When I first started letting people know I was going to participate in the annual Riverwest 24 bike race, I was told the actual biking was secondary to the main point of the event.
The real reason for doing it was to socialize and meet people.
I’ve only been in Milwaukee a couple of months. I know very few people.
And yet, I found they were right. During the race, I met multiple co-workers, one co-worker’s dad and a woman who invited me to sit on a picnic table when I had to pause to do some reporting and file a quick story.
“It’s a trick to get everyone to make friends,” said Julie Krawczyk, who has helped organize the race’s live scoring system since its early years.
The trick, it appears, worked.
Friday, July 24, 5 p.m.
I met Julie at the start line of the race, which is in front of the house of Jeremy Prach, her college friend and one of the race’s founders. “Believe” by Cher was playing in the background.
While the race’s organizers like herself take care of the logistics, she said, it’s the whole neighborhood that organizes the fun events along the route.
“Can’t go 10 feet without bumping into someone,” she quipped as we walked to my bike to help Nick, another organizer, fix it. (I had borrowed it from my boss, who’s had it since his sophomore year of college. He is 66 now.)
Julie introduced me to Jeremy’s son, Loyal, who was donning baggy jean shorts and a larger-than-usual septum piercing.
He grew up in the house by the start line, he said, and still thinks he has to attend the race every year. The race ingrained in him from childhood that “you can’t achieve anything by yourself” — a lesson he said he realized more as he became an adult.
Julie told me that the neighborhood is one filled with artsy, alternative people — “back in the day, we’d say the hippies,” she said — and that may have something to do with the welcoming environment of the weekend’s festivities.
“It’s a lot of big-hearted people,” she said.
Friday, July 24, 7 p.m.
You wouldn’t see so many tutus, fishnets, tattoos, piercings, topless men and manes reminiscent of Robert Plant’s — the “inexhaustible variety of life,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it — than in the Riverwest neighborhood. And, at least this weekend, bicycles.
When the race was about to start, I couldn’t help but notice all the creative outfits. One team was wearing red berets and holding baguettes. One man was wearing fishnets from neck to toe. A couple was on bikes with fish-shaped papier-mâché.
Once the clock hit 7 p.m. and the crowd started chugging through, I saw on the sidelines Journal Sentinel visual journalist Hannah Schroeder, taking photos of the spectacle of bikers. A resident of Riverwest, she was also participating in the race and had her helmet on.
A few seconds later, I turned my head to Sam Leichtling, Milwaukee’s deputy city commissioner, yelling “Journal Sentinel!” to me. I had met him when I was covering city hall meetings. I said hello back, enthusiastically.
After ten or so minutes of cranking on the 45-year-old bike and passing more Francesca Hong signs than I’d seen in any other Milwaukee neighborhood, I caught another familiar silhouette on the road. In front of me was Bridget Fogarty, a Journal Sentinel suburbs reporter, pedaling on in a green tie-die shirt. I yelled her name, and she looked back and yelled my name.
As we strolled across the Holton Street Bridge and muscled through the Beerline Trail hill — no doubt the most strenuous part of the 5-mile route — I got to know Bridget and Marty, her dad, who was visiting from Glenview, Illinois. When I told him I grew up in Korea, he told me about his friend who used to live there.
After I bid Bridget and Marty goodbye, Enrique Rodriguez, a homepage and social producer for the Journal Sentinel, joined me for a night lap. Enrique is becoming a grandfather, now, and it had been a long time since he last biked to work.
The night was a different experience. Instead of posterboard signs and kids selling lemonade, there were strings of neon lights and dance-heavy parties scattered along the route. Instead of folk bands, there was a silent disco under the Holton Street Bridge. (I tuned into the EDM channel, while Enrique danced to the retro channel.)
As we biked around, watching people stop at block parties and do bouncy ball races for points, we also chatted about where we’re from and how he used to work in Asheville. We passed by David Clarey, a Journal Sentinel public safety reporter, and his girlfriend.
Once the route crossed North Ave., I diverged to go home.
Saturday, July 25, 11 a.m.
The next morning, I filed a few stories at home (it was my weekend shift) and biked back over to Riverwest. The kids were out again with their lemonade stands, and tents with free food, from bananas to bacon, dotted the streets.
I had taken around half a lap when I saw familiar faces, Hannah and Bridget, standing around a stoop on Humboldt Blvd. I immediately parked my bike and walked up to Bridget’s house.
There’s no need to take off my shoes because it’s Riverwest 24, she said. Within the realm of air conditioning, we filled up my water bottle and shared some Shrek fruit snacks that felt like an EpiPen of sugar. Hannah told me there’d be a wedding at Kern Park at 2 p.m., and I started biking over.
But when I stopped at a stoplight, I saw my editor had sent me a Teams message for a story about the heat wave in the Western half of the state.
I took a quick turn and parked my bike. There was a girl in her 20s, maybe a few years older than me, sitting on a picnic table next to the house there. I asked her if it’s okay for me to squat on the edge of the sidewalk and type away for a few minutes.
Of course, she said — and she invited me to sit with her on her picnic table. Between my calls to the National Weather Service and typing up my story under the shade, my battery on 5%, the girl and I talked about what it’s like to be a journalist.
She was there because her boyfriend, Sam, lives just there, she said. She could never do the race, but she likes watching the bikers pass by the uphill, she said. We cheered on a little girl together.
Halfway to Kern Park, I bumped into my colleague, Sarah Volpenhein, on the business desk and told her I’m on my way to the wedding. The wedding was over, she said. But I had made a friend.
Saturday, July 25, 7 p.m.
I returned for the race’s closing ceremony at the start line. There was rock music. The smell of beer and cigarettes. Bottles of Malibu. Hugs. Babies on fathers’ backs. Short blue dresses. Tattoos everywhere. And I seemed to be the only one not talking to anyone.
“We did something today that the folks in Waukesha can never understand,” the announcer said. Tomorrow will be a day of rest, he added.
Loyal and some other men were quick to dismantle the tents at the start line and construct a makeshift podium.
The kids went first. Then the non-binary people. Then the “mascs” and the “fems.”
I saw Sam, the deputy city commissioner, again. Donning a 414 cap, he was quick to explain to me that the trophy was made out of ice because it’s not meant to last.
Even the flowers were made out of balloons. As if real flowers would last longer, I thought.
But it really wasn’t about the flowers, was it?
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What I saw –– and the friends I made –– at Riverwest 24
Reporting by Jaeha Jang, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jaeha Jang, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
