The story of Latraac Skate Cafe, where tracks and tricks collide

This story appears in Huck 82: The Music Issue. Order your copy now.

Behind an industrial gate in Athens’ Kerameikos neighbourhood, a design and skateboard project with a bar and a bowl has become an unlikely hub for the city’s alternative music scene. Now, with a global reputation for being one of the city’s top hangout spots, owner and founder Zachos Varfis talks about posterless parties, no-rules DJ sets, and a ramp that listens.

In a place shaped by histories of passage, resistance and reinvention, Latraac unfolds like a quiet threshold into an alternative present. A space named after a playful skateboard-referencing nod to a French political headline, ​“La transition a commencé” – the transition has begun.

Latraac opened in 2017 by architect and skateboarder Zachos Varfis in partnership with cultural collective BIOS. The bowl was built using digital fabrication (computer aided design) and good old fashioned DIY, while the garden shed and bar were built with low cost materials while also preserving some 19^th century elements found on site. It’s now known worldwide for its distinctive urban setting, with a local sensitivity, and has opened new pathways for Athens’ creative scene.

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Not quite a skatepark. Not quite a venue. Something more elusive. Hidden away from the rush of the city, it offers a garden that feels somehow rare and secret. In a place shaped by histories of passage, resistance and reinvention. Known throughout the skateboarding community as a unique place to ride in Athens, Latraac has also been quietly building a reputation as a music venue. One that’s starting to attract some of the most exciting names in live music and is hosting some of the most raucous dance music parties in Greece. 

Since its start in 2017, Zachos Varfis set out to put skateboarding onto the cultural map. ​“Despite its size, Athens doesn’t really offer public space for skating, so there was a wide open window. But Latraac was never just about skating. As a skateboarder but also an architect, I approached it through a solarpunk ethos but also as a dynamic cultural symbol. Skateboarding, music, art, design – all overlapping.”

That interplay has grown since it first opened its doors. ​“In the first couple of years, there was a lot of bootstrapping. I was working behind the bar to keep costs down. Then in 2019, something shifted. One night someone said to me: ​‘How do you feel that Ariel Pink is at your bar?’ That’s when I realised something had changed” [this was pre-Pink’s Trump rally career fallout].

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Word got out – and not through any official channels. ​“We didn’t push anything. Just people coming, talking, bringing friends who kept coming back. That’s always been the best kind of promo for Latraac.”

No flyers, no PR. Just word of mouth and a sense that something was happening here that couldn’t quite be replicated anywhere else. Since then, its courtyard has become one of Athens’ most recognisable alternative music spaces. ​“Our program for selectors, workshops, contests etc is built up through friends recommending friends and it almost happens on its own,” Zachos explains. 

“Last June, one of our biggest nights was when Chet Faker held an open birthday party and played a DJ set. Then in October, we hosted a ​“secret” Invitational Bowl Jam for the CPH Open in Athens, with some of the biggest names in skateboarding going right back to the ​’70s showing up.” To keep that kind of momentum going, Zachos and crew knew they needed to step things up a gear and, in late spring 2025, they did exactly that, opening with a series of secret Thursday sets by Fred again.. as well as welcoming guests including Argentinian rap jesters Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso across the summer. 

“Fred was in Athens recording music, visited the space and suggested a weekly secret pop-up,” recounts Zachos, matter-of-factly. ​“The turnout and energy were off the charts. The idea was for there to be no promotion. To have it spread by word of mouth and social media.” 

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The sets weren’t announced. There were no guest lists. Just a cryptic Instagram story or a whispered DM. The people who showed up brought the people who needed to be there. And that was enough. From the experimental sounds of California’s Spencer Clark, Music From Memory’s Tako Reyenga and drag skate contests thrown by the city’s queer community, music at Latraac isn’t background – it’s an essential part of its identity. 

That openness extends to designers, artists, scenographers. ​“Since 2019, we started having amateur music selectors and somehow this really worked,” says Zachos. ​“It felt fresh and connected. It kind of started with Korina (@Korinetor), a graphic designer/​musician I had been following. I loved her subversive local aesthetic, defined for me by an image of a Greek flag peppered with angry emojis. We invited her to play one night and it blew up.”

From hosting Berlin based Art Collective ​“Pane Per Povera” during European art exhibition Documenta 14 to workshops with scenographer Fiorentina Holzinger, Latraac is also welcoming discussions on urbanisation, technology, and capitalism. In its own understated way, Latraac has become a space where cultural resistance can breathe – not as performance, but as practice. In a city where space is contested and transition is constant, Latraac quietly redefines what a venue can be. Something porous and alive.

George Mylonas is a freelance journalist based in Athens. Follow him on Instagram.

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