In Transition and Through Chaos, We Sing

A love letter to Miceli's Hollywood, the cacophony of life and my son who leaves for college tomorrow. (there's such a lot of world to see.)

I don’t remember when we first started coming to Miceli’s as a family. It was before Bo and Revie were born for sure. Maybe even before Fable. But way even before there was us, the family, I fell in love with Miceli’s on my own. I had just moved to LA and wanted to feel something everywhere I went. I still feel that way about places. Restaurants that specialize in food are fine but I will never be their target demo.

It was the piano for me. The singing waiters. The old of it all. (It has always been the piano for me. The singing waiters. The old…) Back in those days we had The Dresden and for a minute there was that Piano Bar (off Selma?) and buskers literally everywhere — which you don’t see as much of anymore. People busk from their TikTok accounts now. No hats full of dollar bills. Now we spend hundreds of dollars on tickets to see shows. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I do it, too. But give me a raspy-voiced singer whose name I’ll never know in a dimly lit room first. A violinist in a subway station as people push by. The harmony of table banter against an operatic howl from behind an old piano. Lend my ear to an instrument as anonymous as the person plucking its strings. Preferably, somewhere with shit on the walls. Wine bottles and license plates and black and white photos of people, now ghosts.

Miceli’s has always looked the same — in the twenty-four years I have lived in Los Angeles and the decades before that, too. A relief to me when so much else has changed, is changing, will.