../people/Marco Antonio Gonzalez, the Gonz.

Sources: Ride BMX US, www.freedombmx.de, BMX plus!, ...
If you want to add any info, please contact buissonrouge@23mag.com.
1973 DOB: december 20, 1973.
early years
1992 Cover: Ride BMX US #2 december 1992 ride cover

gonz 92
1997 Mark Gonzales is now riding for S&M after using them on his own for as long as he can remember.
Gonz also got hooked up with Puma shoes.
mtv smf
MTV SMF 1997
1998 One-footed frame-grab fakie at ESPN X-Trials round 1. Photo by Mark Losey.

Ells Bells On the down low.
Mark Gonzales

on the down low
1999 Mark Losey, www.ridebmx.com: At the MTV Sports and Music Festival in 1999, Gonz completely lost his mind. He took a bus for three days to get to Memphis, TN, from Phoenix, Arizona, for the event, and he brought one very important item with him: a chicken suit. The night before the event began, MTV held a riders' meeting where Gonz got on the microphone and said, "I have a few social issues I want to talk about," and then he rambled on about Chicken McNuggets for ten minutes. Later he went to the MTV Real World house, hung out in the hot tub while still in the chicken suit, and then he ended the night by running down the street naked. The story doesn't end there. The next day Gonz went to the motocross jumps, got naked on top of a landing, and then got punched by MXer Mike Jones. Gonz got banned from the rest of the event, but he still managed to get beat up by Danny Way before the weekend was over.
2000 Cover and interview in Ride BMX US #51 august 2000.
Mark Losey, www.ridebmx.com: I always thought Gonz was crazy, and while shooting his interview for issue 51 it was confirmed. One night while we were at his apartment at two in the morning, he was playing all kinds of instruments through a loop machine while chanting, "Do you love Satan?" Half of what Gonz does is just to mess with people, but I can honestly say that he freaked me out. A few years later we did a story about dads and asked pros to send in photos of them with their kids; Gonz sent a photo of his son that looked like he was dead in an alley.
ride cover
2001 Mark Losey, www.ridebmx.com: In 2001, Gonz came by our office and said he wanted to shoot an x-up fakie footplant on a wallride in Huntington Beach. The only thing wrong with this scenario was that he didn't have a bike. To him, this wasn't much of an obstacle, so he went over to S&M and "borrowed" Chris Moeller's bike for a few hours. Gonz was riding for S&M at the time, and he's the only rider I know that would steal his boss' bike.
2004 2hip has added the GONZ from Arizona to the flow-list in october 2004.
2006 Holy Gonz on the cover of Ride BMX US september 2006. Shopping-cart mower while wearing Z's jacket. Photo by Jeff Zielinski. 09 2006