By Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer Published Nov 01, 2006 at 10:06 AM
The intersection of North and Lisbon Avenues was once bustling. You can see it in the building stock; there was obviously a bank, there was one of the city's most popular Chinese restaurants, a thriving movie palace. But nowadays, it's one of the city's least pedestrian friendly areas, with a freeway entrance and exit, two major streets crossing one another and no small amount of rush hour traffic.

There has been little development in the area in recent years, except for the police department's communications center, which replaced the historic Uptown Theater, although there have been some long-lived businesses nearby, like Judy's Red Hots, an extremely rare indie gas station -- which still survives despite the arrival of a Mobil next door -- and Lisbon Storm, Screen and Door, up the street, to name a few.

In the past two years, however, a new athletic wear store has opened in a new construction and an old, boarded-up retail building -- which used to house the Spartacus socialist bookstore -- across the street, on the south side of North Avenue, got a facelift. Now, signs have appeared in the windows there for a new art-themed coffee shop.

Hopefully these signs point to a new vitality for this depressed intersection, which sees a lot of daily traffic. However, real and successful development won't likely come until something is done about that traffic.
Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.

He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.

With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.

He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.

In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.

He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.