Don’t know why I’d think my status in blogdom would make anybody remotely interested in me personally. Nevertheless, here it is, the obligatory blogger reminisce-fest. I'll keep it short.
I’m always much more sane when I’ve got a hobby to dig my teeth into. Today I guess I’m sorta interested in music. But for years skateboarding was my life. I’m pretty sure that’s a big part of how I got interested in music – between blasting Minor Threat and Misfits out of a boom box on the corner and the watching skate videos religiously, I got a pretty good education. Also, skateboarding made me independent, which easily leads to antisocial tendencies, a pretty necessary characteristic for any music nerd.
After nailing a huge 360 off a quarterpipe, Gonz falls boardsliding a little curb. He skates past the camera, saying, “That’s all a rider can expect”. “OK” responds the cameraman uncomprehendingly. Then Gonz ollies onto a car hood. Unreal. Mark Gonzales is definitely the greatest artistic mind skateboarding’s ever seen. His video parts always had tons of strange, unique tricks and his illustrated short stories in Thrasher were the only literature I ever used to read (here’s a decent one from ’95, I’ll have to post the weirder ones when I get to my stash in NJ. 1, 2). The other two skateboarders in this ’86 competition, Natas and Tommy Guerero, were equally great at the time but didn’t have Gonz’s longevity.