Monday nights are Open Mic Nights at Mia Cuppa, by 7:30 one of the most diverse crowds in Fresno has come to gather. Strangers greet each other as friends, murmur over coffee, and hold their breath as the microphone kicks on and the little tiny stage in the back of a coffee shop lights up.

Tonight, Fresno shows all that it has to offer, dancers, musicians, poets, storytellers all take their turn stepping up to a mic to be greeted with the same encouraging applause. Fresno doesn’t mind screaming for the first timers, for the new poets who shake when they hold their papers. They clap for the musicians who bring guitars every week with a song about Fresno fog. They cheer for the interpretive dance that holds the entire room spellbound for several minutes, for the girl who sings so quietly that the first verse of Adele’s “Lover.” is almost inaudible.

Fresno is the smoky back room microphone with the smell of coffee and a murmured conversation. The accompanying pianist runs up during a performance as a guitarist laughs and calls out that this is the moment for a solo, his fingers flying along the keys, dancing with the music, barely visible over the top of the instrument.

Our city is a quiet opportunity for new talent to get a start, his name is Jimmy, he’s from Indiana as he nervously rocks on the edges of his shoes at the microphone. “I moved to Fresno to find my big break,” He pulls out his guitar and starts to play, his voice carrying us halfway across the country to a girl he left behind there.

Remarks are thrown into the tip jar with dollar bills and quarters. Fresno is a tip jar, in which everyone gives what they can, the little bits that add up, to become something bigger.

"This is the best open mic in the valley,”
“There’s so much diversity here,”
“I come every week,”

The room is packed out, every seat filled, college students squeezed onto the benches in the corner, musicians taking over the back tables, and even more of us sitting on the floor next to the stand-up lamp, swaying in tune to a song that we all know the words to but can’t remember why.

Fresno is peach smoothies and a chorus of voices that almost overwhelms the microphone. People talk openly about mental illness, social justice, relationships, two hours of honesty, of frustration at the world outside the walls, at our city, at our country.

Seventy-five of us listen, drink it in, validate, cheer, and remember that to hear a voice is to hear someone’s story and it’s the most valuable gift we can give them. Fresno is this open mic night, this chance to speak, to challenge the ideas of the rest of the world, to question, to express. Next Monday at 7:30, a tiny cross section of the city will gather again, coffee in hand, and drink in a little bit more of all that Fresno has to offer.