Here on Our American Stories, we love sharing tales about folks who do extraordinary things for a living, and sometimes, their passions beautifully intersect with their work. Meet Michael Raffino, a dedicated gondolier in sunny Southern California who has spent over a decade gracefully navigating the waterways. This isn’t just any boat ride; being a professional gondolier is a unique skill, demanding mastery of intricate physics and rhythm. Michael shares the often-humorous struggles of new recruits, spinning in circles before learning the precise control needed to offer truly memorable gondola cruises.
Michael’s journeys are often filled with joy, hosting everything from birthdays to first dates. But it’s the romantic proposals that truly light up his work, as he becomes a silent witness to countless engagements unfolding on his boat. He even helps orchestrate elaborate “message-in-a-bottle” stunts, creating unforgettable tales for couples. From hilarious mishaps to heartfelt “yeses,” Michael’s stories offer a rare glimpse into the real-life magic, unexpected challenges, and hopeful human connections that make his gondolier life so special, reminding us of the incredible moments that define Our American Stories.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: 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 Raffino in Southern California who spent more than a decade rowing gondola. Mike, how did you get started as a gondolier, and tell us a bit about the gondola cruises that you offer?
00:00:48
Speaker 2: 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 roll, and you just spin in a circle going nowhere, getting really frustrated. The power and the steering come from the 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, 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 pylons 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. 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 roll the boat back. And so, some of us more seasoned gondoliers had to roll out, get him, and roll the boat back for him. 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; I’ve seen a lot of people get engaged on my boat, 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, 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.
00:02:47
Speaker 1: 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?
00:02:54
Speaker 2: 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 a 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-in-a-bottle thing. We do it, you know, at a certain point in the cruise where there are 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 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, she would buy the ‘Do you have what? Oh? Nothing?'” Well, obviously, it’s something if I know what he’s talking about and I responded to it. And there’s been a couple of 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; 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.'”
00:04:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I’m out of here. Now it’s up to you, buddy. Did anyone ever—did any woman ever say no?
00:04:33
Speaker 2: You know, I have not had any noes, 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.
00:04:50
Speaker 1: It’s a long way back to the dock.
00:04:52
Speaker 2: 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 the gondolier.
00:05:00
Speaker 1: Including the gondolier. So, you’re—you’re a gondolier, or do you sing?
00:05:04
Speaker 2: Yes?
00:05:04
Speaker 1: Does the guy say, “Hey, I need this song,” and you 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 gonna sing, you know.
00:05:14
Speaker 2: We—so, it’s kind of an interesting thing. There are some gondola 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 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 “O Sole Mio” and some of the kind of standards, but mostly I personally sing originals for them.
00:05:56
Speaker 1: 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.
00:06:11
Speaker 2: 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 was a little bit less of a turnout there. Last year, it was in Providence, and there was a huge turnout. The year before that, it was in Huntington, and there was 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 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. 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—like, I coach boot camp classes and I’m a yoga teacher—and when we started doing these competitions, I just really, really came 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 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 have this phrase that we say, “Forte alla 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 more and more as we’ve had the competitions.
00:08:47
Speaker 1: I love “Forte alla 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.
00:08:57
Speaker 2: Oh, that’s—yeah, our mind, too.
00:09:00
Speaker 1: 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 them to do and accept to just go out and try it and have some fun?
00:09:11
Speaker 2: 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, 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 for this, and because the oar 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.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: This, and there is nothing quite like it, 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 U.S. Gondola Nationals at UsgondolaNationals.com. Michael Raffino’s story here on Our American Stories.
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