Italy Lives Here: Severino Ricci Turns the Lens on Southern California’s Italian Stories

After nearly a decade of connecting Italy and California through italy2california, Ricci launches a new original series dedicated to the people, businesses, and stories shaping Italian life in Southern California.

For nearly a decade, Severino “Seve” Ricci has been telling California stories to an international audience through italy2california, the editorial platform he founded in 2016. From travel and surf culture to food, hospitality, art, and conversations with people whose lives cross borders, his work has explored California through a distinctly Italian perspective.

Now, Ricci is turning the lens in a new direction.

With "ITALY LIVES HERE — An italy2california Original Series", he is setting out to discover and share the Italian stories that are being written across Southern California today.

Its message is captured in four words: “Italian stories. California lives.”

Finding Italy in Southern California

ITALY LIVES HERE will take Ricci across Southern California to meet entrepreneurs, restaurateurs, creatives, professionals, and other people whose Italian roots, ideas, and experiences have become part of the region’s contemporary identity.

The project is not simply about finding Italian businesses in California. Ricci is interested in the people behind them: where they came from, why they chose California, what they brought with them, what they discovered along the way, and how their relationship with Italy has evolved as they built a life thousands of miles from home.

Food and hospitality will naturally be part of that journey, but the series is designed to reach beyond them. Italian identity in Southern California can be found in entrepreneurship, art, design, culture, craftsmanship, innovation, and in the personal stories of people who have created something meaningful in Southern California.

“After years of telling California stories to an Italian audience, I wanted to turn the perspective around and meet the Italians who are creating their own California stories,” Ricci says. “ITALY LIVES HERE is about discovering those stories and giving the people behind them a voice.”

A Project Nearly a Decade in the Making

The new series represents a natural evolution for italy2california.

Ricci launched the platform in 2016 from a personal fascination with the connections between two places that have profoundly influenced his life: Italy and California. What began as a way to share experiences, destinations, and observations gradually developed into an independent travel and cultural storytelling platform with an international audience.

Today, italy2california has built a community of more than 112,000 followers on Instagram and reaches more than 20,000 readers each month through its website. Its stories move between Italy and the United States, exploring destinations through the people, cultures, experiences, and details that give them character.

For Ricci, numbers have never been the only measure of that growth. The relationships created along the way have become an equally important part of the project.

His connection with Southern California has led to collaborations and long-standing relationships with tourism and cultural organizations, as well as the opportunity to experience the region beyond the perspective of a visitor.

A Longstanding Connection With California

Ricci has served as a Tourism Ambassador for Oceanside since 2017 and has been a Board Member of the California Surf Museum since 2021. He is also a certified USA Specialist, having completed Brand USA’s destination training program.

These roles have allowed him to deepen his understanding of Southern California and its communities while bringing an Italian and international perspective to the stories he tells.

Oceanside, in particular, has become an important part of his California journey. Its surf culture, community, changing culinary scene, and connection to the Pacific have appeared repeatedly in his work.

His involvement with the California Surf Museum has added another dimension. Surf culture, for Ricci, offers a way to explore California through history, people, creativity, and a sense of freedom that reaches far beyond the sport itself.

That combination of travel, culture, relationships, and storytelling now provides the foundation for ITALY LIVES HERE.

The People Behind the Places

The format of the new series reflects the approach Ricci has developed through italy2california: start with the person, then discover the place.

Rather than creating conventional business profiles, ITALY LIVES HERE will use interviews and on-location storytelling to explore the experiences behind each story. A restaurant, market, winery, creative studio, or other business becomes the setting for a larger conversation about identity, ambition, heritage, and life in California.

The questions are personal as much as professional. What does it mean to build something Italian in Southern California? Which traditions travel well across the ocean, and which ones change? What does California add to an Italian way of thinking? And, after years in America, what still feels unmistakably Italian?

The answers will inevitably be different.

That is precisely the point.

ITALY LIVES HERE is not intended to define a single version of Italian identity abroad. Instead, it will document the many ways that identity continues to evolve when it encounters Southern California.

Storytelling Beyond Social Media

Ricci’s work extends beyond digital content. He is also an author whose books reflect different aspects of his professional and personal journey.

In “A Journey Through Two Worlds: Beyond Social Media,” Ricci explores the experiences, connections, and perspectives that have shaped his life between Italy and the United States. His book “Point Break - Ti porto in California” takes readers on a personal journey through California, combining places, encounters, experiences, and travel insights.

Together, his books and editorial work reflect the same curiosity that drives italy2california: an interest in what happens when places are experienced through people rather than simply visited.

His professional background spans more than two decades in Customer Experience, Client Service, Communication, and Marketing, experience that has influenced the way he approaches storytelling and builds relationships with destinations, organizations, and businesses.

Yet italy2california remains rooted in curiosity.

Ricci prefers conversations to formulas and experiences to checklists. His stories often begin with a place but ultimately focus on the people who give that place meaning.

ITALY LIVES HERE takes that philosophy one step further.

Italian Stories. California Lives.

Southern California has long attracted people willing to reinvent themselves. Italians are part of that story, but their experiences cannot be reduced to a familiar image of Italy exported overseas.

Some preserve traditions. Others reinterpret them. Some build businesses around their heritage, while others carry their Italian identity into entirely different fields. Each represents another way in which cultures travel, adapt, and influence one another.

Through ITALY LIVES HERE, Ricci wants to document those stories while they are still being written.

After nearly ten years of using italy2california to bring his audience closer to California, the new series marks a change in perspective without changing the mission behind the platform.

The bridge remains.

This time, the stories are coming from the people who live on the other side of it.

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