A Bit of Italy Finds a Lasting Home on Bay

Like a giant genie’s slipper, the black gondola glides across tranquil Alamitos Bay, one gondolier pushing one oar. As the sun drops toward the horizon, his two passengers bundle up in a plaid wool blanket and clink champagne flutes.

They are bound for the wind-sheltered waterways of Naples Island, where million-dollar homes and docked yachts line the canals. The gondolier croons in the best serenissima tradition.

“O sooole miiiiiiio .... “

Since the Venetian boats were launched off Long Beach 20 years ago, 400 young men and women have donned the gondolier’s straw hat, black pants and striped T-shirt. Reporting for work, they have stepped off the wharf at Alamitos Bay, then spent eight-hour shifts taking passengers through the canals across the bay from Belmont Shore.

A rite of passage for many a Long Beach teenager, the gondolier experience is a sort of outdoor finishing school.

“Being a gondolier involves, not just the responsibility for people’s safety, it requires social skill, aplomb and a sense of humor,” said Jonathan Talberg, a gondolier from 1991 to 1996.

Now 33, Talberg is director of choral, vocal and opera studies at Cal State Long Beach. He has steered several singing students toward Gondola Getaway’s funky shack for what he calls “the great college job.”

Aboard the fleet of 10 custom-built black gondolas--the largest of which seats 14--the gondoliers ply the waters surrounding what are actually the three islands of Naples.

As guide and host, the gondolier must learn to read the mood of his guests. Otherwise, he risks killing a magic moment with, say, a monologue on the art of Venetian rowing.

Typically, passengers go for hourlong rides, which cost $65 for two people and more for groups.

Sunset cruises are in greatest demand, but the gondolas are out in broad daylight, dodging swimmers and windsurfers, and are often busy well into the night. Depending on passenger preference, the gondolas may stick to the canals, or head out into the middle of the bay, where the twinkling shore lights are more distant.

Would-be gondoliers must have mastered a few authentic-sounding Italian songs to serenade passengers under the canal bridges (good acoustics).

They need to swim well (just in case), understand currents and have the stamina to power the long wooden oar for several hours at a time.

One gondolier put out a house fire several years ago, Talberg said. He himself was awarded a commendation by the Long Beach Fire Department for saving a 3-year-old boy who had fallen into the water beside the gondola wharf.

Current gondoliers include college students studying opera and schoolteachers. One is a poet and leader of a band called John Wilkes Kissing Booth.

The original gondolier, Michael O’Toole, dreamed up the “business” for a school project in his last class as a USC marketing major. A slightly looser ship was run in the early days, O’Toole recalled. Row around the buoy and back and you’d be a gondolier.

The first “gondola” was a Pakistani fishing boat powered by a battery-driven motor bolted to the stern. There were no uniforms, no jaunty hats, no “O Sole Mio” under the arches.

Two years into the work and it dawned on O’Toole: The gondola business needed an actual gondola.

He and business partner David Black traveled to Venice to investigate the possibilities. Watching gondoliers threading through the city’s waterways, O’Toole gained a passion for the unusual boat and its rich history dating to the 11th century.

Back home the partners commissioned a Seal Beach ship maker to build a gondola. From the research mission to Italy, O’Toole also learned about the Venetian style of rowing, which would later be passed on to two decades of gondoliers--not just the 400 in Long Beach, but crews at hotels such as the Hyatt in Scottsdale, Ariz., which offers gondola rides around a lagoon.

Earlier this summer, O’Toole rowed one of the gondolas into Alamitos Bay as he and two veteran gondoliers expounded on the fine points of the watercraft. They demonstrated how the unusually long oar provides more maneuverability in navigating narrow channels, and how the gondola’s oar works within its specialized walnut oar lock, called the forcola.

“Only three men in Venice make the forcola,” said Bob Johnson, 31. A refugee of the dot-com collapse, the job-hunting Web designer had returned to gondola rowing, which in 1985 was his first job.

“In the early days, we were all local boys,” said Johnson, pointing toward the peninsula where he grew up. “It was the cool high school boy job. Like being a waiter at the Chart House.”

It remains so today, Talberg said. As with a waiter, the hourly base pay is minimum wage ($6.75), but tips can reach $140 during a good eight-hour shift.

Every year, couples get married aboard the biggest gondola. Every week couples become engaged. Once in a while, a floating bridal shower will get a little wild, and the women will strip.

When such revelry occurs, it’s the job of the gondolier to row discreetly away from the lighted patios and picture windows of residential Long Beach into darker, more private waters.

“If it’s not against the law or unreasonable,” Talberg said, the gondolier “tries to swing with it.”

Each year, O’Toole selects a team from among the strongest and most experienced gondoliers to travel to Venice and compete in a regatta.

Called the Vogalonga, or long row, it is a 30-kilometer race in which 5,000 contestants on about 1,000 boats squeeze through the canals and lagoons of Venice. A 1985 Long Beach team placed first.

“For one day,” O’Toole said, “the motorboats are turned off, and the butcher, the barber, the shopkeeper and everyday person celebrates the gondola.”

In May, American flag waving off the back of the gondola and locals cheering, the Long Beach crew was the first-place American team.

“We were also the only American entry,” O’Toole said.