Milwaukee jumps into the fitness crawl craze on Saturday, April 27 as six East Side fitness facilities participate in The East Side Business Improvement District’s first fitness crawl.
A fitness crawl is much like a bar crawl but instead of visiting taverns and doing biceps curls with full pint glasses, you hit a variety of gyms and exercise. An there’s no bus to drag you around; instead you walk or run between stops.
Because this is Milwaukee, there’s still beer – it just arrives at the end.
Shred 415, Crossfit 414, East Side Pilates, East Side Family Chiropractic, Urban Om and Yoga Six are participating in this first crawl.
"We’re so excited to be able to bring this concept to the East Side," says Elizabeth Brodek, executive director of the East Side BID. "As the East North Avenue area has evolved over the years, there have been a lot of fitness facilities and healthy living options coming to the neighborhood.
"I’d seen the Fitness Crawl concept in other areas and thought it would be a great opportunity to give people something new and fun to do on a Saturday, and highlight the variety of fitness and healthy lifestyle options we have on the East Side."
The day kicks off at 11:30 a.m. at Adventure Rock, from which participants then head out to the facilities to which they’ve been assigned. For the next two hours, the groups crawl – perhaps literally after a while – between the fitness facilities until 2 p.m.
Afterward, everyone’s invited to Good City Brewing on Farwell for a beer.
"It’s a kind of detox to retox," says Brodek.
Tickets to the Fitness Crawl are $40 and you can register at TheEastSide.org or through the event’s Facebook page.
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.
