Back in 1919, a group of 22 young men from northwest Italy’s Piedmont region got together most evenings at a house in North Oakland to drink wine and play cards and bocce. Similar smaller gatherings took place at other Piemontese family houses in the area.

By 1920, the men’s exuberant energy overwhelmed their hosts. “So we kicked them out of our houses and told them to find somewhere else to play,” one of the older folks, Lucia Puppione, recounted years later to her grandson, Rich. That somewhere else would become the Colombo Club, which after a century — or 101 years later, to be exact — proudly bills itself as “the largest Italian-American club west of the Mississippi.”