Gator was a great skater in the 1980's, no doubt about it. At that time, vert was the king of the skateboard world. Christian Hosoi and Tony Hawk battled for first place contest after contest. But Mark "Gator" Rogowski was always in the mix, a top five pro in vert. Hosoi had the high airs and style, Hawk had the tech tricks, and Gator was known for his big bag of tricks. He could do just about anything on any wall. In 1989, when this video was produced, Gator was the flagship pro skater at Vision skateboards, followed closely by street skating innovator Mark Gonzales.
In 1989, I worked at Unreel Productions, the video production company owned by Vision. At the time, the Vision family of companies included Vision, Schmitt Stix, and Sims skateboards, Sims Snowboards, and Vision Street Wear clothing. The skateboard industry was peaking, and snowboarding was in its infancy. At Unreel, head producer Don Hoffman and the rest of us were trying to make a video as cool as the Powell-Peralta Bones Brigade videos. Vision was huge, but Powell had the best image in the skate world. The clip above comes from 1989's Barge at Will, the best skate video Vision ever made. I was working on the crew that made that video. Gator had the anchor section in the video. The pool skating segment he dedicated to "Sus-Swayne," a nickname for Duane Peters, the Master of Disaster. Gator wrote and recorded the song in the pool segment. This video came out, sold quite a few copies, but still didn't rate as high as the Bones Brigade series with skaters.
At the same time, the world was changing... big-time. Vision Street Wear sold incredibly well in 1988, and then floundered in 1989. The skateboard company didn't understand the fashion world. Money became an issue in the Vision world. A big contract with Tom Sims of Sims Snowboards ended, leading to a legal battle over that company. Vision had moved into a huge, 100,000 square foot facility in Santa Ana, and then sales dropped in both clothing and skateboards. In addition, the skateboard world itself was undergoing a revolution. The weird little genre of street skating, led by Vision's own Mark Gonzales, was beginning to take over and grow bigger than vert skating. Very few kids across the country had drained pools or a vert ramp to skate. The original skateparks of the 1970's had all been bulldozed. But every kid had some pavement to street skate. The Big Three companies of skateboarding, Vision, Powell-Peralta, and Santa Cruz were still focused on vert skating. Meanwhile, a washed up freestyle skater named Steve Rocco started a little company he named World Industries as a joke. He saw the future was in street skating, and he focused on that. The Big Three thought Rocco and street skating were jokes. They were wrong.
It was a weird time to be a top vert skater. The huge board royalty checks were starting to shrink. Kids were taking to street skating and not paying as much attention to vert. The future was uncertain. During this time, Brad Dorfman, the owner of Vision, had a meeting at Unreel one day in late 1989, and told us he was shutting down the video company. I was the lowest guy on the totem pole there, basically a production assistant/video duplicator/cameraman. Myself and a woman would stay, but we got moved to the main Vision building in Santa Ana. The woman soon found another job in Hollywood, and I became Unreel Productions all by myself, tucked into an office in the Vision Promotions Department. Don Hoffman hung around as a freelance producer, working when needed.
At that point, Gator was facing big changes as well. He bought a big house out in the boonies, in the general area of Tony Hawk's Fallbrook house. But Gator was alone much of the time. He also ran into a group evangelical Christians one day. After a fairly long conversation, they seemed to think that Gator needed to be saved from his evil life as a skateboarder. On one hand, Gator was one of the best vert skaters, something he had dedicated himself to for years. He reaped the fruits of all those hours skating. Then he suddenly had some people telling him that skateboarding itself was evil, and that he needed to be saved from it. I know this, because Gator himself told me. Now not only was his position as a top vert skater uncertain, but his very purpose as a human being was in question. Gator started to act weird. We all saw it. And no one really did anything about it. Somewhere along this time, Mark officially changed his name to Gator Mark Anthony. I never was sure why.
Pro skateboarders then and now, have a lot of free time on their hands. At Vision, they were allowed to wander through the offices whenever they wanted. There was kind of an unwritten rule to be nice to them. They sold lots of skateboards, and that kept us all working. So we didn't piss them off. If they were a bit annoying or weird, we'd just let it slide. The incident that stands out to me was one day Gator wandered into my office at Vision. It was a long office, and I usually sat at a big desk at the back, facing the door. In front of me were two long folding tables, both filled with the video equipment I used to make dubs and edit offline videos. Gator often came in when he was in the office, and we'd talk a bit, or I'd show him the latest footage of another skater or something. One day he wandered in, and he seemed pretty depressed. He walked along the tables full of equipment, running his finger along the table and touching the various nobs. Then he looked up at me, "Hey... do you think I'm a good person?" he asked out of the blue. I told him I thought he was. Then he told me about the Christians he'd been talking to and that they thought skateboarding was not a good thing. We talked for a few minutes. But I didn't really dig deep. I just blew it off as him having a bad day. I didn't want to upset Gator. I patronized him. I let the whole thing slide.
During that year, Gator had his ups and downs. He actually threw himself into his skating at one point, and won a contest, beating out both Hawk and Hosoi, as I recall. He was stoked. But it didn't last.
As for me, I spent six months sitting in that office, not doing much of anything. I quit, and went to work in a TV production office with the woman who used to work at Unreel. I left the faltering world of Vision Skateboards behind. Then one morning, that woman asked me, "Did you hear about Gator? He murdered a girl." I was floored. I was never a close friend of his, but we talked fairly often, and I was one of the people who noticed that he was getting weird that last year. And I was one of the people who did nothing about it. I held at least a little responsibility for that young woman's death.
The woman I was working with said, "Wow, this would make a great movie of the week." I was floored a second time, "He was our friend," I responded.
I did A LOT of thinking about Gator in those months and years afterward, as he was convicted and went to prison for murder. Could I have changed things? Maybe, maybe not. I'll never know. But I could have tried. After the Gator tragedy, I've made it a priority to step in if I see someone treading in those dangerous waters. Has it made a difference? Yes, at least once or twice. A young woman I worked with, who became my best friend for several years, struggled with depression, bi-polar disorder, and suicidal thoughts. I talked her out of suicide on the phone more than once. On another occasion, a woman got in my taxi and thanked me for talking her daughter out of suicide. I didn't even remember her daughter. But apparently I helped her during a taxi ride. There have been other people I met in my taxi and on the streets who were in really bad places, and I talked with them as best I could. There have also been people I know who I could not help. They were in such deep denial that I couldn't break through it. I'm not patting myself on the back here. There are times when I was stressed out and didn't help people as much as I probably could. Like everyone, I've had my own issues to deal with, like prolonged battles with homelessness and unemployment. But after the Gator tragedy, I made a vow to myself to try and help people when I can.
Dave Mirra's tragic death took the entire BMX and action sports world by surprise. There have been a myriad of written pieces, videos, and ramp jams in his honor. But no one got to him in time. I challenge all of you in the BMX world to take the same vow I did after the Gator murder, vow to TRY and help the people you see in deep struggles. You can't save everyone, and you can't beat yourself up for not being able to save everyone. But you can try your best. Think about it.
Several years ago, a young film maker produced a documentary about Gator. I went to a premiere in Newport Beach that included a Q & A with the director afterwards. I told her I knew and worked with Gator, and asked how she picked the video footage for the film. I asked that because I was the tape librarian at Unreel, I hand labeled every one of the 2,500+ tapes. I knew the footage better than anyone, because I made dubs of nearly every tape, and watched them as they recorded. She told me she only had two or three days to pick the tapes she wanted to use. I was amazed, because she grabbed most of the best footage of Gator. Not all of it, but most. She did a really good job telling this tragic story. You can watch that documentary here: Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator.
I have new blogs now, check them out:
The Big Freakin' Transition- The future and economics
Crazy California 43- This blog's about weird, cool, and historic locations in California, that have interesting stories.
Full Circle- Writing and the writer's life
and a fiction one-
wow steve what a great piece. Can I contact you to discuss questions I had after reading your piece?
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