On an unseasonably balmy Friday afternoon in late February, a group of men gather behind the oldest Italian restaurant in Santa Barbara for a test of wills. They stand at the far ends of two giant rectangles, locked into a pivotal moment in the game. 

One player steps up for their turn, gently rolling a hefty red ball toward the opposite side. The ball sidles up to the small white ball at the other end, called the pallino; an ideal turn, given that the objective is for each team to get as many of their balls as close to the pallino as possible. 

“That’s a hot one!” says player Michael Haber. “That’s gonna roll back.”

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The roller’s teammate, Dante Panizzon, looks at the ball for a moment before cracking wise: “Why didn’t you play that way before?”

John Morosin rolls the bocce ball at Arnoldi’s Cafe in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2026.

Bocce court signs at Arnoldi’s Cafe in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2026.

These parallel bocce courts have been a permanent fixture of the Arnoldi’s Cafe backyard since the haunt opened there in 1940. Happening a few hours before the restaurant opens to the public, the Friday afternoon bocce game at Arnoldi's is one of the most exclusive events in town. It’s invite-only, extended to those select few who have been deemed both a good hang and decent at bocce.

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Some of its members are local heavyweights around town; Santa Barbara’s most famous bartender, Willy Gilbert, is there. But the pillars of the Friday afternoon bocce game are three older men, all of whom immigrated from the same small town outside of Venice, Italy, to the Central Coast in the 1950s and 1960s. They’ve been playing bocce in Santa Barbara for over 60 years, starting back when one could rattle off the number of courts in the region on one hand. 

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It’s never really been about winning for the longstanding keepers of the Friday afternoon game, who first started charging $3 a game, which was formerly the price of a glass of wine at Arnoldi’s. (The buy-in has since been bumped up to $5.) While no one would sniff at the glory of one-upping fellow bocce players, the game itself — a chance to hang out, sip a Peroni in the sunshine, and catch up — is the point. Its three surviving Italian community members are one of the few remaining tethers between their shared hometown of Crespano del Grappa, as well as the lineage of Italians who immigrated to Santa Barbara in the 19th and 20th centuries, irrevocably shaping the region known as the “American Riviera.”

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A person watches bocce at Arnoldi’s Cafe in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2026.

People play bocce at Arnoldi’s Cafe in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Feb. 27, 2026.

Over time, some of their fellow Italian bocce enthusiasts have passed on. But as the ranks of original........

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