marci blackman
news & updatesWinter/Spring 2010Wow! Crazy shifts have occurred since I last updated. I switched agencies—followed Amy Tipton from Fine Print over to Signature—Ellen Pepus and Gary Heidt's agency. Was admitted to graduate school, then lost my funding when the economy crashed. Ted Kennedy died. Barack Obama was finally seen as a man and president instead of a savior, which while good for all of us is especially good for us black folk. Now, perhaps, we are one step closer to walking in a door and representing only ourselves, instead of an entire race. Earthquakes devastated Haiti and Chile. Don't worry. This is not a sad song (repeat twice and sing to the tune of PIL's "This is not a love song"). Far from it. When it finally sunk in that I would be remaining in New York awhile (completely unprepared to do so), like the rest of the world, I was forced to do a bit of revising. Safari Anyone? For those of you who don't know, I am an insane cyclist! Seriously, the word "avid" when applied to me is a gross understatement. I have bicycled everywhere. Western Europe, a 4200 mile trek across the United States. I've even bicycled in Japan. So when a friend of a friend's shrugged her shoulders one day and asked if I had any interest in working as a bicycle tour guide, my mouth dropped through to the other side of the floor. Was she kidding? Is a pig happy in @#$%? Let me get this straight, I said. You mean ride my bike all day, tell stories to people about the sexiest city in the world and be paid for it? I was born for this job. My life has been a training ground of preparation. When I told my mother about it she laughed. "Only you," she said, "would find a job as a bicycle tour guide in New York City." Then she laughed again. louder this time and she held it there, prolonged and howling over the receiver, like a well-preserved note in a static-filled aria. It never failed; at some point during every tour, as we passed the flatiron building, or stopped at a light in front of one of the pretzel vendors or halal stands, the smell of burnt popcorn piercing the air like ambulance sirens, sunlight splashing our faces as we climbed to the Brooklyn Bridge, I'd look around and think... Billie Holiday walked these streets, Miles, Thelonious, Coltrane. Bird lived right over there, number 151, across from the park. I couldn't believe I was getting paid to do this. It felt so decadent I figured I'd better share some of the wealth before I OD'd on it.So I brought my friend, Ed Glazar, on board, an old school messenger and bike culture photographer, and he loved it just as much as I did. Salty old Ed, leading tourists around on bicycles and telling them about his city. Because that's how it feels. You're not just showing people New York, but your New York. The shy places, hidden off in a corner somewhere, or a lane, or alley. Private places that can only be explored by bike. It's addicting.
Midway through the season, after the one hundredth tourist or so asked if there were a bike guide they could purchase now that they knew the city a little bit so they could venture off on their own, and for the hundredth time we answered, "No," a light bulb went on. We need to put out a guide book, we said. Not just a map of routes, but a NOT FOR TOURISTS meets HERE IS NEW YORK kind of guide book. A history of the city E.B. White style, only by bike, with photos and maps and resource info. A book that people will want to read as well as carry around in their backpacks. We teamed up with blogger and filmmaker, Michael Green, and today I am psyched to announce that BIKE NYC—researched, written and photographed by Marci Blackman, Ed Glazar and Michael Green, published by Skyhorse Publishing—will hit stores April 2011. And I need to put a big shout out to agent extraordinaire AMY TIPTON for making it all happen! Thank You! Summer 2009So as some of you already know this time last year I left New York to move to the servant's quarters of an old turn of the century mansion on a thousand acre nature preserve in southern Ohio (10 miles from where I grew up) to finally finish my second novel. Except for one other tenant who lived in the attic, WHAT'S UP MS FUDGE? and the raccoons who squatted in the chimneys and heating ducts, which ran like a maze through the entire house, the squirrels in the walls... the rest of the mansion was empty.
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