With gas prices on the rise and new policies and ideas on the table, it's time to look at how we get around. We all need to get someplace and we use many different modes of transportation to do so. As we kick off 2011 at OnMilwaukee.com, we're taking an in-depth look at how we get around with a special "Transportation Week," featuring all kinds of stories about how Milwaukee gets where it's going. So, buckle up, hop on and all aboard.
I once thought I'd write some kind of book based on things I'd overheard while riding the bus to UWM. Then I lost my bus notebook.
Moving here from New York as I turned 17, I had no driver's license and I argued with my parents about even getting one. "What's the point?" asked the then-young me, who had been riding subways in New York for a few years already by then.
In my early days here I walked everywhere and took the bus every day to UWM.
I usually heard and so much interesting stuff that I figured a novel -- or some other kind of book -- would basically write itself.
When a guy -- headed I think to a Downtown center for the disabled -- sat down next to me on the 30 and asked me, as the bus waited at the stop in front of the 411 Building on Wisconsin Avenue, if I liked to wrestle and if I wanted to wrestle him, I jotted it down.
When a couple argued the merits of Johnny Mathis, down it went. I vividly remember writing it waiting for a red light to change on Ogden and Prospect (so I know it was the Jackson-Downer 30).
When, on my way home, on the 20, a young woman began to cry (nay, sob), at 6th and Wisconsin and continued to do so even until I got off the bus at 16th and Greenfield, I took a moment to write it down.
Alas, these are most of the few tidbits that remain locked into my memory 20 years after I bought my first car.
If I still had the notebook, I'd consider digging it up and sitting down to write that novel. But it's long gone and I wish I knew where it went. Maybe I'd be a novelist already by now.
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.
