We don’t know why it’s closing, or what the intended use for the space will be, but this fullerton landmark with the great Italian food, and unique ambiance will soon be a memory.

Restaurants (and other businesses) close every year, without anyone taking much notice, in the last few years more than usual because of Covid. It’s hard to turn a profit and keep things going under the best of times, and the gut punched economy was the breaking point for so many stores.

 I recently walked up and down Harbor boulevard and was shocked at the number of now vacant spaces. Many that were thriving just a few years ago.

We’ve grown used to seeing stores go under, but Angelo’s and Vinci’s closing, to me, was a shocker. People had their wedding parties, and quinceaneras there, in the banquet rooms upstairs. I proposed to my girlfriend, now wife of twenty years at a table on the second floor. 

Steven Peck, actor, dancer, choreographer, started the business in 1992 in a vacant space next to his dance studio, so the story goes,  as a place to feed his growing number of dance students, and soon blossomed  into the wondrous place we have all come to love.

I often wondered how Peck chose his design ideas. I mean where do you start? Was there a plan? Did he bring in a Hollywood set designer to create such a flamboyant space according to his vision? Did he start with a few mannequins, and some artwork he had laying around, and then just didn’t stop? It’s color, and chaos, silly Sicilian mayhem, but somehow it’s perfect. It’s a Tuscan paradise squeezed into a few thousand square feet of restaurant space. It’s Sunday, Carnival and Christmas all at once. But it’s even more than that, it’s magical.

I am not really not a fan of “schtick” or theme restaurants, with their manufactured kitsch, but Angelo’s and Vinci’s is none of that. It’s mad, it’s garish, it’s psychedelic, and it all works beautifully. 

Everywhere you look, there are stories being told in the architecture. The  acrobats in flight, a couple having a romantic supper on a balcony. What are they talking about? Who are they?  The picture of the man dishing up a huge plate of pasta. Mona Lisa. A hundred colored lights, cheeses, wine casks embedded in the walls. Photos of old Italians relatives. The  wood walls washed in green, white, and red lights, nooks and crannies that seem to go on forever.

Walt Disney could spend all the money in the world and not produce the dreamy wonder, and all around you as you dine. 

And the food. It’s always been about the food. The fresh bread,  pizza,  pasta, lasagna, the cream sauce, the marinara, always the best, always. 

But now that’s going away.

I don’t know what plans are in store for the space, but it won’t be the same. A new owner won’t likely have, or understand the spirit of what went on here.

I’m sad, not just because this slice of Fullerton history is disappearing, but because something else is disappearing. Something important.

It’s a pattern that is happening more these days..it happens like this…someone has a great little idea for a product or service, that takes off, because there was something about it that people want, need, like, love. And the thing grows to be huge, because people see, and understand the magic. No one can tell you what the magic is, only that it’s there.

Then, the originators of the little idea retire, or cash out, and sell to the highest bidding corporation. Then everything’s different. No more magic. Because magic isn’t in the business plan.

 Joni Mitchell warned..”You don’t don’t know what you got till it’s gone”

More is going than you think.

You’d be hard pressed to find a restaurant, fast food, otherwise, that isn’t a franchise. The food is just good enough, the decor is clean, colorful, and boring. The teenage workers seem to wish they were doing something else. Corporate franchise restaurants are designed for getting customers in and out fast. Speed, is money, and that is more important than customer experience. 

They can say they care about customer satisfaction (at least on paper) to the extent that they want return business, but that’s all. Hard plastic seats and boring decor, isn’t supposed to make you happy, or comfortable, it’s supposed to make you buy food, eat fast, and leave. And every year the food gets greasier, sweeter, spicier, saltier, and in smaller portions. Quality isn’t in the business plan, either.

And if one of the 100 nationwide franchises don’t make the profit that the LLC thinks they should in a given market, it’s closed down. No time for slackers. 

Our culture is being defined, less by sociologists, and artists, and more and more by corporate designers, business models, with a five year plan of maximizing profit. 

 Clothing stores, book stores, movie theaters, etc., are carefully calculated to make customer happiness less important than their bottom line. You can’t blame them them. That’s just what they’re supposed to do. Fair enough. But that leaves us with the question of where do we go for consumer happiness? To get the magic? We live in a society that is abundant, convenient, and in pretty, carefully chosen manipulative colors, and shapes, but cater to our basic needs as humans less and less.

Don’t you find yourself wishing there were more places that offered comfort, and you knew you would be treated like a patron, instead of a customer? Where the product has high quality, and value? Where you go to have, not just a meal, but an experience? Where there’s magic?

Do you miss Angelo’s and Vinci’s already?

I do.