A Meditation on Mike Albanese at 41
“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
No one I know seems to enjoy the experience of living quite like Mike Albanese. The biggest compliment he reserves for other people is the same compliment he most richly deserves: he’s got such a great spirit about him. Mike buzzes with energy and he is never more alive than when he’s mid-conversation at a busy restaurant in the company of his creative, pugnacious, handsome and sexy peers, whose faces you’ll find in faded Polaroids on the walls of the best red sauce joints in town.
And you will know him by the sound of his voice. For some men, their reputation precedes them. For Mike Albanese, it is his voice, which has a low, rumbling, guttural quality like a smoker’s growl without the pulmonary damage of a regular habit. Musicians call this “scraping the pan” — 101.1 delivering you the classics all night long — that you feel as much as you hear, particularly in his long “O”’s, regularly punctuated with a deep and satisfying Delirious-era Eddie Murphy laugh.
When Mike knows you, he will mouth-trumpet the occasion of your arrival — “hut-duh-duh! Hut-duh-duh!” — like you’re a nobleman who’s arrived at his court, emphasizing the point by adding a florid, singsongy “Mis-ter Roth-man” or “Sir Roth-man”, which realizes my lifelong ambition of someone calling me “sir” without then adding “you’re causing a scene.”
Mike greets you with his arms wide overhead, an airplane marshaller gesturing for you to come on in and get yourself a good squeeze. And when you do get in close, expect a bear hug so fierce that you could just as easily go to the mat as you could take your seats for dinner. Sir, you’re causing a scene!
If you didn’t know Mike, and just saw him on the street, you’d notice that he walks with a determined gait, head forward, leading the way. When the weekend rolls around, Mike’s walk is marked by a light hip swivel, a kind of ‘70’s Mick Jagger strut, which makes sense because one of Mike’s singular pleasures is to cruise the streets of New York immersed in deep-cut rock tracks from the ’70s to early Aughts.
Ladies, Mike Albanese is a good looking man. He has strong cheekbones and good skin. The man paid heed to Baz Lehrmann’s call to “Always Wear Sunscreen”.
Ladies, Mike’s got a ravishing smile. He can light up a room with a grin so wide that you think, for a moment, that he may somehow have more than the standard 32 teeth, like a loveable creature from Where The Wild Things Are.
Ladies, he’s got the body of a high school middle linebacker who’s since discovered yoga and leaned out. His schedule of regular meditation gives him the ease of a man comfortable in his meat suit. Like most well-to-do men of a certain age, he perpetually sports a beautiful tan that comports well with his Sicilian olive skin.
But above all else, you will know Mike by his piercing blue eyes. They look ancient and oracular. In an earlier time these eyes would make him either deified or persecuted. It’s not purely superficial; it’s the way the eyes are held, how they narrow, indicating a deep reserve of hard-wrought wisdom.
Mike and I first met at a dinner party I hosted in what was then a common conceit — throw party to meet new friends, meet girls or meet friends who can introduce us to new girls. I saw Mike from across the room and in a glitch-in-the-matrix kind of way I felt like I had known the guy for years. It recalls that line from a song in The Muppets Movie: “there’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.”
We’ve since gone on adventures near and far — from Miami to upstate New York, Mexico City and one time decided on a whim that we had to rent a yellow Mustang convertible and drive to Joshua Tree while blasting the U2 album of the same name. I don’t know what we’re expecting, like maybe we thought the whole park was named after a single, destination tree but the ranger was like “you boys lost? This park is the size of the state of Rhode Island”. Oh ok.
Mike then as always engages fiercely with the social moment, loves just chopping it up with whoever’s in the room — man, woman and child — fueled by an endless and beautiful curiosity. He’ll dance with your grandma; with your kids he’ll play floor is lava!. When he’s spent, he’ll exit a room as quickly as he can, begging the question from those left behind who was that wonderful man?
Mike gravitates towards Big Life Energy: the big writers with the big thoughts (Hemingway), rockstars with their feral intensity, big titans like Joe Kennedy — mascots of a bygone masculinity.
Mike has a voracious appetite for culture. He straight-up inhaled Les Miserables in what must have been a weekend. What next? Infinite Jest? TFG. What for most people is a doorstop for Mike is a beach read. Similarly, few people love a multi-season premium cable drama more than Mike, from The Leftovers to Mad Men to Halt and Catch Fire.
Never far from a photo shoot, Mike is an amateur lensman who has a keen eye for composition. He is in touch with the divine feminine and loves beautiful women not just for obvious reasons but also as a true aesthete who understands the psychology of glamour.
It should surprise no one then he built a thriving career around these interests. Mike Albanese is one of the most interesting and unheralded entrepreneurs in media, parlaying an outstanding career at Spin to President of Observer Media overseeing programming around art, real estate and high-brow gossip to Galore. If the New Republic was the in-flight magazine during the Clinton years, Galore was the in-stall rag of choice in the bathrooms of the trendiest downtown clubs during the Obama years. Before the mainstream world had ever heard of them, Mike’s parties featured Lizzo and Emily Ratajkowski. He hosted a series of festivals for badass women in the culture industry called Girl Crush, spearheaded an early model influencer network, spun up a private label beauty line before pivoting the publication to focus its lens on LatinX culture. Now he’s leveraging Galore to create a brand for empanada delivery. What George Washington Carver was for the peanut, Mike Albanese is for editorial content extensions.
Outside of media Mike has cultivated a portfolio of work involving a fintech incubator, residential real estate and crypto investments. He is nothing if not a multi-hyphenated man of his time.
While Mike thinks about the future, he keeps a connection to his past via a years-long group chat with his high school friends labeled simply The Boys. It’s a nourishing 24/7 line to his roots. At their best these kinds of group chats serve as integrity checks rather than limits to growth that elicit calls of “what are you big timing me, city boy?”
Politically Mike leans center-right in what at present is less of a spectrum than a whirling oceanic garbage patch. He believes in minimal government intervention in business but identifies socially as a free-thinking libertine. He thinks that man should be well-informed and that private enterprise is typically the most efficient vehicle for progress. It’s less that he’s philosophically opposed to large-scale government interventions but more that he’s a pragmatist and outside of vaccine roll-outs, he’s been disappointed in the federal government’s ability to move at the speed of the modern market.
Mike is a romantic and I’ve been lucky to see him in love. I’ve seen him happy, I’ve seen him clumsy, I’ve seen him be ok with being in the dumps. He’s embraced “all the feels”.
“Silvio”, “Uncle Mike”, “Thanksgiving Mike” and “Miami Mike” will no doubt find a partner who will relish the conversation, laughter and fellowship that we cherish in Mike. Michael James Albanese, you’re beloved by all who know you and I’m lucky to have you as a friend. Love you, brother.
