Thousands knew Walking Man; almost nobody knew Bicycle Man

 Thousands knew Walking Man; almost nobody knew Bicycle Man

I’ve been fascinated by the saga of Joe Kromelis, A.K.A. Walking Man, who likely logged over a thousand miles walking the Loop and environs over several decades.

First heard of him after the horrible baseball bat beating he incurred in Chicago’s underground Lower Wacker in May, 2016. Kromelis survived and continued his endless walking, being seen and recognized by thousands of Loop pedestrians due to his strikingly tall figure with flowing white hair.

A European native, Kromelis grew up in Chicago and stayed when his family moved to Michigan when he was 19. He had a factory job but spent most of his working life as a jewelry street peddler. Kromelis lived largely off the grid in cheap SRO apartments till gentrification leveled his last SRO, making him homeless.

Over the years he achieved a measure of fame as ‘Walking Man’ with newspaper and social media articles, a Facebook Page, even a YouTube documentary. Joe Kromelis died December 11, 2022, seven months after being set on fire while sleeping on Lower Wacker. A gentle soul destroyed by an ungentle world.

What struck me about Joe Kromelis was the similarity, exercise wise, to my brother Bob Zlotow. Born 8 years before Kromelis, Bob got his first bicycle in 1948 at age 9. It didn’t take him long to realize it was his magic carpet to explore Chicago. And explore he did, venturing out nearly every day in good weather. When I say explore the city, I don’t mean his boyhood neighborhood of Garfield Ridge. We’re talking about the entire city, rich, poor and in between. He might head out around 9:00 AM and not return till dinnertime.

Sometimes he’d describe his explorations of Chicago’s numerous neighborhoods that fascinated him. He loved to see how neighborhoods changed over the years. Mostly when asked where he went, however, he’d just reply “Turf”.

When it came to a personal life, Bob’s couldn’t have been more different from Joe Kromelis’. Bob got an accounting degree from Roosevelt University. He worked 51 years in the accounting field, the last 20 for the State of Illinois in the Child Support Division. In 1974 he married a woman who fled Cuba in 1969. They had one son who served in the Army and runs a successful business in Kansas.

Bob found time to pursue other interests: photography, movies, ballroom dancing, crossword puzzles and TV's Wheel of Fortune. He would spend many hours planning vacations around America, mostly to major cities to explore his other great passion, interurban railroad systems. He had a savant skill that would mystify. You could give him any date in history. Within 10 seconds he’d tell you the day of the week. It wasn’t magic. It was based on the 28 year calendar repetition he’d memorized.

I’ve figured Bob easily peddled over a hundred thousand miles around Chicago from 1948 to 2018, when declining health necessitated his move near his son in Chapman, Kansas. Yes, he took his trusty bike, his third of fourth, with him and continued to bike from his apartment to the local store and post office till July of last year. Last time out he fell. The Chapman police scooped up him and his bike, ending 74 years on two wheels, 70 in Chicago. Tho uninjured, Bob’s health failed rapidly and he died February 11, 2023 at age 84. He and his wife had been married for 48 years.

Since Bob’s travels were random and varied, likely few if any of those thousands of persons who saw him over the years paid any attention to him, much less recognized possibly the most bicycling dude who ever peddled Chicago’s streets. Unlike Walking Man, he never experienced a single untoward incident till that fall on his last bike ride. Also unlike Walking Man, Bicycle Man didn’t stand out. He relished his anonymity and probably wouldn't want this published. Thought I'd I pen this tribute to my brother Bob Zlotow, who may gain a tad bit of posthumous recognition as Chicago’s most prolific…Bicycle Man.