above: Mark Gonzales. Taken the first night we all arrived in Tokyo for the Untitled 2001 event. Many of us were staying at the same little hotel in Shibuya and we went out for a walk in the snow to stave off the jet lag. Gonz, just taking it in. He ended up staying awake for several days and running through the streets naked. I love how it says “right on” in the neon lights behind him. My favorite skater of all-time, hands down.
previous page: My friend Mike had this skate- induced palm wound that wouldn’t heal and kept reopening all the time. This was one of those times. He referred to it as his Jesus Palm. The photo was used in SLAP for a short–lived (but one of my favorite) monthly departments called The Reason Why. That one was about the merits of slamming.
I know you grew up around northern California. How much would you say that the geography/region influenced your life as you developed?
I wasn’t aware of it while growing up, but with some aged perspective I definitely think I’m a product of my environment. I see a lot of the vibe of northern California in my personality and the tenets of my life. It’s a relaxed place, a creative place, a place in touch with nature without being overly hippie-fied, a multicultural place, a place that accepts and encourages different ways of living. I love it here, very much. Geographically I don’t know if it influenced me but the sights and smells definitely spell out “home” to me. Being able to go from the city to the forest to the beach in a half hour is a great thing.
Being nestled in between San Jose and San Francisco, were you influenced by the skaters or spots of one city more than the other?
Probably 70/30 in favor of San Jose. That’s where most of my best skate friends live, and I’ve definitely been more a part of that scene than the SF scene as far as actual skateboarding goes. But I’m in SF for SLAP every day, and have spent plenty of time skating the city over the last two decades. There’s nothing like skating the spots in SF. The hills here are just about as fun as you can get and in the early 90s you couldn’t help but be influenced by what was going on in San Francisco. I’m equally comfortable in both places, they both have good things to offer, but SJ is more my people.
If you borrowed Rob Dyrdek’s time machine, would you go back to the 80s and skate Montague Banks in SJ or back to the early 90s to EMB in SF?
I skated EMB in the early 90s and it was cool though intimidating. Never got to skate Montague banks so I’ll go with that for the sake of a new spot. Plus banks over blocks any day.
What came first, the camera or the skateboard? And did they influence each other or was there a time when they were separate?
I had a camera first, just a little 110 cartridge film camera. Probably predated my first board by a year or so. Photos of my GI Joes in action, etcetera. But as far as real interest goes, the skateboard came first. I got heavy into it by the time I was about 10. Real interest in photography didn’t come until maybe 15. But they definitely influenced each other, as they continue to do. In high school, I was a yearbook photographer and I would always try to make my photos of the golf team look like they might have looked if Daniel Harold Sturt had shot them—filed edges, sepia tone, real wide angle, etc.
Who were some of the first skaters that you shot? What was the influence that made you decide that you were going to pursue photography?
First skaters I shot were just hometown friends. In high school and college I was a pretty serious videographer—worked on videos for Real, Stereo, Think, 411, Thrasher, Santa Cruz, etcetera, even made an entire video for Skateworks, the Strubing family shop. But I wasn’t shooting skate photos then. My photography was more documentary in high school and then fine art/mixed media in college. It wasn’t until I started at SLAP that I began shooting skate photos in earnest. With filming I just got to a point where I didn’t really enjoy it anymore, I had just gotten burned out on it after maybe six years of it. I was way more into photography and art in general at the time, and then working for a print magazine just became more of a reason to concentrate everything on photography, be it art stuff or skate stuff.
