Nosk8 > Portraits / Legends > Mark Gonzales
Mark Gonzales — The Gonz, the poet who invented street skateboarding
Some skaters just ride. Some skaters do tricks. Then there’s Mark Gonzales. He took a skateboard and reinvented what you could do with it on the street. Artist, poet, visionary. The Gonz isn’t a skateboarding legend. He IS skateboarding.
⏱ Reading time: 5 min
Mark Gonzales
Pioneer of modern street skateboarding. Founder of Blind, then Krooked. Artist, poet. Voted most influential skater of all time by Transworld in 2011.
The Kid from South Gate Who Saw Streets Differently
South Gate, California, early 80s. Skateboarding meant ramps, empty pools, vert. The streets? Nobody took them seriously. Nobody but a kid of Irish and Mexican descent who looked at a curb and saw an infinite playground.
Mark Gonzales started skateboarding at 13. At 16, he landed the Thrasher cover. Not luck. An earthquake. The magazine defining skateboarding featured a teen unlike anything seen before. It was November 1984. The skateboarding world didn’t know it yet, but its trajectory had just changed.
In 1985, Vision Skateboards turned him pro. He won the Oceanside contest that same year. But contests, podiums, trophies — he was already bored. What interested him was outside. Curbs. Stairs. Walls. Where no one else put their board.
Embarcadero, Handrails, and the Birth of Street Skateboarding
Summer 1986, San Francisco. Embarcadero Plaza. A gap between two concrete walls nobody had ever looked at twice. Gonzales rolls up. Ollie. He clears it. The spot would forever be known as the « Gonz Gap ». His name etched in concrete for eternity.
That same year, with Natas Kaupas, he became one of the first to skate handrails. Not curbs. Metal stair railings. That thing millions of skaters do today without thinking? Gonz and Natas invented it. Period.
In 1987, another bombshell. Gonzales introduced switch stance. Riding switch — opposite foot forward — is like writing left-handed when you’re right-handed. He did it in a contest. Ollies, 360s, all switch. The judges didn’t get it. The riders did. Skateboarding had just doubled its vocabulary overnight.
Video Days — The Tape That Changed Everything
1989. Gonzales left Vision and co-founded Blind Skateboards with Steve Rocco. The brand was a middle finger to corporate skateboarding. The logo? A grim reaper. The attitude? Punk, raw, unfiltered.
Two years later, in 1991, Video Days dropped. Directed by a certain Spike Jonze — yes, the future director of Being John Malkovich and Her. Gonzales’ part opens to Willy Wonka, rolls to John Coltrane, crosses parking lots, streets, ditches. No epileptic editing. No metal music. Just jazz and poetry in motion.
Video Days is now considered the most important skateboarding video ever produced. Guy Mariano, Jason Lee, Rudy Johnson, Jordan Richter — the cast is insane. But it was The Gonz’s part that laid the foundations for modern skateboarding videos. Before Video Days, skate videos showed tricks. Afterward, they told stories.
Krooked, Art, and Borderless Skateboarding
The Gonz was never just a skater. He’s always drawn, written, painted. His Krooked boards are canvases. His poems are published. His exhibitions tour the world — the latest, « Going To Love You » at HVW8 Gallery in Los Angeles in 2024, confirmed his status as a major artist beyond skateboarding.
In 2002, he founded Krooked Skateboards with Deluxe Distribution. The brand is just like him: quirky, artistic, free. The graphics are signed Gonz. The team reflects his philosophy — riders who skate for fun, not for likes. Twenty-four years later, Krooked is still rolling.
His partnership with Adidas Skateboarding has lasted over a decade. The Aloha Super, his signature shoe, has become a classic. In 2025, limited editions with Independent Trucks featuring his illustrations reminded everyone that The Gonz remains central to the game.
The Gonz’s Legacy — Why He Still Matters
In December 2011, Transworld Skateboarding voted him the most influential skater of all time. Ahead of Tony Hawk. Ahead of Rodney Mullen. Ahead of everyone. It’s not an honorary title. It’s a fact: without Gonzales, street skateboarding as we know it wouldn’t exist.
Every skater who ollies a gap in the street is a direct descendant of The Gonz. Every video part that tells a story rather than just stacking tricks owes something to Video Days. Every brand founded by a rider instead of a businessman follows the path Blind and Krooked blazed.
At 57, Mark Gonzales is still riding. Still drawing. Still writing. His latest edit with Spitfire in New York, released in 2025, shows him sessioning with his buddies, beer in hand, tricks on the street corner. No staging. No filters. Pure skateboarding, like day one.
The Gonz didn’t just change skateboarding. He proved that skateboarding could be art, poetry, a philosophy of life. And no one else had done that before him.
