After the Sept. 9 committee meeting at which a motion by Ald. Peter Burgelis to make the People's Flag the official City of Milwaukee narrowly passed – sending it on to the full Common Council for discussion – Ald. Robert Bauman, who voted against that motion, has submitted an altered design for consideration.
You can read details of that interesting meeting here, because, honestly, I can't bear to relive it all over again.
Bauman's complaint at that meeting was that the flag did not depict an obvious Milwaukee landmark, unlike the current flag, which is a smorgasbord of pictorial imagery from the 1950s.
At the meeting, Bauman suggested plopping City Hall into the center of the People's Flag, and as you can see from the image above, he got busy on his computer to come up with a bastardization of the design that finds City Hall floating like a cruise ship into the Milwaukee harbor.
Bauman released the image in advance of the Tuesday, Sept. 24 Common Council meeting at which the People's Flag discussion will be brought to the floor, as will a substitute resolution by Bauman suggesting this new design instead.
“The ‘Sunrise Over the Lake’ flag (aka the People's Flag) lacks any key identifying features that we associate with Milwaukee,” Bauman said in a press release he sent out, quoting himself.
“My proposed substitute flag design retains basic layout and design of the People’s Flag but incorporates an image of City Hall which enhances the flag’s association with the City of Milwaukee.”
NOTE: This is not a mis-scheduled April Fool's post.
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.
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