Gonz fandom spreads wide and large — all ends of the age spectrum have brought up Gonz sections in our “Five Favorite Parts” series. Sometimes the Gonz stuff veers into full absurdity.
It’s 2019 and Lucas Puig is dropping parts still 40% filmed at the Venice curbs. There are lines in “BLESSED” that consist of a trick up a curb and a wallride from the sidewalk. So why doesn’t Natas — the guy who invented wallies and wallrides on straight up vertical walls (Gonz’s words, not mine…) — continue to evade top billing alongside Mark Gonzales in the “really old videos that younger people still like”-convo? (Natas has never been mentioned in a 5FP. And anybody who has been skating since the eighties is obvs exempt here.)
Even when we posted that video of Tufty doing his best variation of a Natas spin, a handful of the responses were still “I didn’t know this trick was possible outside of a video game.” At a time when we can watch the techest possible ledge combo on our feed, process it for 1.2 seconds, and keep scrolling, that’s truly saying a lot about a trick that was first done thirty years ago.
Some of this comes down to canonization, or the stuff you’re told to like. A friend once observed that saying Gonz in Video Days is your favorite video part is like saying Citizen Kane is your favorite movie. Like sure, I guess, ok yeah, everyone can dig a bit deeper, and a Natas part isn’t even deep.
All that to say this: I think Zach was feeling elevated, listening to Future, and watching some old favorites this past summer when he realized that for whatever reason, the woozy 120 BPM title track to 56 Nights goes really well with the extra slow-mo and film look of Natas’ Streets on Fire part. While procrastinating on another edit job, I tried to throw it together.
Sure, the Firehose probably goes better with sun-baked California pavement, and I highly doubt Natas knows or gives a fuck about about who Future is, but think of it as the Quartersnacks version of watching The Wizard of Oz while listening to Dark Side of the Moon ;)
