As I noted on yesterday’s blog, MBIP turned eight years old and I realized I’ve been blogging for eleven years now! I decided to write about my different blogs I’ve done through the years and yesterday I wrote about my first blog, The Marty Wombacher Show and the one that followed it, A Guy Walks Into 365 Bars. If you missed yesterday’s post, just click here to catch up!
Now on to the next three blogs. None of these went viral, like the 365 bars blog did, but I didn’t expect them to, that was a once in a lifetime happening and I’m grateful for it, but I also knew better than to think it would happen again.
I was planning on taking a few months off after doing the exhausting 365 bars blog, but a funny thing happened after I finished the bars blog: I realized I was kind of addicted to blogging!
I really liked the daily deadlines and the instant gratification that a daily blog brings, so just about a month after the 365 bars ended, a new one began.
Oh, Sherman, I think you know what to do here…
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Marty After Dark (2011-2012)
So I started thinking about a new blog immediately after I got back to New York. People wanted me to continue to do another “year in the life” blog, but I wasn’t ever going to do something like the 365 bars blog again!
I’m glad it got the attention it did, but I decided when I finally finished it that I would never do another blog that you absolutely had to update every single day. Plus, I didn’t want to do the “Son Of 365 Bars Blog.”
I did want it to be somewhat New York-centric and I started to think about the phrase about New York being, “The City That Never Sleeps.” And having lived there for almost twenty years, I can attest to the fact that that is true. There’s stuff open all night and it’s perfect for an insomniac like me.
I decided to do a blog that celebrates the time of day I like the best and that is the time of day that’s not daytime, nighttime!
I work nights and so I thought I could do an after-hours blog of going to places and meeting people late at night.
I was trying to think of a catchy name for the blog when all of a sudden I thought of the old TV show, Playboy After Dark. This was a show that was hosted by Playboy editor and publisher, Hugh Hefner. It was a late night variety show done in the style of a late-night cocktail party. It lasted two seasons from 1969 to 1970 and you can read about it by clicking here: Playboy After Dark.
I decided to call the new blog, Marty After Dark in a tribute to Playboy After Dark. I figured those that would get the connection would like it and even if you didn’t, it was a catchy title and it incorporated my name in it, which would sort of brand me as the official host of this late-night blog.
Once again, I called my friend, “Boris” to see what he thought of the idea and he loved it! So he went to work on the banner design for that blog and I started setting up a new blog template on Squarespace.
One thing I decided to do was to have all the photos be in black and white. I thought this would set the blog apart from others and give it somewhat a film noir look to it which would embrace the after-hours attitude.
Once again, “Boris” hit it out of the park with the Marty After Dark banner. It perfectly reflected the nighttime vibe and he incorporated a photo of me winking in it, once again, emphasizing that I was the host of these late night adventures. Click here to read more about “Boris” on Marty After Dark.
I made a list of places and things to go to after hours and on February 15th, 2011, Marty After Dark was launched!
I started the blog with a late-night visit to Ray’s Candy Store on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ray’s is open all night, so I went a little after midnight and took photos of Ray and people that were hanging out there. And I had a brand new Marty After Dark card made that I was handing out to everyone. Here’s a link to the very first blog post.
While I didn’t get the national exposure that the 365 bars blog got, I did get small introductions and write-ups in local New York blogs, like EV Grieve (third from the top), Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York (last entry) and the East Village Neighborhoodr.
The first post got a little over 2,000 unique hits and as the blog wore on, I averaged between 500 to 3000 daily unique hits, which I was happy with. I had retained a decent loyal audience and it was nice to know that there was a group of people enjoying my work.
One of the first things that happened was I started getting comments and emails about the black and white photos. Most people wanted said they were enjoying the blog but would like to have photos in color.
One thing I’ve learned is that sometimes you’ve got to listen to your audience. And so on Sunday, March 6th, I started incorporating color photos back in and in a couple weeks I was back to all color. That post is interesting because I got invited to a private screening of a film titled, Gaykeith.
This was part of a CineKink film festival and my friend Lex, who I met when she was visiting NYC from Canada told me her friend, Leslie Hope had a film in the festival and wondered if I’d like to do a blog on it. So I thought that would be the perfect blog to introduce color photos to the blog.l
One thing I got to do more of with Marty After Dark was write. With the 365 bars blog, it was so hectic I really didn’t write much more than captions and reviews for a solid year. With this blog I could branch out and I enjoyed interviewing Leslie for this post. Leslie’s a talented actress and director and two of the roles she’s most famous for are the wife of agent Jack Bauer on the TV show, “24” and she played the producer/girlfriend in the movie, Talk Radio. Check out this post and interview here.
Marty After Dark was fun, there was no pressure and here’s some links to some random posts from the blog: Easter Sunday At Mars Bar, Coney Island, Gallagher’s Steak House, Rolf’s and Occupy Wall Street/Liberty Square.
I went back to Peoria at Christmas that year and I started doing the blog live on that trip. I had just acquired a gizmo that I could attach to my laptop and it would patch into the closest wifi so I could go online anywhere. People enjoyed those live posts, so I decided to start doing the blog live and put up this notice.
I started doing these live blog posts and they were a lot of fun and people seemed to be enjoying them. This was truly improv journalism as you can see from these two posts: Ketchup and The Angry 7-11 Man and Party City and James Gandolfini,
I enjoyed doing the live posts so much, I decided to start a brand new blog that would be me running all over New York posting things as they happened. On January 2nd, I posted this announcement.
Time to start yet another chapter!
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Tripping With Marty (2012)
I decided on the name, “Tripping With Marty” for my next blogging adventure. In the beginning I thought this would be a blog about me going out on adventures in New York City and documenting these trips with live blog posts as they happened.
Once again “Boris” stepped up to the plate and came up with a genius piece of banner art for the blog. You can read about my thoughts for the blog and more about “Boris” here in this introductory Tripping With Marty post.
One of the reasons I would have time to take these day trips was I had lost my job. You can read about that here.
The blog’s first live posts were from a trip to one of New York’s oldest taverns, Mcsorley’s Old Ale House. Here’s some of the live posts from that day: And We’re Off!, My First McSorley’s Moment, A Tour of McSorley’s and Faces In The Crowd.
This blog really took off and I was getting crazy hits all day with these posts. Then as the following days passed by, it was an instant throw back to The Marty Wombacher Show. The hits started to dwindle. I did a Seinfled trip to the Upper West Side and some Coney Island posts the next day and the numbers were plummeting.
I was getting emails from a lot of people saying that they didn’t like the live format. A lot of them said it was too much and I remembered how people disliked the multiple postings at The Marty Wombacher Show.
A lot of people said they preferred the single daily post with a lot of photos. Once again, I listened to the audience and decided to switch back to the original format and I put up this announcement that I was going back to my classic format.
So I went back to the singular posts and people started coming back. Soon I had my daily audience of 500 to 2,000 people back and I started to enjoy doing this Tripping With Marty blog.
Here’s some fun posts that happened in 2012 while doing the blog: John Lennon Walking Tour, Rodeo Bar Starring Susquehanna Industrial Tool & Die Co., Four Slices, Four Bucks, The Bronx Zoo, The Bar Exam With Paul Scanlon and Main Squeeze.
I had a lot of fun doing this blog and while it was nice not to be working, I had hoped that maybe I could generate income from donations to the blog. I put up this post and while some donations floated in, I quickly learned that it wasn’t going to pay my rent.
Tripping With Marty turned out to be a little bit of a roller coaster ride. I was living on unemployment and that was just covering my rent and bills. So money started moving in an unhealthy direction and my bank account was running in reverse, making me very nervous.
I worked a couple of freelance jobs that didn’t work out and I couldn’t afford to keep doing the Tripping With Marty daily adventures and I put up this post.
Eventually I had to put the blog on hold because I couldn’t find any work and got really depressed. I put up this post and entered a very dark time and wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do with my life.
I spent the next few months watching my bank account shrink and wondering what to do. Finally it hit me: I could just move back to my hometown of Peoria, Illinois. Living there would be half the cost of New York and I could probably find a job that could cover my overhead in Peoria.
I also did some research and saw that no one was doing a fun blog there and maybe I could do a blog in Peoria. After all, this whole New York life started because of my magazine, People of Peoria, maybe it was time to bring the whole thing full circle.
I put up this post and started to prepare to move back to Peoria, Illinois and start yet another chapter of my life!
So I moved back to Peoria, found a job, got an apartment and started to put together, Meanwhile Back In Peoria… The whole story is told here in the very first blog post from eight years ago yesterday.
I was really nervous moving back here. I knew that once I left New York, there was no going back there except for vacations. I knew that if this Peoria blog tanked, I would really be depressed and bummed out.
Luckily it took off. Here’s a PJ Star article documenting the blog’s early success. If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the history of this blog, so there’s no need for a history lesson here.
This is by far the longest period of time I’ve ever spent doing a blog or any other project in my life. I want to truly thank all of you who read this blog on a daily basis. It really has made my time back in Peoria enjoyable and at times almost magical. This year has been exceptionally tough and doing MBIP has helped me get through this rotten year!
With over seven years worth of material, I can’t start picking out favorite posts or this post would never end. I’ve had so much fun in the last seven years doing this and I’m thankful for all the people I’ve met, all the places I’ve been to and all of the adventures I’ve had these last seven years.
I thought rather than try to pick out a bunch of posts from the past, I’d highlight my favorite MBIP blog post of all time.
My Favorite MBIP Blog Post!
This post started off a few years ago with my friend Amber telling me that her Uncle Jon was one of Dan Fogelberg’s best friends and they had played together in a local band here in Peoria back in the mid ‘60’s. I thought that might make for some sort of interesting blog post and Amber gave me Jon’s email and I sent him an email asking if maybe I could talk to him about his relationship with Dan and the band he was in. Jon emailed me back and said he was fine with that, but then I got busy and never followed up on it.
That year at Christmas, Amber’s parents, Chuck and Diane gave me a poster from a Paul Revere and The Raiders show from 1966 when they played at Spalding Auditorium in 1966. One of the bands that opened up that show was The Coachmen, the band that Amber’s Uncle Jon was in along with Dan Fogelberg.
I loved the poster and had it framed. One day while looking at it, I wondered what happened to the rest of The Coachmen. Sadly, Dan Fogelberg had died back in 2007. I wondered if the rest of the band had survived through the years and shot an email off to Jon asking him that question.
He responded that yes, the rest of The Coachmen were alive and well. This led me to thinking that these guys probably had some great stories of being in a popular local Peoria band in the ’60’s and I thought it might be fun to do an oral history of the band. I expressed this idea to Jon in an email and his reply was a little skeptical, but he gave me all of the band’s current email address. I was really starting to get excited about this!
But then, one by one I heard back from the former bandmates. They all said they weren’t sure about this and seemed a little confused about why I wanted to do such a thing.
I sent a gang email back to all of them and asked them if I could just mail them some questions and all they would have to do is answer them and that would get the ball rolling. They all agreed and soon we were all getting into this. I think I stirred up some fun memories for these guys and I got some great material to work with.
It turns out that The Coachmen had a very rich history of playing in Peoria. These guys opened up for everyone from the Dave Clark 5, to the Hollies, to The Who and many more in between. They had some interesting and fun stories about being in a band in Peoria in the ’60’s and they all shared memories of their friend, Dan Fogelberg. They sent me some great vintage photos and some pictures from a reunion.
This post is one of my favorite pieces of work I’ve ever been involved in and it exploded after I put it up. It’s gotten the most hits of any post in the last seven years and every day people still look at it. The facecrack post got 277 responses and it was shared 98 times.
Thanks to Amber, Chuck and Diane for planting the seeds for this idea!
And thanks to the surviving members of the Coachmen, Jon Asher, Tom Cain, Robin Sleeth and Terry Walters. And cheers to their departed bandmate, local legend, Dan Fogelberg.
Here’s the link to my favorite MBIP post of all time: From A Basement To A Stage: The Oral History of The Coachmen.
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In closing, I want to thank all of you who read this blog!
When I first started it eight years ago I wondered what would happen after I first hit publish on the very first post on December 10th, 2012. Well, it started a ride that I could not have predicted! It’s truly made my time here in Peoria interesting, fun and unpredictable.
And it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t have an audience to present it to, so I humbly thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart for reading and supporting this blog!
Now let’s get through this fucking year of 2020 and hope for better times in 2021!
Thanks again and we’ll see you all tomorrow!
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Related Post: MBIP One Year Anniversary Party At Mike’s Tavern!