We first met Ruben on a QS family trip to Italy back in 2016. Milan has a tight-knit and friendly skate scene — it feels like a lot of it revolves around Milano Centrale and the Chef Family crew. He and his friends were kind enough to show us around their city when we summoned the willpower to leave an absolutely perfect plaza spot. When a spot is that good, you willfully forget that the whole “exploring the city”-thing is a big part of skate trips. (Colleagues echo our sentiments.)
We visited Milan again a year later. On the train-ride into Centrale (yes, the train from the airport drops you off at Italy’s best skate spot), I remembered out loud, “Oh, I should probably DM Ruben and let him know we’re coming.”
“Don’t worry, he’ll already be there,” a mutual friend replied.
A few minutes after 11 A.M, we got off the train and walked out of the building, still sleepy from the flight. We saw him sitting under a tree, trying to get some shade from the sort of late morning sun that loves to beam off bright white marble. None of the other locals had shown up to the spot yet.
Ruben’s skating occurs in quick improvisational bursts. He’ll chill, get up, do 4-5 impromptu lines — sometimes first go — and sit down to chill again. You’ll tell him, “Yo, let’s film that!” He’ll say yes, chill a little longer, and then do 4-5 completely different lines, e.g. this clip got filmed in like ten minutes.
He had an old part in our friend Matteo’s video, and would pop up in those Villains edits, but he’s been a bit M.I.A. on the footage circuit lately. He used to be heavy on IG, but when we were in Prague with him last June, we noticed that he deleted all of the videos off his page. When we asked why, he smiled and said, “I’m just trying to focus on skating.”
I guess “Mamma Mia” is where the focus lead ♥ Filmed and edited by Patrick Frunzio.
i miss the rss feed here.
every lesser known skater deserved to have a write up like this one. words are nice.
would be funny to hold a contest to see what the thrasher version of the caption of this part would be
“mamma mia, thats a big pizza! there must be something in the sauce in milan for ruben to shred through the city streets on his shred stick the way he does like shredded cheese!”
some shredders get lost in the sauce, but some shred the sauce …pasta sauce that is! watch piasno ruben spelta serve us some special italian cusine on the stuntwood in his new part.
you forgot to include something about endless stoke
¯\_(ツ)_/¯