, is an American professional skateboarder and artist. He is known in the skateboarding scene as a pioneer of Streetskatens.

Career as a skateboarder

At the age of 15 years, Gonzales came with the skateboard scene in contact. He had a new, completely different approach to that time street skating, which earned him a cover photo at the Thrasher Magazine in November 1984. At that time he was sponsored by Alva. He soon caught in the scene so much attention that he got a new sponsor: Vision skateboard. As the name suggests, this company had very innovative ideas and wanted to revolutionize the former skate scene.

1986 Gonzales was the first skateboarder who overcame a major obstacle ( Gap ) by Ollie. This Ollie took place in San Francisco, at the former Embacadero Plaza. At a stroke, this place was at the skateboarders a secret, the steps soon became known as " Gonz Gap ". In the same year also succeeded Gonzales together with the skater Natas Kaupas the first stages railing ( Hand Rails) to skate. Another milestone of Gonzales was there to skate "switch stance", which refers to the traverse in the opposite foot position.

1991 sparked a wave of modernization Gonzales again in skateboarding. The basis for this former hype was the skateboard video "Video Days", which he published with his company, founded around 1989 blind skateboard.

1993 Gonzales was the first skater of the Gonz Gap overcame the Embacaderos with a kickflip.

Mark Gonzales is still an active skateboarder today.

Career as an artist

Parallel to skateboarding Mark Gonzales also began to draw and paint. Among other things, his work in the Allged Gallery and in the Gallery Hournal issued ( here together with skateboard pioneer Christian Hosoi ) in New York.

He designs further designs for the " Gonz country" clothing line, which is currently, however, only available in Japan.

Gonzales also came on in some films. (see filmography )

Moreover, he made a name for himself as an author and poet. He wrote a long short stories that were published in Thrasher Magazine. He brought out a book titled "Broken Poems"; in 2006 he received from Transworld Skateboarding magazine the price "Legend Award", which officially makes him a legend.

2007 Gonzales produced a skateboard video called " Gnar Gnar ". The particularity herein is that this video was completely filmed with an old VHS camera. The video was limited to 1000 VHS video cassettes.

Filmography

• Video Days (1991 )
• Gummo (1997)
• How They Get There (1997)
• South Lander: Diary of a Desperate Musician (2001)
• Music Video: " West Coast " by Coconut Records (2007)

• How They Get There (1997)