I do not care for California, so having my consulate in Los Angeles was troubling. Luckily, there are Honorary Italian Consulates in various areas of the US like Dallas, Honolulu, Seattle, and Phoenix. I think there are other honorary consulates around the world too. They do not offer all of the services of a consulate, but at least Phoenix is able to process your Italian passport, or your passaporto Italiano.
If you hadn't seen on another page, I did not need to go to the consulate for my citizenship appointment. Which I can truly say there were not very many good things that came from COVID, but due to COVID I was able to mail in my paperwork since it was already ready 6 months ahead of time. I did not know what to expect for this passport appointment, so I will share my experience from Phoenix!
I live in northern Arizona and getting to Phoenix is not the easiest trip. Usually a day trip winds up being pretty tiring so I wanted to make sure I got everything ready ahead of time - but I ran into a couple pitfalls. Maybe reading this I can save you some.
On the Phoenix Honorary Consulate website, you can find the packets of information and all the forms you'll need. I don't have any minor children so it was pretty easy to get my paperwork put together.
I have to finish this later.. Real quick in case you're human and here, make sure you follow the standard passport guidelines for the photo. I tried to save some money by doing it myself. It was almost okay - my background was blue and it needs to be white. I had to go to a nearby Staples and get a $17 passport picture taken which was... uncomfortable. Bring extra copies of everything just in case. I made color copies of my IDs for them.
They will fingerprint your fingers so make sure you bring your fingers with you to the appointment. Prepare your stuff close to your appointment. Don't have old paperwork including the bill to prove residency. The USPS postage according to the post office here can "spoil". Actual word used by the post office. I waited until the last day to get that postage for the envelopes. I'll write more later.