July 17, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Angelo Ruffino rows through the canals of Southern California, singing his original music to passengers and perfecting a tradition that goes back hundreds of years. But he’s more than a romantic oarsman. He’s a racer, a performer, and a champion for gondola culture, hoping one day to bring it to the Olympic stage.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
This is our American Stories, and we love bringing you
stories from all across this great country about what people
do for a living and their hobby. Sometimes the two
actually intersect. We read about a fellow named Michael Rafino
in southern California who spent more than a decade rowing
gondola Mike, how did you get started as a gondolier
(00:45):
and tell us a bit about the gondola cruises that
you offer.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, I had to get trained. You know, there's kind
of a way to the style of rowing that you
have to kind of figure out the physics of it
and kind of the rhythm of it. Generally, what happens,
and this happened with me as well, is you go
out on the water your first time you try to row,
and you just spin in a circle going nowhere, getting
really frustrated. The power and the steering comes from the
(01:10):
same side of the boat, so you really have to
learn to control going like hard left, slowly, back to
the right, hard left, slowly, back to the right, hard left,
slowly back to the right, and you get that rhythm
down eventually you can go straight. Yeah, it's a little
bit frustrating when you first learn, and then you have
your you know, you get trained for a while, you
have your kind of like gondolier tests, you know, Like
(01:32):
one of the things we had to do is we
had to like go under this bridge that has this
opening that's not that like we go under the pilons
of the bridge, and you know, you have to be
able to dock well. And it's tough. I mean, there's
still some things that happened to last fall. We had
a newer gondolier that was out with the crew and
the wind picked up so bad that he just couldn't
(01:53):
row the boat back, and so some of us more
season gondoliers had to row out get him and row
the boat back for It does take a little bit
of getting used to in training. But and the people
that we have out, you know, people celebrating special occasions, birthdays,
maybe a date. We do a lot of engagements that
I've seen a lot of people get engaged on my boat,
(02:15):
and which is really cool to see because usually it's
something that no one has like a front row seat for.
And even sometimes we get to be involved in the
actual process itself. Like we'll do a message in a
bottle thing where it's like, you know, ahead of time,
the groom, we'll write out a little message and give
it to us, and we'll prepare a bottle. And later
in the cruise she'll see this bottle in the water
(02:38):
and she'll pull the bottle out of the water. Lo
and behold, there's a note. As she's reading the note,
he drops down on one knee. Boom, there's a ring.
It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And where were you for me when I was engaged?
Mine was so lame compared to that. Oh my goodness,
where were you when I needed you?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's you know, it's it's funny, like it sounds like
a cool idea, but there's some there. It doesn't always
go smoothly. Let me tell you. There's this one guy.
I couldn't believe this. I never had anything like this
happen before. But we're supposed to do a message in bottle.
We're waiting to do the thing. At some point the
guy turns back because you know, we do it, like
they don't really know when we're gonna do the message
(03:15):
in a bottle thing. We do it, you know, at
a certain point in the cruise where there's spots in
the harbor where there's not too much tide and not
too much wine. So we're rolling to the spot and
he turns around and looks at me. He goes, do
you have it? And I go yes, and then she goes,
have what and he goes nothing. We go later in
(03:38):
the cruise and we do the message in a bottle thing.
She gets the message of bottle. Of course, she says yes,
they're all happy, and then like five minutes later, he
looks back at me and he goes, did I ruin it?
And she looks back and I'm like, what do you
want to say? Man? Like, do you think do you
think she's like so simple that you know that she
would buy the Do you have what? Oh? Nothing? Well,
(03:59):
obviously it's something if I know what he's talking about.
And I responded to it. And there's been a couple
times where the bottle ended up in the water and
like I have to make a couple of attempts to
go get it. They don't always grab it out of
the water right away. And man, I had one person,
one girl. I was like, oh, looks like there might
be a message in that bottle right there. Would you
mind grabbing it? And she goes, I'm not touching that
(04:19):
it's garbage. And the guy looks back at me and
I'm like tell her, like, oh, just grab it. It's okay,
it's not garbage.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, I'm out of here. Now it's up to you, buddy.
Did anyone ever, did any woman ever say no?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know, I have not had any nose, but some
other gondoliers have. The last thing you would want if
the person that's saying no, would be to spend another
half an hour sitting right next to them on a
boat that there's no escape from.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's a long way back to the dock.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, exactly. So I haven't had it happen, but I've
heard it's just I mean, it's just miserable for everyone,
including a gondoli.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Including the gondolier. So you're you're a gondolier or do
you sing?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Does the guy say, hey, I need this song, start singing?
You know, love me do or I will always love
you or back that thing up or whatever they're they
that's going to sing, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We so it's kind of an interesting thing. There are
some gondolas kind of standards that we sing, but we
really have to kind of be careful with music licensing,
you know, we can't sing everything, you know, So I
actually I sing original songs that I wrote a long
time ago and then translated into Italian, and that's mostly
(05:37):
what I sing, just to kind of like keep myself
covered from that kind of stuff, I mean, and I
like them, and I get really good feedback on the songs,
and it's Italian, so no one knows what I'm saying anyway,
But you know, we sing like ol solo mio and
some of the kind of standards, but mostly I personally
sing originals for them.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well, that's great, and let's talk about now, Ultimately a
compare a strain in this comes out. It turns out
gondoliers compete, and there is such a thing as gondola competitions.
Talk about how you got into that and how many
people are doing this around the country.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
The number of people around the country that do it
kind of varies depending on where we're having it. We're
trying to have like every different gondola company host some year,
so it's kind of been bouncing around a little bit.
And three years ago it was in Stillwater, Minnesota, and
there's a little bit less of a turnout there. Last
year it was in Providence, and there's a huge turnout.
(06:33):
The year before that it was in Huntington and there's
a big turnout. So it just kind of depends on
who's hosting it and who all can make the trip.
But it originally started actually in Providence, the idea being
in Venice, they actually have gondola races all the time,
and we would like to grow the sport here to
(06:55):
the point where the Italians invite us to compete in
their competitions. Maybe in our lifetimes it could get to
the Olympic level, which would be really cool. You know,
in my lifetime both dragon boat racing and curling have
become Olympic events. Supposedly that beanbag game is on the way,
So if that can do it, I feel like gondola
can make it to the Nationals or to the Olympics.
(07:17):
But first we need to have international competitions. So the
Providence people started it I think like eight years ago,
and the first one was over there. I didn't go
to that one. The next one was in Huntington and
I did compete in that one and I got one medal.
It was a bronze for the single distance, and that
really kind of put fuel in me, like I'm an athlete,
(07:40):
like I coach boot camp classes and I'm a yoga teacher,
and when we started doing these competitions, I just really
really come to love the competitive aspect of it. Like
we're all friends, we all know each other, but just
the you know, mostly what I do are the longer races,
and I realize like kind of the mental aspect of
(08:03):
what goes into endurance racing. It's not like go as
quick as you can and then it's done and then
just relax and catch your breath. It's like you're gonna
be doing this for so long that you're gonna get
to the point where you feel miserable and you have
to keep going or you want to quit and you
have to keep going, or it's gonna really hurt and
you have to keep going. And I like that. I
like being in that headspace of like, you know, they
(08:24):
have this phrase that we say forte a la morte,
which means strong till death, and it's like, look, you're
gonna row and you're either gonna win or you're gonna
die from rowing. Our distance races end up being anything
from twenty minutes to forty five minutes of just rowing
and rowing and rowing, and I've started to love it
(08:45):
more and more as we've had the competitions.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I love Forte till Morte. I'm gonna start using it myself.
People can ask me what it means and I can
tell them with my heavy Italian dialect half of my
family heritage coming from Sicily.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Oh that's yeah, our mind too.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, it's fantastic. And so for anybody who's endeavoring to
do this and giving it, giving it a shot, what
do you urge him to do and accept to just
go out and try it and have some fun.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I mean, definitely go out and try and have
some fun. Like I would say, start with just learning
the finesse of just regular rowing before race rowing, like
you're really gonna fall. You know, what's going to make
you really fall in love with it is like the
first time you see people get engaged on the boat
in front of you and your life I am a footnote. Well,
you can go your whole life and like your best friends,
your family, you may not ever really see that moment,
(09:34):
but when they're doing it, like right in front of you,
like three feet away from you, you're hearing every word,
You're seeing every expression, it's like a beautiful thing. You know,
it's like a privilege to behold something like that. And
as you get into the racing part of it, you know,
as part of the physical aspect of it, most rowing
you're using like a lot of back muscles, a little
bit of leg but mostly you're sitting. You're standing upright
(09:55):
for this, and because the ore never leaves the water,
it's really a full body workout like nothing I've ever
experienced before. I mean, I've done all kinds of different
races and obstacle courses and Spartan runs and something like that,
and there's nothing quite like.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
This, and there is nothing quite like it. And we've
had very few interviews quite like this either. And you've
been listening to Michael Raffino and he's a gondola guy,
a professional and also a competitor. And you can find
Mike online by searching for run Wild Mike and learn
more about the US Gondola Nationals at Uscondola Nationals dot com.
(10:37):
Michael Raffino's story here on our American Story
This is our American Stories, and we love bringing you
stories from all across this great country about what people
do for a living and their hobby. Sometimes the two
actually intersect. We read about a fellow named Michael Rafino
in southern California who spent more than a decade rowing
gondola Mike, how did you get started as a gondolier
(00:45):
and tell us a bit about the gondola cruises that
you offer.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, I had to get trained. You know, there's kind
of a way to the style of rowing that you
have to kind of figure out the physics of it
and kind of the rhythm of it. Generally, what happens,
and this happened with me as well, is you go
out on the water your first time you try to row,
and you just spin in a circle going nowhere, getting
really frustrated. The power and the steering comes from the
(01:10):
same side of the boat, so you really have to
learn to control going like hard left, slowly, back to
the right, hard left, slowly, back to the right, hard left,
slowly back to the right, and you get that rhythm
down eventually you can go straight. Yeah, it's a little
bit frustrating when you first learn, and then you have
your you know, you get trained for a while, you
have your kind of like gondolier tests, you know, Like
(01:32):
one of the things we had to do is we
had to like go under this bridge that has this
opening that's not that like we go under the pilons
of the bridge, and you know, you have to be
able to dock well. And it's tough. I mean, there's
still some things that happened to last fall. We had
a newer gondolier that was out with the crew and
the wind picked up so bad that he just couldn't
(01:53):
row the boat back, and so some of us more
season gondoliers had to row out get him and row
the boat back for It does take a little bit
of getting used to in training. But and the people
that we have out, you know, people celebrating special occasions, birthdays,
maybe a date. We do a lot of engagements that
I've seen a lot of people get engaged on my boat,
(02:15):
and which is really cool to see because usually it's
something that no one has like a front row seat for.
And even sometimes we get to be involved in the
actual process itself. Like we'll do a message in a
bottle thing where it's like, you know, ahead of time,
the groom, we'll write out a little message and give
it to us, and we'll prepare a bottle. And later
in the cruise she'll see this bottle in the water
(02:38):
and she'll pull the bottle out of the water. Lo
and behold, there's a note. As she's reading the note,
he drops down on one knee. Boom, there's a ring.
It's really cool.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
And where were you for me when I was engaged?
Mine was so lame compared to that. Oh my goodness,
where were you when I needed you?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It's you know, it's it's funny, like it sounds like
a cool idea, but there's some there. It doesn't always
go smoothly. Let me tell you. There's this one guy.
I couldn't believe this. I never had anything like this
happen before. But we're supposed to do a message in bottle.
We're waiting to do the thing. At some point the
guy turns back because you know, we do it, like
they don't really know when we're gonna do the message
(03:15):
in a bottle thing. We do it, you know, at
a certain point in the cruise where there's spots in
the harbor where there's not too much tide and not
too much wine. So we're rolling to the spot and
he turns around and looks at me. He goes, do
you have it? And I go yes, and then she goes,
have what and he goes nothing. We go later in
(03:38):
the cruise and we do the message in a bottle thing.
She gets the message of bottle. Of course, she says yes,
they're all happy, and then like five minutes later, he
looks back at me and he goes, did I ruin it?
And she looks back and I'm like, what do you
want to say? Man? Like, do you think do you
think she's like so simple that you know that she
would buy the Do you have what? Oh? Nothing? Well,
(03:59):
obviously it's something if I know what he's talking about.
And I responded to it. And there's been a couple
times where the bottle ended up in the water and
like I have to make a couple of attempts to
go get it. They don't always grab it out of
the water right away. And man, I had one person,
one girl. I was like, oh, looks like there might
be a message in that bottle right there. Would you
mind grabbing it? And she goes, I'm not touching that
(04:19):
it's garbage. And the guy looks back at me and
I'm like tell her, like, oh, just grab it. It's okay,
it's not garbage.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, I'm out of here. Now it's up to you, buddy.
Did anyone ever, did any woman ever say no?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
You know, I have not had any nose, but some
other gondoliers have. The last thing you would want if
the person that's saying no, would be to spend another
half an hour sitting right next to them on a
boat that there's no escape from.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
It's a long way back to the dock.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, exactly. So I haven't had it happen, but I've
heard it's just I mean, it's just miserable for everyone,
including a gondoli.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Including the gondolier. So you're you're a gondolier or do
you sing?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Does the guy say, hey, I need this song, start singing?
You know, love me do or I will always love
you or back that thing up or whatever they're they
that's going to sing, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
We so it's kind of an interesting thing. There are
some gondolas kind of standards that we sing, but we
really have to kind of be careful with music licensing,
you know, we can't sing everything, you know, So I
actually I sing original songs that I wrote a long
time ago and then translated into Italian, and that's mostly
(05:37):
what I sing, just to kind of like keep myself
covered from that kind of stuff, I mean, and I
like them, and I get really good feedback on the songs,
and it's Italian, so no one knows what I'm saying anyway,
But you know, we sing like ol solo mio and
some of the kind of standards, but mostly I personally
sing originals for them.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Well, that's great, and let's talk about now, Ultimately a
compare a strain in this comes out. It turns out
gondoliers compete, and there is such a thing as gondola competitions.
Talk about how you got into that and how many
people are doing this around the country.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
The number of people around the country that do it
kind of varies depending on where we're having it. We're
trying to have like every different gondola company host some year,
so it's kind of been bouncing around a little bit.
And three years ago it was in Stillwater, Minnesota, and
there's a little bit less of a turnout there. Last
year it was in Providence, and there's a huge turnout.
(06:33):
The year before that it was in Huntington and there's
a big turnout. So it just kind of depends on
who's hosting it and who all can make the trip.
But it originally started actually in Providence, the idea being
in Venice, they actually have gondola races all the time,
and we would like to grow the sport here to
(06:55):
the point where the Italians invite us to compete in
their competitions. Maybe in our lifetimes it could get to
the Olympic level, which would be really cool. You know,
in my lifetime both dragon boat racing and curling have
become Olympic events. Supposedly that beanbag game is on the way,
So if that can do it, I feel like gondola
can make it to the Nationals or to the Olympics.
(07:17):
But first we need to have international competitions. So the
Providence people started it I think like eight years ago,
and the first one was over there. I didn't go
to that one. The next one was in Huntington and
I did compete in that one and I got one medal.
It was a bronze for the single distance, and that
really kind of put fuel in me, like I'm an athlete,
(07:40):
like I coach boot camp classes and I'm a yoga teacher,
and when we started doing these competitions, I just really
really come to love the competitive aspect of it. Like
we're all friends, we all know each other, but just
the you know, mostly what I do are the longer races,
and I realize like kind of the mental aspect of
(08:03):
what goes into endurance racing. It's not like go as
quick as you can and then it's done and then
just relax and catch your breath. It's like you're gonna
be doing this for so long that you're gonna get
to the point where you feel miserable and you have
to keep going or you want to quit and you
have to keep going, or it's gonna really hurt and
you have to keep going. And I like that. I
like being in that headspace of like, you know, they
(08:24):
have this phrase that we say forte a la morte,
which means strong till death, and it's like, look, you're
gonna row and you're either gonna win or you're gonna
die from rowing. Our distance races end up being anything
from twenty minutes to forty five minutes of just rowing
and rowing and rowing, and I've started to love it
(08:45):
more and more as we've had the competitions.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
I love Forte till Morte. I'm gonna start using it myself.
People can ask me what it means and I can
tell them with my heavy Italian dialect half of my
family heritage coming from Sicily.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Oh that's yeah, our mind too.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, it's fantastic. And so for anybody who's endeavoring to
do this and giving it, giving it a shot, what
do you urge him to do and accept to just
go out and try it and have some fun.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah, I mean, definitely go out and try and have
some fun. Like I would say, start with just learning
the finesse of just regular rowing before race rowing, like
you're really gonna fall. You know, what's going to make
you really fall in love with it is like the
first time you see people get engaged on the boat
in front of you and your life I am a footnote. Well,
you can go your whole life and like your best friends,
your family, you may not ever really see that moment,
(09:34):
but when they're doing it, like right in front of you,
like three feet away from you, you're hearing every word,
You're seeing every expression, it's like a beautiful thing. You know,
it's like a privilege to behold something like that. And
as you get into the racing part of it, you know,
as part of the physical aspect of it, most rowing
you're using like a lot of back muscles, a little
bit of leg but mostly you're sitting. You're standing upright
(09:55):
for this, and because the ore never leaves the water,
it's really a full body workout like nothing I've ever
experienced before. I mean, I've done all kinds of different
races and obstacle courses and Spartan runs and something like that,
and there's nothing quite like.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
This, and there is nothing quite like it. And we've
had very few interviews quite like this either. And you've
been listening to Michael Raffino and he's a gondola guy,
a professional and also a competitor. And you can find
Mike online by searching for run Wild Mike and learn
more about the US Gondola Nationals at Uscondola Nationals dot com.
(10:37):
Michael Raffino's story here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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