See the amazing East Baltimore building where these women worked. (Photo credit: Enoch Pratt Library)

Want to get post-industrial AND sweaty this weekend?

Baltimore Brew and Baltimore Bicycle Works present the third annual “May Day Roll.” Come join us Saturday, May 1, for a guided tour of Baltimore’s rich and varied labor heritage in celebration of International Workers’ Day.

Our two-wheeled tour will begin in the Jones Falls Valley, site of the city’s first intensive industrial development, and will circle through east and southeast Baltimore, visiting little-known factories, union organizing halls, backstreets and conflict zones where the lives and legacies of working men and women were forged.

Your host will be BREW contributor Mark Reutter, historian and author of “Making Steel: Sparrows Point.”

• We’ll meet up at 8:30 a.m. at Baltimore Bicycle Works (corner of Trenton and Falls Rd. one block south of North Ave. and one block west of Maryland Ave.) and the bikes will roll at 9 a.m. Come early and make sure your bike is shipshape. Meet your fellow riders over coffee and donuts.

• We will stop for lunch in Greektown for a specially prepared meal at Ikaros ($15 per person if you choose to do it.)

• The tour will end about 3 p.m. (we hope!) at Baltimore Bicycle Works.

• Please sign the waiver form before starting the tour.

• Be sure to bring a bike lock and a helmet.

• Participants must be 18-years-old or older.

• $10 suggested donation (no fellow workers will be turned away for lack of funds).

• Temperatures are going to be in the 80s, we hear, so hydrate, folks.

• Here’s the May Day Roll Route (this has been tweaked a bit):  http://bit.ly/9I8YTP

• To read up on the places we’ll visit, check out Mark’s “Biking into Baltimore History” series in the Brew:

Part 1 – “Born by the Falls” (Woodberry and Hampden) 4/28/10

Part 2 – “The Bottlecap Capital of the World” (Crown Cork & Seal building) 4/29/10

Part 3 – “Conflict on the Docks” (Wildcat seamen vs. labor goons, a 1936 clash) 4/30/10