Mark Gonzales

MARK GONZALES, legendary skateboarder and artist photographed by ARI MARCOPOULOS  text by JEFF RIAN   RADICAL and ELEGANCE are two words that are difficult to use together in any context. Yet they describe Mark “Gonz” Gonzales’s style of just about everything he does — be it as a master street skater, a professional skateboard producer, or a recognized visual artist. Watching Gonzales skate is like watching a well-trained dancer. But what he’s known for is street skating, not choreography. In this he performs the impossible, gliding across the concrete and metal geometries of urban sprawl with the practiced nonchalance of a person who has put in the requisite 10,000 hours needed to integrate a skill into one’s genetic apparatus — and then some. Known for his famous “Gonz Gap,” in which he “ollied” (popped the board into the air, the hero on his truckboard) across a disproportionately large airspace at Embarcadero, a vast…