Erik Moser, our Whitefish Bay neighbor, husband, dad of two, and self-described high-pressure B2B sales veteran, had a health scare. Not a physical one, but a mental one. He says he was “bursting at the seams carrying 1,000 pounds.” The autopilot had kicked in: bills, investments, a nagging feeling of not doing enough at work. The kind of slow burn that doesn’t show up in a blood test but quietly takes a toll.
“I started to feel myself turning into this autopilot dad around my family,” he says. The further he dug into how to actually improve his wellbeing, the more he noticed something missing, not just in his own life, but potentially also in the community around him.
“We’ve lived in Whitefish Bay for seven years. My next door neighbors on both sides are great, but go two doors down and they might as well live on Mars.”
That observation, equal parts funny and a little sad, is what planted the seed for Dad O’Clock, a biweekly happy hour for dads of all kinds launching Tuesday, May 13th from 4 to 6pm at The Argo.
Old dads. New dads. Tall dads. Short dads. Cat dads. Dog dads.
(Yes, he Dr. Seuss’d his original announcement. No, he is not sorry about it.)
The premise is disarmingly simple: dads meeting dads, no agenda, no networking pitch, no ulterior motive. Just a bar stool, a beverage, and someone who might actually want to hear how your week went.
Conversation topics are flexible. Sports? Wisconsin everything, plus Tampa Bay Lightning hockey. Kids? his daughters are named Marley and Bowie, after Bob Marley and David Bowie respectively, which tells you something about the guy. Local politics? Erik has strong feelings about leaf-gate and Mother Nature’s decision to snow before the leaves were collected. He is not over it.
What he’s really after, though, is something harder to put on a flyer. He talks about watching parents at the park, heads down on their phones while their kids play, and the irony of adults lecturing children about screen time while doing the exact same thing. He talks about how the digital age keeps making it easier to stay isolated, and how a simple “hi” from a stranger somehow feels harder than it used to.
“People are more than happy to chat if you just say hi,” he says. “But for so many, saying hi can feel too uncomfortable, too awkward, or just not worth it. That’s where I want to step in: hey neighbor, let me buy you a drink and I’d love to hear your story.”
For men, the cultural pressure to appear fine has always been louder than the invitation to admit they’re not. A Today Show commissioned study showed that 49% of men felt more depressed than they would admit to people in their lives.
Erik has hosted plenty of events professionally, rooftop gatherings in New York, Chicago, and Miami. But those, he’ll tell you, were always money-motivated. Dad O’Clock is the first thing he’s done in a long time purely for himself. For his own wellbeing. For his community.
And Erik is already thinking about the moms. He’d love to see someone step up to host a counterpart happy hour on a different day of the week. “Battle of the sexes, Whitefish Bay. Bravo TV, here we come.”
He signs off as “Tootie Butt,” a nickname he says he earned through integrity, according to his daughter Marley. Whether that story holds up under scrutiny is a matter for another happy hour conversation.
Dad O’Clock kicks off May 13th at 4pm at The Argo.
What do you think, Bay Neighbor?