A friend of ours was recently talking about his young son falling in love with skateboarding, and happened to mention that all his kid does is binge Ratz and Panorama videos. To take it further, this friend works in the fashion industry, thus finding himself in Milan semi-often, and his kid is constantly begging to come along: “just leave me at Centrale.” (His son is probably not old enough to be left alone at an Italian train station all day.)
Anybody who was missing the crew vibes from “NILS & VINCE” can rejoice. They’re all back in the latest from Rat Ratz, “RACH & ZUMA,” which features parts from …Rach and Zuma. Between them, is the entire crew that has anchored every Ratz project since they first popped up on our radar back in 2019.
Rach really comes into his own with this one — as soon as that opening nosegrind shuv over the gap came on, you knew he wasn’t fucking around — while Zuma holds it down with exemplary flip trick form. And for a scene whose marquee obstacle involves avoiding a grate (so much to the point that people just easily slide to the end now), the fellas have picked up a real habit for …landing in actual grates with this release.
Video by Spezzatura. Filmed by Formizzz, Spezzatura, Cionve, Brisquit, Augustin Giovannoni and Will Miles.
The latest from Rat Ratz is a shared part between the Milan crew’s two star players, Nils Matijas and Vince Palmer. All the other familiar faces from the past half-decade’s worth of Ratz projects are there for moral support as these two put their all-grown-up talents on display. All remnants of their jit era are gone: Nils puts on a Saari-inspired showcase of mirror lines, and Vince earns first-tier placement among the otherwise endless list Centrale grate gap tricks.
While the early Ratz videos drew inspiration from things like the first wave of Supreme videos, they arrived at a place that feels wholly their own. A large part of that process has been taking an ever-expanding eye towards what’s possible and what else is even skateable at their home plaza, which has to be one of the most-skated spots anywhere on earth.
Approximately 5 billion crew edits have passed through the QS front page over the years. Some crews stick together while many don’t; others splinter off, morphing into hybrids with other crews. The first Rat Ratz video to catch the eye of the QS newsroom was in early 2020. In 2024, their crew is grown up and perhaps more tight-knit than ever, spreading their wings beyond the Milan plaza for which they have been waving the flag since they were kids — and into the plazas of Paris, London and New York. Everyone’s flick carries more loft, everyone’s pop has manned-up, and the technicality of the tricks they hold over the grate ledge on their home court has compounded tenfold. Imagine what Rat Ratz 10 will be like!
Features Niko Giovannoni, Zuma, Rachid, Plako, Korahn Gayle, with full closing parts from Nils Matijas and Vince Palmer. Filmed & edited by Brisquit. Supported by Nike SB.
