As my elementary school-aged kid reminded me the other day after an art camp visit to Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee was the first American city to build a structure designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
This year, New York City’s Calatrava – the nearly $4 billion transportation hub at the World Trade Center – finally opened. Nearly 15 years after the Milwaukee Art Museum.
This morning I read that Marwa Abdrabo gave birth to a baby in the transportation hub at 2:36 a.m. on Tuesday. According to The New York Times, the newborn baby girl, named Asenat, was the first baby born in the World Trade Center.
But not the first baby born in an American Calatrava building. Milwaukee just might hold that distinction, too, according to this tidbit gleaned from MAM's senior director of marketing, communications and audience development Vicki Scharfberg.
In 2010, a New Berlin woman gave birth to a boy while she and her husband were at a wedding party at the Milwaukee Art Museum. That boy was named Lincoln James Calatrava Sherwood.
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.
