Where Bob will be
Where Bob will be.
Every stop below has a street address, a day and a time. If a date is on this page, somebody checked it against the organizer's own listing.
This is the public list — the places you can walk up to Bob and say something to his face. It is short on purpose. An invitation with no address attached isn't a stop yet, so it waits down at the bottom of the page instead of being dressed up as one.
At a glance
- Fri, October 2
- Fall ArtScene, night one5 to 9 p.m. Bennie's Cleaners, 126 N 1st St.
- Sat, October 3
- Fall ArtScene, night two4 to 9 p.m. Same room, one hour earlier.
Checked against the organizer's own listing on September 20, 2026: the Rockford Area Arts Council. Where this page and an organizer disagree, the organizer is right. Stops that have already happened stay on the page rather than disappearing off it.
Friday and Saturday, October 2 and 3 — Fall ArtScene
Friday, October 2, 5 to 9 p.m. and Saturday, October 3, 4 to 9 p.m. Bennie's Cleaners, 126 N 1st St, Rockford. Free, both nights, no ticket.
Note the Saturday time: the gallery walk opens an hour earlier on the second night than it does on the first. That hour catches people out every year.
ArtScene is the Arts Council's gallery walk, running across dozens of venues downtown and beyond since 1987. The room above the shop is one of them, and has been for about twenty-five years. Bob is behind the counter downstairs on both nights, which makes this the least formal way to meet him on the calendar: there is art upstairs to look at, the artists are there to talk to, and nobody is going to put a clipboard in your hand.
The full venue list and map are on the Arts Council's site. Walking more than one stop is the point of the thing.
Why the room upstairs exists, and what Bob would and wouldn't do about the arts as mayor →
Can't make a date on this list? He is behind the counter at Bennie's on weekday mornings, 126 N 1st St. No appointment.
The door there is open weekdays, 7:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and closed at weekends. Mornings are the reliable part for finding Bob himself.
Or call 815-669-9604. That is the campaign's real number and it gets answered.
Already happened
Saturday, September 19 — Lifescape Senior Expo
This one is over. It ran 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, September 19 at the Rock Valley College Physical Education Center, 3301 N Mulford Rd. It stays on this page because a schedule that deletes its own past is harder to check than one that doesn't.
Lifescape put better than sixty exhibitors on that floor, alongside a free farmers market, wellness checks from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, flu shots and vaccines from Walgreens, and tours of OSF's new mobile health clinic. Bob walked the floor rather than shaking a few hands at the door.
If you meant to come and didn't, the next chance to say something to his face in person is ArtScene on October 2 and 3, or any weekday morning at the counter at Bennie's. The expo listing is Lifescape's own.
What isn't on this list
Two kinds of things get left off, and it is worth saying which, because a schedule that only ever grows is a schedule nobody has checked.
- Invitations without a confirmed place. Bob accepts more than this. Some of it has a date and no address yet. Those go up when somebody has confirmed where the room is — not before, because a stop you drove to and couldn't find is worse than no listing at all.
- Meetings that aren't ours to announce. A fair amount of a campaign is sitting down with an organization in its own building at its own invitation. Those are the host's to publicize, not Bob's, and they stay off this page unless the host says otherwise.
If you want to know whether Bob will be somewhere specific, the fastest answer is to ask: 815-669-9604, or send a message.
If this page is wrong
Tell us and it gets fixed
If you went somewhere on this list and Bob wasn't there, that is a failure worth hearing about, and we'd rather hear it than not. Call 815-669-9604 or send a message.